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.

CTO Hire 277

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 277

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.

CTO Coach 174

CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 174

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2024

I try to work with (and invest in) CEOs that are better than me. 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. 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.

Sales Hiring 200

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Startup 200

Valerian Tech

JANUARY 5, 2023

It can be beneficial to hire a fractional CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in a variety of situations. They can provide guidance on which technologies to invest in and help you create a roadmap for the future.

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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.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Technology 52

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

I’ve invested in 5 start-ups that had a $1,000,000,000+ cash exit or IPO. Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Dear SaaStr: What Qualities Make a CEO The Best In Their Industry?

CTO Hire 219

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 219

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Investing at a breathtaking pace. And he made an observation to me that I’d been thinking about for a very long time, but didn’t know how to express. In my first start-up as a founder, I had a great CTO and VPE and a pretty darn good VP Ops from the very beginning. 20×7, near as I can tell.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 293

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? We are currently investing out of our 9th Early Stage fund, a $650M vehicle.

Management 221

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 221

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. There are no Cloud magicians, and you can’t hire a PLG magician. Let’s jump right into the questions.

Scale 242

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 242

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.

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Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 259

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it’s not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times. His answers didn’t disappoint. They wanted a one-call close.

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CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 172

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on.

CTO Hire 277

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 277

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. Bootstrapped because nobody in their right mind would have actually invested in us back then and took it up until 2014 as a bootstrapped company. It is much more painful to have to fire people and contract as a company than it is to grow. Turned out it became who I am.

Startup 280

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 280

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2019

I remember my CTO once arguing with a Fortune 500 company on a “security” concern they had which really made no sense. More here: I Never Lost a Customer I Actually Visited | SaaStr Not hiring a full-time RFP person. Not hiring a full-time Chief Security & Compliance Offer. Didn’t matter. They were concerned.

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Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 174

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

It starts at the beginning when someone interacts with your brand.” – Kim Walsh Hiring and collaboration for growth The product marketing team is the first function to hire for. The next hiring focus should be growth marketing. Once this is in place, start investing in paid channels.

Scale 180

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 180

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

They’ve invested in all of these other businesses. 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. We might’ve touched on this one too on the hiring and the people.

Sales Hiring 238

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 238

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. To get the team started we hired several junior developers. There is a binary feeling that comes from making those first few technical hires. We needed a CTO.

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CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years. Roughly 90%.

Sales Hiring 157

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 157

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

Fractional CTO services can be a valuable asset for businesses that want to take advantage of technology to grow and improve their operations, but don’t have the resources or expertise to do so in-house.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Technology 40

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

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. Maybe if you have the ex-CTO of Github, but that’s still a super speculative bet. in 12 months?

CTO Hire 144

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 144

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

Some of the things we talked about were operational overhead and cost of various data stores we were running, along with whether or not we needed to hire dedicated database administrators for various different technologies. Ciaran, our CTO , came up with this magical line. He said, “I want to run less software, not more software.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

We ended up signing that contract in the uber back to the airport on the way home. It was our largest contract to date, kind of helps the other quarter. I had my CTO and everyone would be like, “You can’t do this. For example, I referenced hiring a Chief Revenue Officer, Bill. This is never going to work.”

CTO Hire 164

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 164

CloudGeometry

JULY 8, 2021

When you treat your cloud provider as a fractional colo. See a useful background talk from their CTO Pini Reznik here ). Either way, focus your attention on the most important part of your architecture: how well does it serve the goals of your business? Look out for FrankenCloud How can you tell when you live on a Frankencloud?

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Well Architected Framework Payment Methods CTO Hire Payment Solutions 130

Outseta

APRIL 11, 2019

Why most SaaS companies are blind to some of the best talent on the market By Geoff Roberts 9 min read I believe that most SaaS companies are missing out of a major opportunity when hiring—the opportunity to hire more part-time help, where the employee acts as a fully integrated (albeit part-time) member of the team on an ongoing basis.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Sales Hiring B2B New CTO 52

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

This can be a huge advantage, especially for a bootstrapped startup that can't afford to hire many people. Also, I have already invested in 1-person and 2-person founder teams, which became very successful, so my preference is only a light one.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They were aware of it, but startups that I work with closely or invested in, if they got all the way to 25 million with 75% NRR, I would tell them to quit today. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. VCs can only invest in outliers. I want to invest in her.”

Outsourcing Services 177

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 177

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

You have to see: A couple of good hires brought in Improvement on some metrics A big deal or two hanging out there, brought in and closed Things taken off your plate. More time may make them better if they’re already progressing, even if it’s just 10-15% in the first sales cycle. Hiring someone too junior. That often compounds.

Part-Time VPE 173

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 173

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. ” We didn’t do any annual contracts.

Part-Time VPE 224

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 224

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2021

That question has been on Will Larson ‘s mind for a long time. 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.

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Join this panel of investors from Connect Ventures, Blossom Capital, Dawn Capital, The Family, and Indico Partners as they provide an overview of the current investment landscape, and discuss whether the seed stage is emerging as the new Series A. We are a $50 million fund based in Lisbon, and we invest mainly in seed stage.

New CTO 156

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 156

Panintelligence

JUNE 7, 2024

In this blog, we asked Panintelligence CEO Zandra Moore and CTO Ken Miller what they think are some of the most frequent mistakes in SaaS development and offer actionable insights to help you steer clear of them. But the people you hire and lead are absolutely essential to the success of your business. We’re complex.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2020

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. Bootstrapped, because nobody in their right mind would have actually invested in us back then and took it up until 2014 as a bootstrapped company. It is much more painful to have to fire people and contract as a company than it is to grow. Turned out it became who I am.

Startup 163

Startup CTO Hire Scale CTO Coach 163

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 131

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 131

Valerian Tech

JUNE 5, 2023

Therefore, investing in robust cybersecurity measures is essential to safeguard against these threats. The Role of Fractional CTO in Enhancing Cybersecurity A Fractional CTO can provide invaluable expertise and guidance in strengthening an insurance company's cybersecurity defenses.

Cybersecurity 52

Cybersecurity CTO Hire CTO compliance 52

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. David Sacks has a long history in tech from his time as a Founder and CEO of Geni.com and Yammer to his stint as COO of Paypal. So, how do you choose amongst the stable of unicorns?

Payment Services 100

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 100

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

Adam Risman , a former host of the podcast, asked Rachel what made that point when Rachel joined Slack in 2016 the right time to invest in growth marketing? And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team. They had occasional advertising here and there. Here’s Rachel.

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Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

We do that by: Investing in your trust through compliance with industry security and privacy ISO standards or frameworks such as SOC 2. Hiring and cultivating incredible talent on our Information Security team. Investing significantly in safeguarding our customers’ trust. Shipping quickly and securely.

Data 118

Data CTO Hire Technical Review compliance 118