SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. PLG is like the Cloud. There are no Cloud magicians, and you can’t hire a PLG magician.

Scale 290

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 290

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 264

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 264

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

We’ve convinced more than a thousand great big companies to put their financial data into our private cloud. I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. It is much more painful to have to fire people and contract as a company than it is to grow. Your big money is going to go into hiring your employees.

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Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 290

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CEO of ZoomInfo , Henry Schuck. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo? Second, AI is changing how ZoomInfo ranks and prioritizes accounts.

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New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 316

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

Join us for a fireside chat between Google Cloud and Zenoss, a leader in software-defined IT operations, as we discuss the most common and emerging challenges facing SaaS companies today for both technical and non-technical backgrounds. Eyal Manor – VP, Engineering @ Google Cloud. They wanted real-time results.

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Artificial Intelligence 173

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

That includes all of our cloud strategy, cloud operations, backend engineering, IT and security. You can think of them beginning from very base infrastructural technologies, and in our case we’re betting exclusively on AWS as a cloud vendor. Ciaran, our CTO , came up with this magical line. Who do we outsource to?

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Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

CloudGeometry

JULY 8, 2021

When you treat your cloud provider as a fractional colo. Bottom-up cost transparency is a key feature of any public cloud platform. Cloud compute spend is another form of technical debt; more on that in a future post). An alternative: the Cloud Container Solutions Cloud Native Maturity Matrix. Containers!

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Well Architected Framework Payment Methods CTO Hire Payment Solutions 130

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2020

One of the things that you and I talk about a lot is hiring for skill and impact over proximity, right? We’re using digital workflows and storing data in the cloud, but the rest of the world, this was an overnight just shift in how people worked and how they communicated. That’s your basic cloud infrastructure.

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Sales Recruiting Cloud CTO Hire Sales Hiring 213

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

Julian Lemoine, Co-Founder, and CTO of Algolia will share his lessons learned on how to stay focused and innovative as you scale while also avoiding the innovation for innovation’s sake pitfalls. Julien Lemoine | Co-founder and CTO @Algolia. So I’m Julien, Co-founder and CTO of Algolia. Want to see more content like this?

Scale 173

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 173

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

MongoDB was down 23%, a great Cloud stock consistently growing in the 30s. 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. It’s a rocket ship.

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CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 147

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2020

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. Terrifying, because back in those days, big companies didn’t even know what SaaS was, much less they weren’t going to put their financial information out in the cloud. It is much more painful to have to fire people and contract as a company than it is to grow.

Startup 227

Startup CTO Hire Scale CTO Coach 227

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They have service and all this, but the second cloud for them was sales. 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.

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Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Today on the show, we’ve got Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, a company that applies AI to your contract. Sam Jacobs: Today on the show, we’ve got Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, a company that applies AI to your contract. Sam’s Corner [28:45]. Show Introduction [00:10]. What is LinkSquares?

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Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 119

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

I wanted to have another fun, informal conversation with, one of, I think, the most insightful and smartest cloud investors, Sunil Dhaliwal. Interesting for a couple reasons, but Sunil’s been investing in cloud internet since before almost anybody. Just like a whole bunch of people said, “I’ll never hire remote.”

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Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Technical Review Sales Hiring 225

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Dee: And you’ve worked in the industry for more than 22 years, so you have an incredible insight into the expansion of cloud networks, enterprise and data center technologies. Tim: I was hired in 2010, when Facebook was what I like to call a “teenage company”. That was actually a pretty tall order at the time.

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Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169

Valerian Tech

JULY 18, 2023

Introduction Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate by increasing agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. In this blog post, we will delve into the world of cloud computing, exploring recent trends and developments. It provides flexibility and scalability for cloud-native applications.

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multi-cloud Kubernetes K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) Cloud CTO Hire 52

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

And as nice as verbal assurances and a handshake are, as you grow and try to sign with more established, enterprise-level companies, you’ll find yourself more and more having to provide proofs of compliance before closing the deal: The shift to the cloud, more and more data breaches – it really put a magnifying glass on third-party risk.

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Scale Software Review compliance Technical Review 211

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 4, 2023

To improve the efficiency of spend on cost of goods sold (COGS), most growth-stage leaders can optimize seat-based spend or renegotiate consumption-based contracts in a quarter or 2. Measuring the efficiency of S&M spend is usually a matter of quantifying LTV:CAC , and most tech companies can identify inefficiencies within 2 quarters.

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Underperforming Technical Team Benchmarks CTO Hire New CTO 120

OPEXEngine

JUNE 16, 2020

Hired CEOs: It’s the Board’s Company vs. It’s My Company to Run. You become a hired CEO primarily through one path — climbing the corporate ladder at a large tech company [5a], reaching the GM or CXO level, and then deciding to branch out. 6] Like it or not, it’s not a bad three-part formula for climbing the corporate ladder.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Venture Capital Technical Advisors 59

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2019

We replace on-prem software and hardware with a pure cloud solution. That means lots and lots of hiring and I don’t want to say firing, we did fire anyone, but people get reshuffled, you know? Jonathan : Did you have to do any sort of big steps hiring wise? Vlad : Well we did have to hire a new CFO. We did not.

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Scale Business Sales Hiring CTO Hire 207

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 8, 2018

Follow the Demand and Hire Accordingly [16:07]. Chris was actually the first sales hire at Snowflake. They are now well past $100 million in ARR and one of the most successful enterprise technology businesses to come out of Silicon Valley and, in fact, out of the US in a long, long time. Follow the Demand and Hire Accordingly.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 82

BetterCloud

AUGUST 6, 2021

” At that time, I said, “You know what, I think I really want to become a CIO or CTO.” When I decided I wanted to be a CIO or CTO , I was an associate director or what other companies might call a junior director. I really learned from the managers who came before me, including the person who hired me.

Technology 98

Technology CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO 98

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

And we just have never seen this in the cloud before. But so it was four years, the last time when the cloud was smaller, right? Jason Lemkin: So it’s just inverting that ratio, and I think that means overall, when we talk with other cloud leaders and executives and CEOs today, the answers are more guarded.

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Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 273

Baremetrics

MARCH 16, 2021

what we use today) advanced mobile usage, cloud infrastructure, and interactivity through social media, Web 3.0 QuikNode wants to see technology transform decentralized applications, smart contracts, decentralized governance, voting systems, and more. Building for the Evolving Internet For those who may not be familiar, Web 3.0

Blockchain 90

Blockchain Payment Solutions Artificial Intelligence Payment Services 90

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

That’s the advice, Petri Hollmén picked up on the more technical side of things from the opening session on Day 2 with Cal Henderson, CTO of Slack. Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth. We loved this one in particular, the importance of hiring, which he picked up at a side event Notion Capital ran. Full post. . Full post.

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Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

Sales Hacker

MAY 5, 2021

As Director of RevOps, he scaled his team at Sendoso by hiring smart generalists to lead their own teams of MOps, SOps, CSOps. Ask him about his thoughts on what companies are looking for in a RevOps role or where companies go wrong trying to hire/ build their RevOps function.). Alex Miller , Director of RevOps at Sendoso.

Scale 121

Scale Technical Cofounder Technical Advisors Sales Hiring 121

Upscope

JANUARY 5, 2020

If only we had figured out how to explain to people why they needed cloud storage :-(." and created a word cloud with the results. Speed stood at the centre of that word cloud. Teamviewer is download based and not made for one click instant screen sharing now that everything is in the cloud. Product positioning matters!

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Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring Engineering 128

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

You’ll need Cost of Revenue to calculate your Gross Margin, which in turn you need to calculate Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Payback Time and to understand your company’s unit economics in general. You’ll probably want to include Contract Labor – R&D for any product-related contractors you work with.

Startup 90

Startup Merchant Services DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

Hull

JANUARY 22, 2019

These roles are filled by engineers that roll up to the CMO/COO (not CTO) as part of a growth team. Second, cloud-hosted SaaS apps meet “consumerized” technology buyers via a freemium sales models. Since this is a post about engineering, here's the obligatory "we're hiring" plug, including growth engineers.

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SaaS Payments Engineering Technical Advisors Payment Solutions 77

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 31, 2019

SaaS companies tend to have more Finance headcount than traditional, non-Cloud companies. From speaking with a variety of CFOs and VPs of Finance recently, here’s what we are hearing they are looking for in their FP&A hiring, outside of traditional Finance, math, accounting and reporting skills. SaaS Finance Benchmarks.

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Finance CTO Hire Headcount Sales Hiring 40

Crafty CTO

JUNE 9, 2024

That led me down one final rabbit hole, but a very useful one, as I soon realized that Framework was a perfect fit for one of my fractional CTO client’s “data science reporting and dashboard” needs. Cloud API introduce a lot of latency? It’s build time, not runtime—time is measured differently here.

Data 52

Data CTO Hire Cloud New CTO 52

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 21, 2020

Most recently, he started and founded Upserve and grew it to become one of the largest cloud-based point-of-sale platforms for full-service restaurants in the US with over 10,000 restaurant customers and a payments platform processing over $12 billion in annual volume. We were part of the office of the CTO.

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Payment Methods Scale CTO Coach SMB 62

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2025

We were bought in part to help spark the SaaS and Cloud transition in one business unit — Document Cloud. Because they could build it, but that would take time. Salesforce bought an online wordprocessor for $750m … just to get its CTO. #2. Hire one 95% of the time. And it did that.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review CTO Hire CTO Cloud 279

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Leveraging the power of cloud technology, SaaS has re-engineered the way we look at modern technology and software. Byron Deeter is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and is an investor in SaaS and Cloud. He co-authored Bessemer’s iconic cloud computing and state of cloud report. Casey Winters. David Skok.

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VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2019

And so we started building a cloud solution, but it was a long arduous journey. And I thank a lot of that to actually Met Gourniak, who I hired at that time. It’s in the cloud. We built a CPQ in the cloud, can we partner?” We became the number one partner for Salesforce in the cloud.

Sales Recruiting 233

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Payments 233

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

Harry Stebbings: And before that, Erica had an incredible 16 year tenure with Oracle Corporation where she founded and led numerous teams within the sales organization, including pioneering the company’s cloud business and leading teams for North American and Latin American markets. I came back to North America.

Scale 214

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 214

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2018

At our inaugural SaaStr Europa last June, podcast host-with-the-most Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. We have a lot of technology trends, so cloud was pivotal.

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Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 232