SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Including: CEO Snowflake CEO HubSpot CEO DropBox CEO Descript CEO Clio CEO Flock Safety CEO Own CRO ServiceTitan CMO Databricks CMO Infinite Reality CTO Rubrik CCO Canva CCO Bill CCO GitHub VP AI Wiz CEO Calendly and 100s more!! Investor Connections and Funding Opportunities — And $5m AI VC Pitch Stage!!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

You just close more, and churn less, and upsell more, when you show up. You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Are we sure?

CTO Hire 328

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 328

ProfitWell

JANUARY 29, 2019

On this episode of the ProfitWell Report, Brendan Schwartz , Co-Founder and CTO at Wistia , wants to know what proportion of paid plans should be annual versus monthly. The beauty of the subscription model is that for the first time in the history of business, relationships are baked directly into how you make money. Click to enlarge.

Churn 103

Churn CTO Hire Data CTO 103

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

Which role should you hire for first? For starters, your first hire should be someone who can complement your skills, someone who is strong in areas where you’re weak, but it goes much deeper than that. I am guessing it’s probably the hardest problem to solve, hiring a job, let alone at this level. And for good reason.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 265

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2019

I remember my CTO once arguing with a Fortune 500 company on a “security” concern they had which really made no sense. But the ones I didn’t, were the ones that silently churned. More here: I Never Lost a Customer I Actually Visited | SaaStr Not hiring a full-time RFP person. Not being responsive to every key concern.

Sales Hiring 174

Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 174

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

” For companies like ZoomInfo, their tech cohort of customers went from its fastest-growing for two decades running to now reducing spend or just churning outright. Second, AI is changing how ZoomInfo ranks and prioritizes accounts.

New CTO 316

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 316

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah shared with us how they got there — and the top mistakes they made — just 3 quarters after their IPO. We have someone that probably 98 percent of you know virtually or socially in some sense, Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot. ” We didn’t do any annual contracts.

Part-Time VPE 297

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 297

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

They’re able to actually swipe a credit card, and what starts off similar to a freemium self-serve product can turn into a six-figure contract in just a few months. It might even be months later that a VP of Engineering or a CTO or CFO realizes that they’re built on a new platform. The contract size grows.

Outsourced Development 215

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 215

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Deals are contracting, not because of layoffs, but because people are managing budgets so tightly. It Takes Time To Bounce Back Jason was the first investor in RevenueCat , a company that automates mobile subscriptions on your phone. Maybe if you have the ex-CTO of Github, but that’s still a super speculative bet. in 12 months?

CTO Hire 148

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 148

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

What I mean is Ben broke the rule that he didn’t care what NRR and churn were. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. And the best CTO I know in the world is the CEO. Then I was the CTO at another YC company, Standard Treasury, acquired by Silicon Valley Bank.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

“The biggest thing I can do for Slack is to hire people who know a lot more than I do and give them free rein to do their best work” Adam Risman: You mentioned the team started with performance marketing. And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team. Andrew Chen: Exactly.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. What to do before building a team for your SaaS company You can’t just jump into hiring without some forethought, or you’ll make many mistakes. Before the hiring process, take some time to decide on your current needs and hire as your company grows.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

A successful price increase helps you acquire better customers, who are more serious about using your product and less likely to churn. Time and time again SaaS companies are promising customers that they will save hundreds of thousands of dollars, but their pricing strategies are only capturing a tiny fraction of that savings.

Pricing 135

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 135

Baremetrics

MARCH 16, 2021

QuikNode wants to see technology transform decentralized applications, smart contracts, decentralized governance, voting systems, and more. Bunsen, a serial founder and multi-CTO before starting QuikNode, had used Baremetrics in previous roles and was familiar with the value it brought to growing businesses.

Blockchain 90

Blockchain Payment Solutions Artificial Intelligence Payment Services 90

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

The volume of transactions was low enough that they could get by using database queries to calculate their MRR, churn, and even to perform some cohort analysis. However, as the company grew, their systems started to fail all the time, prompting the team to re-think their approach and look for a scalable solution. Click To Tweet.

Payment Solutions 113

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Social Media 113

ProfitWell

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

When Co-founder and CTO of Chargify , Michael Klett isn’t brewing his own beer, he’s crafting billing experiences. This can range from help with pricing, retention, and churn, as well as providing subscription financial metrics so a customer can see everything that is going on from acquisition all the way through to retention.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 98

ProfitWell

JANUARY 2, 2020

Because the contracts are typically much higher in these sales agreements, B2B subscriptions often require a much longer sales process before your customer will consider making a purchase. Contract length. The length of a contract defines how often subscription payments recur. B2C contract length. B2B contract length.

B2C 52

B2C Subscription Payment Features Payments 52

Crafty CTO

APRIL 17, 2023

Caught in the churn If we really are at the early stages of an emergence, what are the implications? Corey ’s fantastic sci-fi series The Expanse known as “the churn.” The churn can be seen as a metaphor for the unpredictable nature of life and the constant state of flux that people experience.

Artificial Intelligence 8

Artificial Intelligence CTO Hire ChatGPT AI Search 8

Natalia Luneva

APRIL 30, 2021

All-in-all, the community is the best way to keep users on top of the updates, and it certainly reduces the churn rate. ”. Of course, our team is involved to an extent, and we have an external part-time moderator for support. But mostly our members help each other, and it works like a charm.

Marketing 98

Marketing Social Media SaaS New CTO 98

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 9, 2022

More and more people are hiring leaders, not for past experience, but for capability and capacity. We hire a third-party firm. We’ve got to be OK with that because if we’re serving the entire market, we’re naturally going to have higher churn and therefore a lower CAC on the lower end of the market.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

He references Dan Steinman from Gainsight , who says, “the natural tendency for customers is towards churn.”. If we fail, our customers will churn. How many CSMs should you hire? But we know customer success reduces churn and increases expansion revenue, so CSMs do have a very serious purpose in an organization.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

We tend to believe that the technical aspects of our product are the most important differentiator because that’s what our CTO says. And most of the time, the unseen features will provide a better product positioning or marketing message against competitors. Step 5: Time for the interview.

Interviewing 76

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 76

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

The volume of transactions was low enough that they could get by using database queries to calculate their MRR, churn, and even to perform some cohort analysis. However, as the company grew, their systems started to fail all the time, prompting the team to re-think their approach and look for a scalable solution. Tweet this quote.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Features Outsourcing Services Payments 52

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

We were talking to Sean Place, who was the co founder and CTO, and it turned out that they were just giving gift cards to these drivers, but they had no way to authorize the right transaction at the right time for the right amount. And we felt that we couldn’t fail them and fail these new customers coming in at the same time.

Merchant Services 81

Merchant Services Payment Methods Payments Payment Solutions 81

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

We tend to believe that the technical aspects of our product are the most important differentiator because that’s what our CTO says. And most of the time, the unseen features will provide a better product positioning or marketing message against competitors. Step 5: Time for the interview.

Interviewing 52

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

Public valuations are still at a fraction of their 2021 peaks, but seed rounds are more expensive than ever. To IPO, companies need to triple their market share in their core market and have a churn rate of less than 3-4% per month. The Qualities of Great CTOs (00:15:54) To identify great CTOs, it may take interviewing 20 candidates.

CTO Hire 298

CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 298

SmartKarrot

AUGUST 16, 2022

You can prevent customer churn before it actually happens. These annual executive business meetings are a wonderful time to discuss contracts. Whatever suits the customer would be the right time. If the product is very technical, you can even include the CTO or such C-executives to get the best outcomes.

Technical Review 10

Technical Review Systems Review Business CTO Hire 10

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

And by business technology function I want to define that because sometimes there’s a overlap with the CTO from an engineering side. Harry Stebbings: So given the centrality of that role there and the ever increasing prominence of it, I guess my next question is for operators listening, when is the right time to hire that first CIO?

Technical Advisors 228

Technical Advisors Scale Technical Review Payment Solutions 228

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

Discussed in this Episode: When to hire your first account executives Key traits to look for in early sales hires Structuring compensation for first sales reps Should you ‘hire the buyer’ to be your sales rep? 31:55 Hiring for grit, curiosity & determination. What does Joe look like at that time?

Sales Hiring 99

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale VP of Engineering 99

Sales Hacker

MARCH 11, 2025

Pursuit helps companies hire elite go-to-market talent on a non-retainer basis. If you’re hiring for sales or marketing roles, reach out to Pursuit at pursuitsalessolutions.com/gtm or message a GTMfund team member. And I would say detractors are 10 times louder in the market than the promoters are.

Scale 82

Scale Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Technical Review 82

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

At SaaStr Annual we had a great session with HubSpot Founder & CTO, Dharmesh Shah, and their Chief People Officer, Katie Burke, on building happier employees. We hire remarkable people, and we give them a lot of freedom for how they’re going to get their work done. Who actually knows stuff and does things?”

Part-Time CTO 291

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 291

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2025

Co-founders Dharmesh Shah (CTO) and Brian Halligan (Chairperson) shared at SaaStr Annual the unfiltered truth on building an SMB powerhouse, pivoting to product-led growth, and why the “M” segment is SaaS gold. Focus obsessively on churn. They improved customer dollar retention from an initial 70% to around 90% over time.

Scale 201

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Scaling 201