SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Be Careful Hiring “Dualies” — Folks That Are a VP of More Than One Thing. SaaStr 565: Classic Episode: The Importance of Company Values, a Great Hiring Process, and Ownership Culture with Gusto Co-Founder & CEO Josh Reeves.

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CTO Hire CTO Sales Hiring Scale 255

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2022

SaaStr 564: Top 10 Learnings Architecting a High Throughput Critical API with RevenueCat CTO Miguel Carranza. SaaStr 565: Classic Episode: The Importance of Company Values, a Great Hiring Process, and Ownership Culture with Gusto Co-Founder & CEO Josh Reeves. Product-Led Growth: Panacea or Boondoggle?

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CTO Hire CTO Sales Hiring Innovation 239

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be. 95% of the time, your super-smart hacker co-founder is not that person. She can be your CTO forever. That’s a different, and critical, job than CTO. Marketing is also an art and science.

Scale 273

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 273

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

Many companies believe excellent product design comes from hiring the best engineers and signing up for the latest software instead of building from the users’ perspectives. Stripe’s CTO, David Singleton, shares how they use a system of feedback, iteration, and fast shipping to create products that meet users’ expectations.

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SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How does a First Time Founder Identify 10x Hires? How do you hire a great CTO, a great VP of Product, a great VP of Sales … if you’ve never worked with one? There’s a reason almost every founder you talk to had a mis-hire for their first head of sales. It’s hard.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 231

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2020

He joined StubHub as CTO, but didn’t get nearly as much equity as the other CTO — because he “wasn’t committed enough.” If your customers love your product now, hire reps. ” Times of crisis are actually great times to find hard problems to solve.

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CTO Hire New CTO CTO Airlines 351

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2024

So I caught up the other day with the CTO of a leading SaaS company with tens of thousands of customers, growing quickly. AI is all over their homepage and website and comms. I asked him about a particular use case for AI, and his answer shocked me a bit: Honestly, our AI is basically still in beta. The same with other leaders.

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SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be. 95% of the time, your super-smart hacker co-founder is not that person. She can be your CTO forever. That’s a different, and critical, job than CTO. Marketing is also an art and science.

Part-Time VPE 248

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 248

SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2024

He made many great leadership points, but one in particular rattles around my head a lot and I think deserves its own post: You usually won’t know if you’ve made a 10x hire … when you make the hire. A good / great employee can become 10x in a new environment was part of Auren’s point. But I didn’t know they were truly 10x hires.

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SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2022

Miguel Carranza, CTO at RevenueCat, shares ten learnings from firsthand experience in architecting an API & SDK that is currently on 5,000+ apps and has seen 3x growth Year-over-Year. . Instead, the CTO suggests that you avoid adding new pieces of infrastructure until absolutely necessary. What makes a great API?

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CTO Hire New CTO CTO Scaling 234

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

Co-founder and CEO of Plato, Quong Hoang, the #1 mentoring platform for engineering leaders , helped moderate a discussion between CTO of Change.org, Elaine Zhou, and Head of Engineering at Notion, Michael Manapat, on this subject. Focus on retaining your engineers from day one. More like this at 2022 SaaStr Annual, Sep 13-15 in SF Bay Area!!

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CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO CTO 253

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

Anyhow the one thing I learned, beyond getting help screening and hiring for these positions from domain experts, is to look for Flags. For signs the prospective hire just won’t work out, no matter how strong they might look on paper. Why join a start-up? Well reason #1 is personal and career advancement.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 258

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. I just see this time and time again.

Part-Time VPE 315

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 315

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2021

The first 2 scaled reps you hire that hit plan (some may churn before then) get special training. They get CTO training. And so we see reps 3-10, or reps-from-#3-until-The-VP-of-Sales-is-Hired … fail. Simplify to a 1 page contract. And the others perform so poorly vs. the 2 that are doing well? So what can you do?

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Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 347

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

They hire a VP of Sales who doesn’t want to sell or learn the product. You also don’t want to hire a VP of Sales who won’t carry a bag. If you joined a startup at $2M and wanted to get to $6M with reps doing $400k, that VP of Sales would need to hire ten reps. 90% of the time, sales falls when a founder steps out of it.

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CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 211

TechEmpower SaaS

DECEMBER 11, 2023

While the appearance matters, remember you are hiring the development firm primarily for its development skills, not its graphic design skills. cto , product , saas Quality of Work: The end product should not only look good but function as expected. Don't be charmed by an impressive aesthetic at the expense of functional results.

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Software Development Development Software Review Software 443

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Founded by Sanjit Biswas, former CEO at Meraki and John Bicket former CTO at Meraki[link] Samsara builds software to manage physical operations: truck fleets, mining, food & beverage, oil & gas. The first is the company sell 3 or 5 year contracts that are non-refundable and non-cancellable at relatively small ACVs of $35k.

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CTO Hire CTO Coach Benchmarks Scale 349

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2023

You really need a great CTO, not just a good business team. A mediocre tech team, a part-time CTO, or even just a decent CTO just doesn’t get you there. Finally you have great customers and traction — but you can’t afford to hire all the people you need to meet their needs. True in B2C too of course.

Part-Time VPE 251

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 251

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 14, 2024

Kevin Scott, CTO of Microsoft, framed the opportunity in AI this way : work on problems that used to be impossible, but are now really hard. Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a post about the minimum viable average contract value to justify a sales team. Imagine a product offerd at a $10k contract value sold by an AE.

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CTO Hire Sales Hiring Outsourced Development CTO 219

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? David considers product to be its own department that should also report directly to the CEO, instead of falling under the CTO. CTO (40 Employees).

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CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 276

TechEmpower SaaS

JULY 24, 2023

Still, if you’re a business leader and your developers haven’t asked you these questions, look for a Fractional CTO to help navigate the critical early stage of development. The innovator/developer relationship needs to be a conversation.

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Innovation Development CTO Hire Technical Review 780

Valerian Tech

DECEMBER 30, 2022

The role of a Fractional Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is to provide technical expertise and leadership to a company on a part-time or temporary basis. This can be a useful option for startups or small businesses that may not have the resources to hire a full-time CTO or may not need one on a permanent basis.

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Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2023

Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares five essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. What Your Job Is (And What It Isn’t) Your Job is to Make the Company Win A CTO may imagine their primary job is to provide technical expertise, lead engineers, and help build the product.

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CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 198

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10. That it’s time to bring in someone that knows. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. I Need a VP of Sales.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 361

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2024

Worked out great for my CTO who stayed (proud of him), but if things were structured differently, I would have made nine figures just staying. Hiring a controller that didn’t care. I avoided this mistake for my first two-startups, but then made it several times after. We ended up needing another 6 months of runway.

CTO Hire 269

CTO Hire CTO Banking Finance 269

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2024

I felt part of your core job as CEO was to assemble a management team, not complain about how you couldn’t get it all done. Or couldn’t stand your CTO. I still believe a CEO should “do it all” in terms of building a decent management team first before hiring a COO. Hiring a strong COO between Management Team 1.0

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Startup 229

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” “When customers get back $100k’s in minutes and want to pay us more” — Kanat Bekt, founder/CTO, SupplyPike. 20% conversion. ” — Drew Naugher.

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CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 300

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. Folks come out differently here, but while Amplitude charges per volume, in part, it doesn’t make a material amount from overages. CEO Spencer Skates owns 8.5%, CTO Curtis Liu 8.0%. But Amplitude has 51% growth in paying customers on top of 57% overall growth.

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Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 298

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

They’ll revolt when you make a senior or mid-level hire that as a group, they simply cannot suffer one day longer. But I forced us to hire him, over my CTO’s strong objection and my VPE’s grudging acknowledgment we had no choice. It was a hire I wasn’t really in favor of, but it was an experiment.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 290

Valerian Tech

JANUARY 5, 2023

It can be beneficial to hire a fractional CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in a variety of situations. When you don't have an in-house technology leader: If you don't have a CTO or a similar technology leader on your team, a fractional CTO can fill that role.

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Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

Valerian Tech

DECEMBER 14, 2022

There are many benefits to hiring a fractional CTO, also known as a part-time or interim CTO. A fractional CTO can bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to your organization without the added expense of a full-time executive.

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CTO Hire New CTO CTO Technology 52

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR. Fixing it yourself becomes the biggest time sink and excuse for not hiring there is. You end up spending all your time backfilling roles you should have hired. And even worse, you often sort of give up trying to make the hire. And hire against it. More here.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. But even if you’ve hired the world’s best VP of Sales … you can’t opt out of sales entirely. You still need to spend 15-20% of your time in sales. Hire a VP of Finance or even a CFO Early if You Are Growing Quickly.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 290

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2021

But what they don’t have is a good enough founding team: Sometimes, if the prospective founder isn’t super technical, then the CTO/VPE isn’t really great. They’ve got a rent-a-CTO. Or sometimes they are great, but the team members are just not great enough for their new C-level roles (CEO, CTO, CMO, CSO, CBO, C?O).

Part-Time VPE 228

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire New CTO CTO 228

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2020

In fact, right after that we hired a roundtrip employee as our CTO in my first start-up and it was amazing. Especially in tougher times, folks may be knocking on your door again. First, what doesn’t work, or at least hasn’t for me, is re-hiring: Folks that left for a company that was a better fit.

CTO Hire 260

CTO Hire CTO Scaling Management 260

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . “A Hiring in a streamlined manner with a rigorous selection process initially builds momentum for long-term goals.

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Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 226

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2023

The best we made our CTO. But what if our CTO gets hit by a bus? They feed on each other, hire other toxic people, and turn the company against the mission and each other. Once in a while, the toxic but critical employee does mature out of it in time. Sometimes, still hire them. Well he was toxic. For a while.

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