SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Including: CEO Snowflake CEO HubSpot CEO DropBox CEO Descript CEO Clio CEO Flock Safety CEO Own CRO ServiceTitan CMO Databricks CMO Infinite Reality CTO Rubrik CCO Canva CCO Bill CCO GitHub VP AI Wiz CEO Calendly and 100s more!! Investor Connections and Funding Opportunities — And $5m AI VC Pitch Stage!!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. I just see this time and time again.

Part-Time VPE 321

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 321

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

And that means your initial leadership team often takes you faster, and further, than you might ever think. The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. And if you are, you are going to naturally start off hiring up-and-comers to your first leadership team. And that’s great.

Part-Time VPE 285

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 285

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 211

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 211

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? David considers product to be its own department that should also report directly to the CEO, instead of falling under the CTO. CTO (40 Employees).

CTO Hire 290

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 290

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. This can be a useful option for startups or small businesses that may not have the resources to hire a full-time CTO or may not need one on a permanent basis.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2021

But what they don’t have is a good enough founding team: Sometimes, if the prospective founder isn’t super technical, then the CTO/VPE isn’t really great. They’ve got a rent-a-CTO. Or sometimes they are great, but the team members are just not great enough for their new C-level roles (CEO, CTO, CMO, CSO, CBO, C?O).

Part-Time VPE 263

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire New CTO CTO 263

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2019

“Juggling People, Processes, and Priorities: Leadership Lessons from Intuit, SurveyMonkey & Stitch Fix” with Heavy Bit GM Dana Oshiro Intuit CTO Marianna Tessel, SurveyMonkey CTO Robin Ducot and Stitchfix CTO Cathy Polinsky. ” When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster.

CTO Coach 191

CTO Coach Engineering CTO Hire Development 191

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . “A Hiring in a streamlined manner with a rigorous selection process initially builds momentum for long-term goals.

Scale 263

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 263

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 232

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 232

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Some wicked smart, some merely very smart. Some direct, some warm and friendly. But what made them great: Ability to attract amazing co-founders and execs. Not just great, but epic. Ability to iterate pretty darn quickly.

CTO Hire 288

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 288

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. And hire against it. More here.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 299

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. But even if you’ve hired the world’s best VP of Sales … you can’t opt out of sales entirely. You still need to spend 15-20% of your time in sales. Hire a VP of Finance or even a CFO Early if You Are Growing Quickly.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 290

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. Short on time? Here are five quick takeaways: Management and leadership aren’t one and the same.

Leadership 141

Leadership Engineering Part-Time VPE CTO Coach 141

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

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

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. Second, hire the best management team you can as early as you can. But don’t wait a moment after that to hire the best senior help you can. If you haven’t experienced this yet, you don’t know.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 299

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

With 3 full days of sessions, featuring over 300 speakers from the best SaaS companies around the world, SaaStr Annual will be filled with actionable thought leadership to help grow your business. I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. Your big money is going to go into hiring your employees.

Startup 290

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 290

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

I’ve been reminded of this question in several meetings lately where founders are doing pretty well, getting to and past Initial Traction, but with hindsight it’s interesting that the founder that took the CEO gig perhaps was better suited to a different role, say CTO or SVP of Sales or President or COO or SVP Product.

Sales Recruiting 328

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital CTO Hire CTO 328

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

Is the CTO involved in these decisions? App contraction is still happening, and AI is absorbing all of the energy in the industry. Q: What Teams Should Be Involved to Fully Leverage AI and Get in Front of the Wave? Jason would challenge each department to go out and find one app that will make the company more efficient.

AI 304

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 304

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. Our Chief Revenue officer, another one of our senior leadership lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.

CTO Hire 178

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 178

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

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. Well, let’s transition then to leadership. Excited to be back emceeing.

CTO Coach 161

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 161

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.

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. First, hire a management coach to work with you as the company grows. The best ways he found to learn leadership skills was to hire a management coach to meet him once per month, to talk through the issues facing him at Optimizely.

CTO Coach 114

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 114

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 147

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 147

Valerian Tech

MAY 4, 2023

In this article, we'll explore the benefits of DevOps for legacy businesses and how a Fractional CTO can help overcome the challenges of DevOps adoption. This can come from employees, who are already accustomed to traditional methods of working, as well as leadership, who may not fully understand the value of a digital transformation.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Business 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2020

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. We decided, at that point, to bite the bullet and say everything we’re going to do, whether it’s how we architect the software, how we go to market, how we actually contract everything, is SaaS from here on out. I really try to never lose a game of chicken.

Startup 227

Startup CTO Hire Scale CTO Coach 227

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

“The biggest thing I can do for Slack is to hire people who know a lot more than I do and give them free rein to do their best work” Adam Risman: You mentioned the team started with performance marketing. And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team. Andrew Chen: Exactly.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

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. 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. Sam’s Corner [28:45]. Show Introduction [00:10]. What is LinkSquares?

Scale 119

Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 119

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Tim: I was hired in 2010, when Facebook was what I like to call a “teenage company”. There were about 1,400 people, just under a billion dollars in revenue, and I was hired as the CIO of the company with the mission of driving the productivity of the workforce. That was actually a pretty tall order at the time.

Artificial Intelligence 169

Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169

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 173

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 173

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

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Throughout the year, we’ve talked to business leaders, experts, and pioneers about all kinds of topics: from creating world-class customer experiences to the challenges of running a business during the pandemic, from being an ally and addressing gaps in diversity to building technical leadership careers. Will Larson , CTO of Calm.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Technical Review Scale Outsourcing Services 118

User Pilot

MARCH 7, 2024

of leadership roles. This could be explained by the fact that it was women, more often than men, who had to step down and work part-time to take care of stay-at-home children during the pandemic. I wanted to learn more about what challenges are deterring women from entering leadership career paths in tech.

Technical Review 105

Technical Review CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire 105

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

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. Eric Yuan: Because, at that time, we really needed a product.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 145

OPEXEngine

JUNE 16, 2020

Hired CEOs: It’s the Board’s Company vs. It’s My Company to Run. You become a hired CEO primarily through one path — climbing the corporate ladder at a large tech company [5a], reaching the GM or CXO level, and then deciding to branch out. 6] Like it or not, it’s not a bad three-part formula for climbing the corporate ladder.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Venture Capital Technical Advisors 59

Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 1, 2023

⏰ Time at Buffer: 11 years, 6 months Andy was one of Buffer’s earliest hires. While he has worked mostly in iOS and apps, he’s also dabbled in marketing, too — Andy’s had a hand in building almost every part of the Buffer website! ” 12.

VP of Engineering 126

VP of Engineering Part-Time CTO New CTO CTO 126