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. Less and you under-invest.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

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.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

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 229

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 229

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 273

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 273

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 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

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

OCTOBER 17, 2019

When it comes to seamlessly scaling your applications, a top-notch engineering team will be your foundation. 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. Of course, not at scale.

Scale 169

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 169

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 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

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. You have to learn things like how do I scale my sales force? Your big money is going to go into hiring your employees.

Startup 284

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 284

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. 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. But after a couple million in ARR, you can afford any hire if they’re accretive.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 242

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 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

Rich Archbold , Senior Director of Engineering, has been at the forefront of codifying and scaling this philosophy over the past few years. Our chat covers the origins of Run Less Software, how it has evolved at scale, and how it differs from the equally valid approaches of other engineering teams.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

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. You have to learn things like how do I scale my sales force? Turned out it became who I am. I’m also a serial entrepreneur.

Startup 222

Startup CTO Hire Scale CTO Coach 222

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

Learn how Pendo built a product, team, and culture in its Raleigh hometown that could scale coast-to-coast and continent-to-continent. 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. Join us for SaaStr Annual 2020.

CTO Hire 177

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 177

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. It got much better over time. A SaaStr Classic!!

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

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. Or Scale AI securing $1B. Every VC wants to invest. It’s a rocket ship. in 12 months?

CTO Hire 144

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 144

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 179

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 179

CloudGeometry

JULY 8, 2021

When you treat your cloud provider as a fractional colo. That scale of mega-learning (and failure, both public and hidden) has translated into the Well-Architected Framework , a system of best practices around the key attributes of cloud and SaaS architecture. See a useful background talk from their CTO Pini Reznik here ).

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework Payment Methods CTO Hire Payment Solutions 130

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2019

And then it was just a matter of, okay, make sure that it works, make sure that it scales, then very important not to forget, make sure that people buy it, that they know how to find you, you know. en you start saying, scaling and what does that even mean? They’re really giving them money to scale the business. Vlad : Ye ah.

Scale 204

Scale Business Sales Hiring CTO Hire 204

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

We’re excited to continue the Month of Scale here for Redpoint Office Hours. 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. That was the start of the Month of Scale. Travis Bryant : All right, let’s get started.

CTO Coach 157

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 157

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 113

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 113

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. It’s a factor of their size as they become successful – it’s hard to innovate at a very large scale. We’re complex.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

I looked back at our investment memo, it was a 2K ACV when Jason invested after Y-C. 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.

Scale 146

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 146

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

As we scale, we’re working with larger mid-market and enterprise customers with more complex needs and specifications. 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.

Data 118

Data CTO Hire Technical Review Scale 118

Stax

AUGUST 14, 2024

Krahl’s appointment cements Stax’s commitment to investing in its team and bringing on new team members with deep industry knowledge and is the latest executive hire at Stax. His leadership will be integral as we continue to foster and grow this segment of our business.” and Canada.

Payments 88

Payments Stax Payment Solutions Payment Services 88

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

What started as a series of interviews by co-founder Des Traynor soon bloomed into hundreds of episodes where we explore how businesses are driving growth through customer relationships and how to build successful products at scale. And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

And then, invest your energy and time into the product. 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. You’ve got to learn about sales, about marketing and, otherwise, you need to hire a lot of other people around you to help.

Sales Hiring 141

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 141

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

You’ll also learn how leading SaaS companies are able to scale and thrive in this complex, dynamic environment. And so we actually had to make some major adjustments and look for an alternative way to deliver the software which clearly meant that we needed to move to the cloud full-time. Want to see more content like this session?

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 173

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

Interesting for a couple reasons, but Sunil’s been investing in cloud internet since before almost anybody. So, not that many people have started so early in the career, so long in the space, and great investments that we know like Datadog and Fastly, and good at it. GP and founder of Amplify Partners. Jason Lemkin: Crazy.

Sales Recruiting 219

Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Technical Review Sales Hiring 219

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. What to do before building a team for your SaaS company You can’t just jump into hiring without some forethought, or you’ll make many mistakes. Before the hiring process, take some time to decide on your current needs and hire as your company grows.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 15, 2018

He had to quickly determine which team members displayed a potential for leadership and teach them the fundamentals of management so they could make new hires and scale – without ruining the culture. Building trust can be tough when you’re a new hire in a leadership position. Those were three things I wanted to jump on.

Leadership 141

Leadership Engineering Part-Time VPE CTO Coach 141

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

I mean, maybe you do, but I don’t know anyone right now with extra money, time, or people, right? And well, that simplicity theme obviously is so massive and also just doing more in the product when you have that massive scale that you all have at Algolia and New Relic has as well. From contract signature to launch.

Payment Methods 268

Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 268

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

Instead, there’s one continuous streamlined customer-centric journey, leveraging the next generation of artificial intelligence, Outreach allows sales reps to deliver consistent, relevant, and responsible communication for each prospect every time enabling personalization at scale previously unthinkable. Are they hiring?

Marketplace as a Service 112

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 112

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

Here is what he writes: Kieran Flanagan , VP of marketing at HubSpot, shared some interesting insights on approaching new ideas for scaling up your business. The Gold: these are very rare and hard to achieve at the scale-up stage, so you’ll mostly encounter them with startups. The best part? Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Will Larson , CTO of Calm. Des Traynor , Co-founder and CTO of Intercom. But as you scale beyond Series A, how can you be sure you’re choosing the right lane? Scaling a sales team is not for the faint of heart – for one, it’s not even that much about selling. Intercom on Product: Keeping the momentum going as you scale.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Technical Review Scale Outsourcing Services 118

Neil Patel

JULY 7, 2021

Are sales at a point where we can justify investing in and learning a new platform? Do we have the technical support, in-house or contracted, to take on the learning curve of an emerging platform? As you scale, ensuring a great customer experience can become harder and harder, but building a solid e-commerce website can help.

AI Search 124

AI Search CTO Hire Scale Artificial Intelligence 124

Sales Hacker

MARCH 25, 2019

Simmone talks about her experience building Gilt City and Kidpass as a woman of color and how she advises companies to build diversity and inclusion into their hiring practices and sales teams. How to build diversity into your hiring practices. It really starts in how you’re hiring. Unconscious bias is a part of all of us.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Revenue CTO Coach CTO Hire 92