SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Recently, I spent several hours with a new but great friend who has been on a vaguely similar journey to me. 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. 20×7, near as I can tell.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 290

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

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

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. “That it was much easier to do more in order to keep that customer than to get a new “top” customer.

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SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal?

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Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 215

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. It’s too much to learn on the fly for most new VPs of Sales.

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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.

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Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 236

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 256

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.

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New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 153

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

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.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 236

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

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.

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CTO Hire New CTO CTO Technology 40

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Growth is still good for them, but they had no net new customers last quarter. 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. What happened?

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CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 143

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

If I think about the founders of "my" SaaS startups, these are the three qualities that all of them have – in addition to a huge amount of intelligence, motivation and commitment, which allows them to quickly acquire new skills as the company grows. The second best option is two, and the third best option is one, four or five.

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CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

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.

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Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 218

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%.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 154

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. 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. VCs can only invest in outliers.

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Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 174

CloudGeometry

JULY 8, 2021

When you treat your cloud provider as a fractional colo. What starts as an easy hack for a new feature that accesses the database directly sprawls quickly into reads and writes that conflict with all kinds existing functions. and onboarding new customers. See a useful background talk from their CTO Pini Reznik here ).

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Well Architected Framework CTO Hire Payment Methods Payment Solutions 130

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.

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Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

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. The catch was he had just moved his family four kids to New York city. We had no New York city presence. For example, I referenced hiring a Chief Revenue Officer, Bill.

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CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 162

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 keeping what you’ve got is as important as bringing in new customers. Also – live by your cultural values.

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CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

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.

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CTO Hire Sales Hiring B2B New CTO 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?

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Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 100

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.

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Data CTO Hire Technical Review compliance 118

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? For Slack, that was clearly the engineering and dev communities, who love new tools. They had occasional advertising here and there. Here’s Rachel.

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Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

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 129

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 129

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 4, 2023

To improve the efficiency of spend on cost of goods sold (COGS), most growth-stage leaders can optimize seat-based spend or renegotiate consumption-based contracts in a quarter or 2. Focus on performance management of your product and engineering teams as early indicators for what R&D investments are working, and which aren’t.

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Underperforming Technical Team Benchmarks CTO Hire New CTO 120

Buffer Resources

JANUARY 30, 2023

Then he became CTO at Bezos Academy, a non-profit organization founded by Jeff Bezos. After leaving Bezos Academy, he decided to start a paid newsletter focused on career development, organization design, and hiring. “ I want to invest as little as possible to get 80% of the value. Each insight becomes a Buffer post.

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Social Media CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO 20

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

CEO Joel Gascoigne tells us about the decision to invest in new analytics tools and how Buffer sustained long-term growth thanks to growing their ARPA. The Solution: Invest in a revamped data infrastructure. Joel had what he calls “an honest conversation” with Buffer’s CTO Dan. What is Buffer. Click To Tweet.

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Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Social Media 113

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Customer Onboarding Specialist: Responsible for helping new customers get up and running with the company’s products. Before the hiring process, take some time to decide on your current needs and hire as your company grows.

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Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 87

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2019

And this is not just about something you do in a later stage, when you raise that $120,000,000 that PJ from Sherpa had done, but something you can do at the series A stage when you’re doing small hires to build out your team. I used to be a CTO and operator, co-founder of a SaaS start up. One other thing would be talent pickup.

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Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Technical Review 110

BetterCloud

AUGUST 6, 2021

A couple of weeks ago, we launched a new podcast called SaaSOps Leaders With David Politis. I just knew there was always going to be something new to learn and I wasn’t going to get stagnant in it. ” At that time, I said, “You know what, I think I really want to become a CIO or CTO.”

Technology 98

Technology CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO 98

OpenView Labs

MARCH 17, 2020

When you ask average questions, you get average hires. If a potential senior hire has gotten so far as to talk with the CEO , she’s probably someone the company wants. Mixmax isn’t the only company that tries to talk new employees out of staying. Zappos famously pays new employees to leave after the first month.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team 52

Neil Patel

JULY 7, 2021

Is it something we just have to continually improve and build on as new opportunities roll out? As new options roll out, keeping customer experiences seamless and continuous across all digital platforms grows is highly important. Are sales at a point where we can justify investing in and learning a new platform?

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AI Search CTO Hire Scale Artificial Intelligence 124

Valerian Tech

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

However, they are still relatively new and their value can be extremely volatile, making them a high-risk investment for some people. A cryptocurrency project is a venture or initiative that involves the development, launch, and management of a new cryptocurrency or blockchain platform. What is a Cryptocurrency Project?

Part-Time CTO 52

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Coach CTO Hire 52

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

And then, invest your energy and time into 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. It’s too hard?

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Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 139

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.

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