SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

5 Key Learnings from Scaling from 3 to 75 Go-To-Market Team Members in Less Than 12 Months The latest SaaStr CRO Confidential is out and Sam Blond did a great deep dive with Graham Mareno, VP of Worldwide Sales at Codeium. The 5 Key Elements of Codeium’s GTM Scaling Playbook 1. What is Codeium and Windsurf?

Sales Recruiting 245

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 245

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2025

The right person to lead finance at a Series A company looks very different than the right person to lead finance at a true pre-IPO company (that is near an IPO). And the scope might be even larger at an earlier stage company, but the scope/importance of most of these responsibilities dramatically increase as a company scales.

Scale 319

Scale Finance Headcount Leadership 319

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2023

So leading growth stage VC Iconiq has published its latest and very detailed Definitive Guide to Sales Compensation here. It’s very detailed and oriented more toward growth-stage scale-ups — but it’s excellent. Corners were cut in the boom times of 2021, but we are back to sane sales models.

Compensation 307

Compensation Scale Sales SMB 307

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

General Partner Doug Pepper and General Partner and Head of Analytics at ICONIQ Growth, Christine Edmonds, share the art and science of scaling GTM at this year’s SaaStr Annual. Because founder-led sales worked really well for most of the early stages, but you eventually start running out of juice around $15M ARR.

Scale 279

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 279

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2022

The world of sales is evolving as rising costs and shifts in buyer behaviors continue to change. An emerging strategy that organizations are adopting to grow revenue more efficiently is inside sales. Inside sales refer to the practice of selling from office premises via phone, email, or video calls. Benefits of inside sales.

Scale 265

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 265

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

This is a positive trajectory, but it presents a challenge for your customer success efforts: How can you scale your support and CS while still delivering a memorable, quality customer experience? According to the Totango report, 77% of respondents said that scale was their top challenge. Key Takeaways For Scaling Growth.

Scale 284

Scale Customer Success Scaling Compensation 284

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2025

Pre-Seed / Seed Stage (Pre-Revenue or <$1M ARR) At this stage, you’re compensating for high risk with high equity. Early Growth Stage ($1M-$10M ARR) At this stage, you’re starting to scale, and the risk is lower. Scaling Stage ($10M-$50M ARR) By now, you’re hiring people who want the machine running already.

Part-Time VPE 146

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Compensation 146

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2020

I’m not ashamed to admit that when I set up our first SaaS sales comp plan, I had no idea what I was doing. But I did all the sales myself, and stupidly, had no sales comp plan at all ??. Then, as we first scaled up a sales team, we ended up literally copying Salesforce’s comp plan. A boiler room.

Scale 363

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 363

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2022

Imagine a coverage model, from end to end, for the full customer life cycle: from demand generation to sales to post-sales. Sales Cycle. This includes everything from inside sales to account executives to strategic asset allocation. Post Sales. Hire talent strategically and be two steps ahead with sales capacity.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 278

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

In SaaS, #1 most common misfire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof. Because in SaaS start-ups, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Should I Design a Sales Reps Compensation Plan at Just $10k MRR ? Figuring out your very first sales comp plan when you don’t have a repeatable process or much revenue is confusing. but You don’t have the capital to invest here … the rep has to be accretive. Then try it again (e.g., appeared first on SaaStr.

Compensation 246

Compensation Scale Sales Business Model 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

2021 will be the year SaaS sales evolves the most since the Appexchange ecosystem started to take off ~15 years ago, which spawned the entire notion of a true sales app stack. The permanent move to distributed sales teams. Almost every SaaS VP of Sales and CRO I’ve talked to in the past few months isn’t going back.

Sales Recruiting 354

Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 354

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2024

How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? Ways to scale that don’t include rampant inefficiency and burn. You shouldn’t be adding a bunch of sales reps or spending a bunch of money on marketing if the economics aren’t sustainable. While this title is SMB-oriented, the advice applies to Mid-Market and Enterprise, too.

Scale 307

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Sales 307

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Scaling a sales organization isn’t easy. Knowing which metrics matter and how to analyze them to increase your revenue and hit organizational sales goals is essential. . What makes a sales organization grow? What’s the best way to grow a sales organization? Are you compensating your teams to sell recurring revenue?

Scale 298

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Sales 298

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2020

Q: What is a typical organizational structure for a SaaS startup with sales reps? A rough structure from 1–25 sales reps: Early days: CEO acts as VP of Sales. CEO hires 2 reps, in the beginning, each barely pays for themselves, but by months 4–6 they are able to close 3x-5x their total compensation.

Sales Hiring 309

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 309

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2021

So how do you simplify and speed up your sales cycles? He started as the first sales hire at TripActions when the company was small and he helped scale the business to 5,000 customers, 1,200 employees and a $5 billion private valuation. Read on for Michael’s insightful advice for driving faster sales cycles. Subscribe.

Scale 300

Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 300

The SaaS CFO

JANUARY 7, 2025

Sales compensation plans play a critical role in the success and scaling of SaaS companies. The transition from founder-led sales to scalable, team-driven sales models can be challenging. The transition can stop companies from hitting the next level of ARR. Higher ARR, higher valuation.

Compensation 65

Compensation Scale Sales SaaS 65

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Justin Welsh, former SVP of Sales at PatientPop explains how he started in SaaS in 2009 as the second sales hire at Zocdoc. Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. Justin Welsh | SVP Sales @ PatientPop. I was a local sales manager or regional manager.

Sales Recruiting 332

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 332

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2023

A rough structure from 1–25 sales reps: Early days: CEO acts as VP of Sales. CEO hires 2 reps, in the beginning, each barely pays for themselves, but by months 4–6 they are able to close 3x or more of their total compensation. Then : Have to scale from reps 3–8 or so. VP of Sales hires next 5–10 reps herself.

Sales Hiring 329

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Compensation 329

Tom Tunguz

MAY 1, 2023

When a startup is born, founders lead sales. Design partners, pilots, or founder-led sales - they have many names - these customers work with a startup to solve a problem. Said another way, founder-led sales are sales engineering sales, not account executive sales.

Scale 211

Scale Engineering Outsourced Development Sales 211

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2024

The post The Top 8 SaaStr Tips to Building an Effective First Sales Team (per Perplexity) appeared first on SaaStr. I think it did a pretty good job The summaries we do might be better, but this is a great place to start.

Sales Hiring 291

Sales Hiring Scale AI Search Compensation 291

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Back in the day, premium comp for some software sales execs made simple and easy sense. Traditional software had 90% gross margins, and the classic enterprise sales reps, the best ones, could close a million or more dollars a year. Sales reps in low NRR and high churn environments got paid almost the same as enterprise reps.

Scale 345

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring Sales 345

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Is The Optimal Structure of an Initial SaaS B2B Sales Team? Where, roughly speaking, each sales rep brings in at least 4x-5x the total compensation they take out. Where you burn a ton of cash is “buying” sales. Shoving sales reps into segments where you don’t have enough leads / enough demand.

Sales Hiring 279

Sales Hiring Scale B2B Sales 279

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. So for the audience, cloud giants are turbocharging startup sales, and the predominant reason for this is because they’re fundamentally changing IT budgets at the customers that we’re all selling to. Jabari Norton, VP WW Partner and Alliances, Sumo Logic.

Scale 263

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 263

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. It does mean a well-oiled machine that hires strong reps of all backgrounds, and gets them the help and training so they can scale up and succeed.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 363

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

You might have a few account executives and a sales leader in place; maybe some revenue and a handful of customers. The sales team costs real money, and the question before the company is: how do you know what quota plan to assign to the account executives? Your startup is just getting off the ground. Stage 1: Management by Objectives.

Compensation 195

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 195

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Should I Pay Sales Reps When Our Customers Pay Monthly? You’ll find it won’t matter much as you scale, as you’ll get good as estimating the total deal size from each customer segment. But it can be a pain to administer — and more importantly, is not fun for the sales rep. Later, you’ll want to flip that around.

Scale 300

Scale Sales Payments Compensation 300

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2020

If the founders are the highest compensated people in the start-up, at least pre-Scale (e.g., pre $10m ARR) … and perhaps even always … something is wrong. Incentives are not aligned here. How Much Should the CEO Pay Herself?

Venture Capital 346

Venture Capital Sales Hiring Scale Compensation 346

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2025

I’ll dig in, but a really great deep dive with MongoDB’s head of sales ops here: Four Sales Compensation Tactics for Consumption-Based GTM with MongoDB’s SVP of Sales MongoDB us a blended commission model for their consumption-based GTM. Thats a disaster for your business. using 20 out of 25 features).

Scale 148

Scale Compensation Retention Churn 148

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2019

As you scale your salesteam, unless you are very careful whom you hire and how you train them, incentives being what they are in variable compensation, some negative behavior will creep in. Prospects will be … if not lied to … then told half truths. Clawback sales commission for customers that churn quickly.

Scale 257

Scale Churn Sales Hiring Sales 257

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2025

As startups scale, effective sales implementation becomes the difference between stagnation and sustainable growth. After analyzing hundreds of sales organizations across startups, I’ve distilled the key pieces of advice that founders and leaders should keep in mind.

Scale 182

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Compensation 182

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them.

Sales Hiring 260

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 260

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2022

There often isn’t a way to guarantee 99.99% uptime, but neither the sales rep nor the customer knows this. . Compensation has to be directly attached to actual usage rather than an intention to use. Get clarity on what uptime means for the jobs that matter, then spend your time and resources to make sure you deliver.”.

Scale 265

Scale Payments SaaS Payments Payment Services 265

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. Here are some things to remember when you think about scaling your next big SaaS company.

Sales Recruiting 260

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 260

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2021

Q: What is a good model for SaaS product sales commission? Sometimes for very transactional, low ACV sales, the percent can be lower. Sometimes for very transactional, low ACV sales, the percent can be lower. Ultimately, it should all solve out to say 20% of the bookings goes out to sales comp, one way or another.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Compensation Churn 237

SaaStr

OCTOBER 19, 2023

Once you are profitable and at scale, I don’t think any VC expects founders to take anything less than market salaries ? One thing I have learned, though: If the founders are the highest compensated people in the start-up, especially pre-Scale (e.g., But if you raise less than that — 75% may well be too high.

Scale 300

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Marketing 300

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2022

If the founders are the highest compensated people in an early-stage start-up, at least pre-Scale (e.g., Later, as you scale, it makes sense if the CEO has the highest salary, at least by a modest margin. At least the VP of Sales. So different situations = different answers, up to a point. Incentives are not aligned here.

Scale 297

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Engineering 297