Remove CTO Hire Remove Leadership Remove Scale
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Dear SaaStr: Why did Jason M. Lemkin Change his Point of View on The Value of a COO for Earlier Stage Startups?

SaaStr

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. Or didn’t want to do sales. Or couldn’t stand your CTO. I still believe a CEO should “do it all” in terms of building a decent management team first before hiring a COO. I still believe this.

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VPs That Can’t Hire … They Aren’t Real VPs. At Least, Not Yet.

SaaStr

Perhaps the single most important thing you can ever do in SaaS, at least after $1m in ARR or so, is hire the best VPs you can. We’ve talked a lot over the years about how not to hire a wrong VP of Sales — 70%+ of the first VPs of Sales don’t make it even 10 months. You need to hire up-and-comers.

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What Order Should You Hire Your Management Team In?

SaaStr

IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m He asked which to hire first. If you have a few nickels in the bank, and you somehow find a great VP a half stage or even full stage early, just hire her. Hiring is so hard as it is. And your first VP of Marketing just increases qualified leads by 25%.

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Startup 411: Building for Scale with Google Cloud, Stairwell, Mashvisor, and Inworld.ai (Video)

SaaStr

To convert an idea into a successful venture, startups need to be equipped to scale. 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. . Build an irreplaceable team .

Scale 263
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Leadership Learnings: 5 Things I Wish I Could Have Told My 2013 Self With Advisor and Former CTO of Heap Dan Robinson (Pod 663 + Video)

SaaStr

You’ll never truly understand how to lead a SaaS company until you’ve done it firsthand. Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares five essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. But it always helps to get advice from someone with experience. Want more content like this? Get your tickets.

CTO Coach 242
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The Top 10 Reasons to Attend 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!!

SaaStr

Our 10th Annual Meet-a-VC program to opt-in ahead of time, to set up VC-Founder matchmaking, Note: the above programs are only for Cloud / SaaS / AI founders and executives. Speakers share their playbooks on everything from achieving product-market fit to optimizing CAC:LTV ratios and scaling go-to-market strategies.

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Bet On Up-and-Comers. But Add One Veteran For Each $10m ARR.

SaaStr

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. Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales. But most of us are first-time founders, or close to it.