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 256

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 256

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

Some are decades-old problems, while others have emerged from this new world we’re in. 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. There wouldn’t be enough time for them to carry a bag for six months and hire those ten people.

CTO Hire 204

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 204

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. 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.

Part-Time VPE 286

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 286

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.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

They’ll revolt when you make a senior or mid-level hire that as a group, they simply cannot suffer one day longer. It’s happened to me, and I think for whatever my faults, I have a pretty high EQ and am a half-decent manager. Another time, a rather long time ago, I had a senior product hire that was pretty brilliant.

Part-Time VPE 278

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 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. 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 3, 2021

A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. Something new to boost your ACV and TCV. Double your pricing for new customer, on the largest deals. And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. Add a layer. the prospects).

Part-Time VPE 278

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 278

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

As a founder/CEO, building your first management team is something that you often lose sleep over. 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. One thing is the timing.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 258

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. ” — Echeyde Cubillo, Co-founder and CTO, Acme Ticketing.

CTO Hire 321

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 321

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. 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. Third, my second start-up as a founder — once we had a great management team.

Part-Time VPE 286

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 286

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

JULY 14, 2022

This led to our first meet-ups in 2013 and 2014, the first SaaStr Annual in 2015 , the industry’s leading podcast in 2016, the first SaaS founder coworking space in 2017, and SaaStr Pro , the first learning management system for SaaS founders in 2018. Teams saw on another in-person instead of behind a screen for the first time.

Scale 300

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 300

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

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. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 283

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

If you’re running a smaller digital business, you may find it challenging to hire great talent. If you’re facing challenges winning the best candidates for your roles, or if you have a small number of roles and every hire really matters, then don’t miss this episode of Growth Stage. Why are you looking for a new job?

SMB 105

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 105

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. Pietro Bezza | Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures. We’ve got half a billion into management. Want to see more content like this?

New CTO 174

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 174

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 27, 2018

Back in the early days of Intercom, our CTO Ciaran was the entirety of the on call team, both in and out of the office. Soon after, new teams started building a lot of new features and services, and they assumed full on call responsibilities. The history of on call at Intercom. There were too many people on call at any moment.

Engineering 209

Engineering Software Review Technical Review Systems Review 209

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

WorkOS CEO Michael Grinich, Developer Success Manager Betsy Calender, and VP of Developer Experience Zeno Rocha share how to price your product for developers, how to market it to developers, how to how to support them as they scale and use the products. Management might even know that they’re using a product.

Outsourced Development 207

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 207

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

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. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. That’s how you manage your burn rate. And the best CTO I know in the world is the CEO.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

What’s the point of all the specialization so many sales orgs strive for if it’s just going to eat up director, VP and executive-level time and energy? Wouldn’t it take away from allowing managers to manage and coach — not to mention the monstrous to-do lists of VPs and CEOs? Have an action plan.

Underperforming Technical Team 131

Underperforming Technical Team CTO Hire CTO Coach Technical Review 131

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

So even the freshest new SaaS startup celebrating their 50th customer may find themselves dealing with sales tax in multiple states. . hiring in-house talent). That’s what Basecamp, a leading project management software provider, chose to do when partnering with TaxJar. It’s time to think about sales tax management.

Merchant Services 195

Merchant Services Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring 195

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

Over time I had eight different jobs there and progressed from an engineer, to technical project manager, to technical program manager, to manager, to a manager of managers. 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

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.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

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

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.

CTO Coach 157

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 157

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.

CTO Hire 141

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 141

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 ).

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework Payment Methods CTO Hire Payment Solutions 130

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2021

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. They likely don’t have all the answers. Will Larson: I would love to.

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. Pete was a Google Associate Product Manager for AdSense and launched Google App Engine. First, hire a management coach to work with you as the company grows. These were some of the things I learned from Pete.

CTO Coach 113

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 113

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

What sets apart some of the most successful, high-growth companies we see today—Slack, Dropbox, Atlassian—has been their ability to tap into and master a new GTM strategy: B2C2B. We saw inside the company this tension between our classroom business and this new B2C digital business, and we knew we had to make a decision.

B2B 173

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 173

Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Given that their guidance is so universal — both for people just stepping into new roles and those at fast-paced companies like Buffer — I thought I’d share their wisdom here. ⏰ Time at Buffer: 11 years, 6 months Andy was one of Buffer’s earliest hires.

VP of Engineering 124

VP of Engineering Part-Time CTO New CTO CTO 124

Scytale

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

ISO 27001 stipulates specific requirements for establishing, maintaining, and improving an organization’s information security management system (ISMS). The preparation costs To obtain an ISO 27001 certification, your organization needs to implement an Information Security Management System (ISMS).

Systems Review 52

Systems Review Software Review CTO Hire compliance 52

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

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. First, legacy businesses often face cultural barriers and resistance to change when it comes to implementing new technologies and practices.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Business 52

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.

CTO Hire 174

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 174

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

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Chief Operating Officer: Responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations, providing strategic advice, and managing the company’s operations. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98