SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR.

Part-Time VPE 286

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 286

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 226

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 226

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.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

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. Good but not great CEOs just can’t find a way to iterate fast enough.

CTO Hire 276

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 276

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.

CTO Hire 204

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 204

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 278

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 278

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. Technology staff management: A fractional CTO is responsible for managing the technology team, including hiring, training, and motivating employees.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

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.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

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 321

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 321

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. Obviously, I can’t imagine a chief executive not having loss of sleep over building a management team. Mallun : Sure.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 258

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 286

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 286

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 244

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 244

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 268

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 268

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

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 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

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.

Sales Hiring 173

Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 173

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 278

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 278

OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

Getting hiring right is absolutely critical. If you push them, what a VC will also tell you is that they back founders who have the ability to attract and recruit singular talent. I’d like to talk about two different companies with two very different approaches to hiring post-seed raise. We needed a CTO. Full disclosure.

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

You can watch the full session , and if you missed the podcast with the first half of the interview, you’ll find that here. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin. They’ve invested in all of these other businesses. Henry Schuck.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

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. You’ll find out tomorrow.

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 283

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. So I think my learning is just know the rules, know the KPIs, they’re all public, find public comps and copy them. VCs can only invest in outliers.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

If you find this valuable, check out more episodes of our podcast. 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. I thought, wow, the system works.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

Again, we felt that there was much greater value in being authentic than trying to be someone that we weren’t and try to find positives. I immediately left the office, went home, packed a bag, went the airport, booked flights, showed up there at mid night, met with the individual. It was the last day of the quarter as well.

CTO Hire 174

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 174

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. Besides that, it’s rare to find all the skills that you need in order to get a SaaS startup off the ground in just one person, which is an argument for two or more founders (more on that below).

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

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. Recruit on your cultural values.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

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. Anything that you can find that cascades through the organization is critical. How do you keep?

CTO Coach 157

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 157

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

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

AUGUST 2, 2020

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin. 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.

Startup 217

Startup CTO Hire Scale CTO Coach 217

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 141

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 141

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

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Though our second day of the event is focused on mythical creatures of all kinds, you’ll find that there are unicorns hiding in our agenda every day this year. 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. Check it out below!

Payment Services 113

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 113

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 174

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 174

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? Adam Risman: What were some of the aha moments you experienced in those early days when you were trying to find a product/channel fit? Here’s Rachel. .

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

That was when a new vision formed beyond the physical classroom to what would later become our cloud, where we can teach anyone anywhere the digital technology skills of the future. So we kept investing, we knew we were onto something, and little by little we saw our traction improve. We were not an enterprise company yet.

B2B 173

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 173

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 164

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 164

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. The different roles in SaaS companies: Chief Executive Officer : As the highest-ranking executive, this person ensures the company runs smoothly and employees are happy and engaged.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98