SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2020

And, the second system is what I call the product marketing system. What I find is that if you think about the product marketing calendar this way, it makes it a little bit more like the sales finance calendar where sales is about selling to customers, sales don’t work unless a customer buys what you’re selling.

Startup 299

Startup Software Review Scale Systems Review 299

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success. Hire a leader who will not only agree with you but someone you can disagree with in a respectful and productive way. Prioritize demand discovery Demand is a strong indicator of product market fit.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 264

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

You may have a one-person representative in each continent who does the job of an SDR, closes deals, takes care of partnerships, marketing, and more. The size of your team is inconsequential when you’ve found a product market fit and can demonstrably grow your business. “If

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 278

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2022

Migrating from the hyper-growth and chaos of the early days seeking product-market fit is critical to managing growth in customers, employees, products, and geographies. What did it take for the VCs to throw their hands up in surrender — and what can be done to prevent this from happening? Start-ups can be chaotic places.

Startup 316

Startup Leadership Innovation Scaling 316

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2023

The Founder-Led Sales Era When you’re first starting out, and have that initial product-market fit and tight feedback loops with champions and customers, there are many pros to founder-led sales. Early first-hand knowledge leads to rapid fixes to the product, pricing, and packaging.

Scale 283

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 283

Mucker Capital

JUNE 24, 2019

When I was leading my last business, I always knew that company culture was important. With a thousand other things demanding my time, thinking about culture was perpetually on the back burner. The Moment that Culture Becomes Crucial. But what I needed to do about it and when to do it was a mystery to me.

Company Culture 40

Company Culture Scale Leadership Scaling 40

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2022

Product-Market Fit. Don’t rush your product-market fit too early. However, he notes that the dollar amounts can differ from business to business. Phase 1: $0 – $10M. Pattern Matching. This is the discovery phase to gather information, experiment, and identify patterns. Phase 2: $30M. Phase 3: $100M. Repeatability.

Scaling 246

Scaling Leadership Startup Product Marketing 246

Hitenism

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

If you make the customer the center and beginning of every product initiative, no matter how big or small, you hardwire it into a central part of your company culture. Your approach to your customers is a reflection of your company’s mission.

AWS 189

AWS New CTO Scale CTO 189

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2019

Show it to them in the context of your existing product. Market your new product within your existing product. Show the integration, show the new product with the customer’s data already in it. Alright, strategy number three – Finding product market fit again and again.

Scale 248

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Strategy 248

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

We continued to adjust to working from home , and our company culture evolved accordingly. What’s also clear is how much of our culture has stayed the same, and how much has evolved as we have grown. We hit a huge milestone as our ARR grew well past $200M. Sharing Intercom’s Values.

Technical Review 196

Technical Review Scale Innovation Company Culture 196

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2020

And, the second system is what I call the product marketing system. What I find is that if you think about the product marketing calendar this way, it makes it a little bit more like the sales finance calendar where sales is about selling to customers, sales doesn’t work unless a customer buys what you’re selling.

Software Review 269

Software Review Scale Systems Review Startup 269

SaaStr

OCTOBER 21, 2022

Braze has witnessed other companies lose focus in trying to claw up the growth curve. Without focusing on product market fit, a company might find itself selling five products with only a hundred employees to meet its targets.

Mobile 263

Mobile Technology Investment Innovation 263

FastSpring

APRIL 19, 2019

It is something our People and Culture team is constantly working on through a variety of initiatives. While it’s impossible to summarize everything we do in just one blog post, I would like to share three key ways we are putting employees first to build a company culture that scales alongside FastSpring.

Scaling 105

Scaling Company Culture Leadership Education 105

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 25, 2019

Paul Graham puts it like this: “A startup is a company designed to grow fast”. In general, growth is a good problem to have – it means you’ve found some measure of product market fit and you’re generating real revenue from active users. Making sure culture scales as you grow.

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 136

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

If you don’t know, it’s the hockey stick curve going from $2M to $6M to $18M to $36M and on and on after you’ve found product market fit. Even if you think you’ve passed the stage of product market fit, it’s always worth keeping a lens toward it and understanding the needs of your customers as you evolve from early to later stages.

Scale 182

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling 182

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

But this process was also hard: We had to get alignment across Product, Marketing, Sales, CS, and PS on what our end-to-end value (from 30K feet to 30 feet). But the spirit was the same: We are the experts on how to get value from our software. Lead our clients to the outcome. We needed the right granularity for each stakeholder.

Sales Hiring 331

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success Scaling 331

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

Sales and marketing are still significant, but consider dedicating more research and design to the user experience. Know how to market your product. Product marketing can bring the focus back onto the value your clients get from your product.

Scale 246

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring SMB 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2022

Guarantee true product market fit. Get your marketing strategy right. Solidify your positioning and communicate it to your customer through the right marketing channels. Your founder’s team should be complementary. Attract new investors, but be picky. Seek to truly understand your core customers and their needs. .

Scale 245

Scale Marketing Scaling Communication 245

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

They don’t care like you had a successful company or not in the past. Do you have to still find the right product market fit, you have to build a good product, you have to service the customers, you have to compete in the market. And it doesn’t mean that you have to sell a big product.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 264

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

Another thing I wish I had realized before is the fact that company culture is unfortunately not only about values you put on your wall but also about tough decisions. Then, of course, you need product marketing because these teams need sales collateral that’s up to date that helps them sell the product.

Sales Hiring 124

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Company Culture 124

ProfitWell

MARCH 20, 2019

To explore the power or lack thereof of remote, we looked at just over three thousand subscription and SaaS companies. By $10M you probably have figured out your main channels and definitely product/market fit, so remote is less of an issue. Here’s what we found.

Company Culture 85

Company Culture Trends Product Marketing Payment Features 85

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 4, 2021

Anne Hollander, Senior Director of Product Marketing and Growth at Trimble. More on company culture. How to Build, Maintain and Scale a Strong Culture—According to Kristin Graham. Lessons From Netflix—Drift’s David Cancel on Building a Strong Company Culture. appeared first on OpenView.

Company Culture 80

Company Culture Systems Review Leadership Scaling 80

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

In the early days, what you really want as a CEO is to actually be the first sales rep, so you want to find some sort of product market fit. The reason that you want to do this, if you just hire one AE, you don’t know if they are good, which is why the product you’re really selling and the product is taking off.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 195

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

I’ve definitely found myself posting more on Twitter and LinkedIn since I joined the company, largely because it’s just become a whole lot easier for me to do. Employee advocacy is organic If you’re familiar with Buffer, you know company culture is something we take pretty seriously.

Branding 127

Branding Social Media Company Culture Engagement 127

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

These initial hires will influence how you approach each region, how you build off your success, and what your new office culture is. And office culture is invaluable as a new sales team in a new region. You can’t just force your company’s old company culture onto this new team. It has to be organic.

Sales Hiring 126

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 126

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

What’s the go to market motion look like? What does the product marketing look like, and the battle cards look like? And so there’s this whole area around product releases where historically, I released the product and I got in the sales all hands and went, “Check this out.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

User Pilot

JULY 17, 2023

A well-structured product team requires a product leader – either a product manager or a product owner. In larger organizations, they may work side by side with QA engineers, product marketers , data analysts , or product ops managers. They play an important role in product launches.

SaaS 98

SaaS Scale Leadership Customer Lifetime Value 98

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Start by defining the following: Vision: Compelling company vision that inspires employees, investors, customers, and partners to join you on the journey. This will usually center around PMF (product-market fit) or growth. Priorities: Determine what you will focus on to help realize your vision.

Retention 130

Retention Leadership Compensation Communication 130

OpenView Labs

MARCH 22, 2019

If you asked most people to name the top three attributes of a successful SaaS company, they would probably include things like a killer product, strong technical expertise and a solid product-market fit. In a company of 65 people, we have built out a people team which includes a team of three in-house recruiters.

SaaS 86

SaaS Company Culture Leadership Communication 86

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 31, 2021

It’s important to convey that you understand and are digesting this honest feedback from a person who has very little to lose to a person (you) trying to retain a team and build a positive company alumni group.” — Anne Hollander, Senior Director, Product Marketing & Growth, Trimble. More on company culture.

Interviewing 72

Interviewing Company Culture Leadership Engagement 72

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Develop policies that promote company culture . The COO has to balance budget and strategy alongside culture and people management. Often, companies turn responsibility for all areas of operations over to the COO—this typically includes production, marketing and sales, and research and development.

Scale 75

Scale Sales Hiring Finance Company Culture 75

Chargify

APRIL 23, 2019

You’ll also hear this stage called validation or the product/market fit stage. As those names indicate, in this phase a SaaS company’s focus should be on finding product/market fit. Finding channel/market fit. You may be less familiar with the concept of channel/market fit than product/market fit.

Scale 74

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling Payment Services 74

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

But there are a lot of generic responsibilities that all or most product growth managers will do in a company. This allows the marketing team and the Product Marketing Managers to reach the exact right audience. You can do so with an informal session with the entire team or get to know them one by one.

Management 105

Management Sales Hiring Onboarding User Experience 105

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 26, 2021

. “I think about things like the amazing communities built by our Employee Resource Group leads , and the work they do to share and support the experiences of their members” As Jasmine Jaume , Director of Product Marketing shares, “I see examples every day of Intercomrades lifting each other up and supporting each other.

Sales Hiring 138

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Customer Support Engineering 138

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

And, that was a product manager? Eric Yuan : Product marketing manager. Eric Yuan: Yeah, we tried to let him evaluate our product, you know? And we hired a product marketing person. The product worked so well. Mallun Yen : So, when did you hire employee 34? Mallun Yen : One year later.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 145

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

And so we are absolutely in lockstep every day of the week to make sure something that might slip we are made aware of because marketing campaigns really need to align with what new features are coming out. It follows on the heels of having our engineering PMC.

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Artificial Intelligence 173

SaaSOptics

MAY 6, 2022

A thoughtfully-designed HR Core can significantly impact the employee experience at early-stage companies—it improves company culture, reduces employee turnover, streamlines onboarding and offboarding, and determines how your company is perceived in the job market. Background checking software.

SaaS 76

SaaS Scale Underperforming Technical Team Forecasting 76