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. It’s happened to me, and I think for whatever my faults, I have a pretty high EQ and am a half-decent manager. The three times it happened to me: A very senior engineer that we just HAD to have.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 290

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. That’s when you want to lean in.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 299

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

Some are decades-old problems, while others have emerged from this new world we’re in. 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. There wouldn’t be enough time for them to carry a bag for six months and hire those ten people.

CTO Hire 211

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 211

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 27, 2018

On call work like this can be a powerful customer orientated activity that connects engineers to the value customers get from your product. Back in the early days of Intercom, our CTO Ciaran was the entirety of the on call team, both in and out of the office. The history of on call at Intercom. Finding the right on call process.

Engineering 209

Engineering Software Review Technical Review Systems Review 209

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. You’re not building a product or getting any new customers. You can’t hire a magician Head of Product.

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

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. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 296

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 296

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

In engineering, you want to move fast, ship often and solve real customer problems. It means reducing choices amongst engineering teams and standardizing technology, so our team can spend as much time as possible delivering value to customers. Rich: Today I’m the Senior Director for Foundations Engineering at Intercom.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2021

For those who don’t know him, Will has over 10 years of experience in the likes of Yahoo, Digg, Uber, and Stripe, and he’s currently the CTO of Calm , the mindfulness app that helps millions of people to lower their stress levels and sleep better. If you’re a senior engineer and want to further your career, what skills should you develop?

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Since 2010 we’ve seen more startups, funds, and capital than ever before, but with this drastic increase, investors are seeing unexpected new trends reshaping the future of the industry. The panel that we are in is called Is Seed the New Series A, and this is a question that I’ve been asking informally yesterday and today.

New CTO 182

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 182

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

Jason Lemkin: I think I noticed a pattern, and I wrote it up a couple of years ago and refreshed it, and then I’ll add a new anecdote. 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. We have a 60% chance that we can do it.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

If you’re running a smaller digital business, you may find it challenging to hire great talent. If you’re facing challenges winning the best candidates for your roles, or if you have a small number of roles and every hire really matters, then don’t miss this episode of Growth Stage. Why are you looking for a new job?

SMB 107

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 107

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Well, in the past several years, there’s been a tremendous number of companies that have built specifically for developers and use this as a way to get into these new markets, to displace incumbents and disrupt the competition. You have the opportunity to upsell new features and capabilities to them. The contract size grows.

Outsourced Development 214

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 214

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

I’ve learned so much … most importantly, I think, that I love being a fractional CTO, a role that allows me to make use of everything I’ve learned and experienced over a long technology-focused career. What’s changing, rather, is the entity I’m delivering through – a new company called Crafty CTO.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Headcount 40

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

So even the freshest new SaaS startup celebrating their 50th customer may find themselves dealing with sales tax in multiple states. . hiring in-house talent). On a more day-to-day level, problems with your sales tax calculation engine can also stall your checkout. Expanding into new sales channels is a common growth play.

Merchant Services 207

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 207

The Angel VC

OCTOBER 18, 2012

Continuing my little series using the "minimum viable" approach , here is my 2nd DO for SaaS startups: Build the right team I've written about the topic before, so if you've read this post from early this year most of what I'm going to write now won't be new for you and you may want to skip this article. What comes next?

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup Outsourced Development 121

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Your CTO probably does not need to be on the first Demo, but instead that could be an opportune time to loop in a Manager or director. After all, a CTO can’t handhold the entire deal cycle, but they can jump in and provide clarity and an expert voice at critical points. Who doesn’t love a good combo of ham, egg and cheese?

Underperforming Technical Team 131

Underperforming Technical Team CTO Hire CTO Coach Technical Review 131

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

In my opinion, the founder team of a SaaS startup needs to excel in three areas: engineering/technology, product/UX and domain/market expertise. This can be a huge advantage, especially for a bootstrapped startup that can't afford to hire many people.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

Immediately told them to hire 50 reps in a different city, in a different city, and they did. The CEO was deferential because that was 10 times what he’d ever raised before, and did all of it. Jason Lemkin: 50 reps in a new city that you’ve never met, and hired in 60 days when you’re in the low millions ARR.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

Getting hiring right is absolutely critical. I’d like to talk about two different companies with two very different approaches to hiring post-seed raise. I’m focusing on engineering in these examples, but the experience applies to other areas of the business. To get the team started we hired several junior developers.

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. Pete was a Google Associate Product Manager for AdSense and launched Google App Engine. First, hire a management coach to work with you as the company grows. These were some of the things I learned from Pete. And you should do it right then.

CTO Coach 113

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 113

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Well, we did the heavy lifting and highlighted a few here for you… “When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster. Henrique and co-founder Pedro Franceschi founded the company as 22-year-old engineers in Brazil in 2017. At the time the duo had founded Pagar.me, a payment processor.

Payment Services 113

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 113

Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Given that their guidance is so universal — both for people just stepping into new roles and those at fast-paced companies like Buffer — I thought I’d share their wisdom here. Andy Yates, Staff Engineer 📍Started at Buffer in June 2012 as iOS Engineering Lead 🌎 Location: California, U.S.

VP of Engineering 124

VP of Engineering Part-Time CTO New CTO CTO 124

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

For Slack, that was clearly the engineering and dev communities, who love new tools. They love new ways of working and were happy to bring Slack into their functional teams and say, “Let’s experiment with this new way of working.” And it was very successful. Product can do a huge amount there.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

Being an engineer can give you the upper hand as a CEO because you understand the product. And also, we always prioritize the features requested by our existing customers over the new prospects. Mallun Yen : So, you were an engineer by training and then you became an engineering leader, as the CTO of Webex, and then you became a CEO.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 145

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams. Much of the success here depends on how competent and motivated the CTO and their team is.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

Hiring and cultivating incredible talent on our Information Security team. Understanding the guardrails we need to build means closely tracking meaningful change across Intercom and making sure we’re on top of new initiatives”. Shipping quickly and securely. Continuous risk management. Intercom is no exception.

Data 118

Data CTO Hire Technical Review Scale 118

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

. “Take the work out of work, that’s my motto in life” Prior to that, I was the CIO of another large Fortune 500 company called KLA-Tencor, and the rest of my life has been in software engineering: building tools to help people get things done without having to do all the work. Balancing human-computer interaction.

Artificial Intelligence 169

Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

Great to see a lot of repeat attendees and some new ones. A thanks to [Marsh 00:00:34] for stepping in at the beginning of the month, and a great session with our own Jason Warner and Adrian, the CTO of Zendesk. Lionetti, the CMO at Confluent, and most recently, the CTO from Zendesk, Adrian. I’m Travis Bryant.

CTO Coach 164

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 164

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. Major challenges facing a new CEO [19:40]. 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.

Scale 120

Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 120

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

So you were the first sales hire. Talk to me about the sales hires that you made back in the early days and talk to me about how it changed through the different stages. So my first sales hire was beginning of 2015. The very first few sales hire are I would say not your typical reps. Laura Bilazarian : Awesome.

Scale 150

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 150

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

There are enough stories of data breaches and cyber attacks to chill even the savviest security engineer to the core. An aerospace engineer turned entrepreneur, Adam learned early the best way to earn trust was proving you deserve it. And then, in the 50s, they introduced this new thing, and there was resistance.

Scale 211

Scale Software Review compliance Technical Review 211

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

Eyal Manor – VP, Engineering @ Google Cloud. Eyal Manor: So I’ve been building SaaS services for over 10 years now in an engineering capacity, and just before we start can we get a sense from the audience, I know it’s kind of hard to see but who here is kind of in a technical hat? Join us for SaaStr Annual 2020.

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 173

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

Hiring managers are also just trying to sell as well. Users come to us all the time and they say, Hey, this company looks awesome. Are they hiring? That goes to the hiring manager. And if you get hired, RepVue will actually pay you $500. And it’s easy to inflate that for companies during the hiring process.

Marketplace as a Service 113

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 113

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

With that in mind, before we welcome the new year and all the good things to come, we’ve gathered our favorite insights and nuggets of wisdom from 2021 in a special wrap-up episode. Will Larson , CTO of Calm. Des Traynor , Co-founder and CTO of Intercom. Zanade Mann , founder of Black Women’s Business Collective.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Technical Review Scale Outsourcing Services 118

Sales Hacker

MAY 5, 2021

RevOps is still developing as a function, so people with a lot of different experiences, like moving from engineering to marketing for example, find RevOps to be a great place to put their problem solving skills to work. In fact, she says that you will probably be thrown new software tools every three months in a RevOps job.

Scale 122

Scale Technical Cofounder Technical Advisors Sales Hiring 122

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

New for 2020: SaaS Pricing and COVID-19. In this brand-new report, we finally answer the question “Freemium or free trial?” Pricing Low-Touch SaaS: How to Approach Pricing and Packaging a New SaaS App, by Example. SaaS pricing is one of the most important (but difficult) decisions a new business makes.

Pricing 135

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 135