TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

AI empowers businesses to craft more impactful marketing campaigns by utilizing data analytics for content personalization and market trend forecasting, thereby significantly enhancing campaign relevance and effectiveness. This not only speeds up hiring but also lowers the costs associated with lengthy recruitment cycles.

Generative AI 443

Generative AI CTO Hire AI Sales Recruiting 443

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

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. Get on jets?

Part-Time VPE 352

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 352

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be. 95% of the time, your super-smart hacker co-founder is not that person. She can be your CTO forever. That’s a different, and critical, job than CTO. Marketing is also an art and science.

Part-Time VPE 311

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 311

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be. 95% of the time, your super-smart hacker co-founder is not that person. She can be your CTO forever. That’s a different, and critical, job than CTO. Marketing is also an art and science.

Scale 279

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 279

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2020

He joined StubHub as CTO, but didn’t get nearly as much equity as the other CTO — because he “wasn’t committed enough.” Times will change. Markets will change. If your customers love your product now, hire reps. He learned paper millions can go to zero ??.

CTO Hire 355

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Airlines 355

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

That they can get away without no one in the role, or a just a junior person in marketing, in product, in success, in biz dev, etc. Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10. That it’s time to bring in someone that knows. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 363

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

Co-founder and CEO of Plato, Quong Hoang, the #1 mentoring platform for engineering leaders , helped moderate a discussion between CTO of Change.org, Elaine Zhou, and Head of Engineering at Notion, Michael Manapat, on this subject. How do they sufficiently value and compensate an engineer’s skills in such a competitive market?

CTO Coach 278

CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO Engineering 278

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2023

We’ve discussed most before individually, but let me throw ’em together: It may well take 24 months to get to true product-market fit and Initial Traction. You really need a great CTO, not just a good business team. A mediocre tech team, a part-time CTO, or even just a decent CTO just doesn’t get you there.

Part-Time VPE 300

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 300

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2022

Miguel Carranza, CTO at RevenueCat, shares ten learnings from firsthand experience in architecting an API & SDK that is currently on 5,000+ apps and has seen 3x growth Year-over-Year. . But the reality is that when you’re trying to find product-market fit, that probably shouldn’t be your concern.” What makes a great API?

CTO Hire 246

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Scaling 246

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

A VP of Sales and Success A VP of Sales and Marketing A VP of Sales and Anything Else. Internet marketers when I didn’t know how to internet market. Anyhow the one thing I learned, beyond getting help screening and hiring for these positions from domain experts, is to look for Flags. I’ve had to recruit Ph.Ds.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 259

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Founded by Sanjit Biswas, former CEO at Meraki and John Bicket former CTO at Meraki[link] Samsara builds software to manage physical operations: truck fleets, mining, food & beverage, oil & gas. Samsara has adopted a few interesting go-to market techniques. But these contracts produce compelling economics.

CTO Hire 362

CTO Hire CTO Coach Benchmarks Scale 362

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. That’s a field marketer, and you need someone who can do demand gen.

CTO Hire 211

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 211

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2021

The first 2 scaled reps you hire that hit plan (some may churn before then) get special training. They get CTO training. And so we see reps 3-10, or reps-from-#3-until-The-VP-of-Sales-is-Hired … fail. Simplify to a 1 page contract. And the others perform so poorly vs. the 2 that are doing well? So what can you do?

Scale 348

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 348

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2023

Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares five essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. What Your Job Is (And What It Isn’t) Your Job is to Make the Company Win A CTO may imagine their primary job is to provide technical expertise, lead engineers, and help build the product.

CTO Coach 242

CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 242

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? Positions Needed: Enterprise AEs, Mid-Market & SMB AEs, SDRs, Sales Ops, Sales Engineer. Head of Marketing. CTO (40 Employees).

CTO Hire 290

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 290

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Speakers share their playbooks on everything from achieving product-market fit to optimizing CAC:LTV ratios and scaling go-to-market strategies. SaaStr Annual attracts thousands of high-quality SaaS professionals across functions like engineering, product, marketing, sales, and customer success.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

TechEmpower SaaS

JULY 24, 2023

Still, if you’re a business leader and your developers haven’t asked you these questions, look for a Fractional CTO to help navigate the critical early stage of development. How will you be taking this to market? Often this ties to marketing support. How can we leverage AI to get our product to market faster?

Innovation 780

Innovation Development CTO Hire Technical Review 780

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 14, 2024

Kevin Scott, CTO of Microsoft, framed the opportunity in AI this way : work on problems that used to be impossible, but are now really hard. Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a post about the minimum viable average contract value to justify a sales team. Imagine a product offerd at a $10k contract value sold by an AE.

CTO Hire 216

CTO Hire Outsourced Development Sales Hiring CTO 216

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

JANUARY 16, 2023

They need to act fast and take first-mover advantage to compete in the dynamic market. 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 Final thoughts.

Scale 263

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 263

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. Folks come out differently here, but while Amplitude charges per volume, in part, it doesn’t make a material amount from overages. 245 employees in Sales & Marketing — vs. 101 in Engineering / R&D. CEO Spencer Skates owns 8.5%, CTO Curtis Liu 8.0%.

Scale 312

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 312

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. You can do the drip marketing campaigns if you have to. These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR. Fixing it yourself becomes the biggest time sink and excuse for not hiring there is. That’s not good enough, especially in competitive markets.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 299

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

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. Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or 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. But I forced us to hire him, over my CTO’s strong objection and my VPE’s grudging acknowledgment we had no choice. A senior marketing manager that offended everyone culturally.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 290

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. You still have to figure out the strategic market position.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 290

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. The best CEOs see white space in the market that either others don’t see, or more often, sort of see, but this is too small. Some wicked smart, some merely very smart. Some direct, some warm and friendly. Not just great, but epic.

CTO Hire 288

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 288

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

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. That CTO that doesn’t quite have the traditional background. That CTO that doesn’t quite have the traditional background.

Part-Time VPE 285

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 285

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

It is a prerequisite to hire folks with a high IQ to success in software. You probably need a wicked smart CTO, some incredible engineers, maybe an insanely smart head of product or marketing, etc. Q: Is it a prerequisite to have a high IQ in order to succeed as a tech entrepreneur?

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire CTO Engineering Software 227

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

JUNE 12, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: What All First-Time CEOs Should Know About Fundraising. If You Leave the Low End of the Market … You Probably Can’t Go Back. SaaStr 559: Secrets to Building Your Marketing Engine To Drive Scale with Airtable CMO Archana Agrawal.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO 237

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

How do you build a best-in-class go-to-market model to get to 100mn ARR and beyond? Marketing, design, and product teams work to optimize one end of the funnel at the cost of the other. If you have product market fit, don’t wait to implement outbound. The next hiring focus should be growth marketing. 20 million?

Scale 244

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 244

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2023

Answers from the CEOs of Twilio, Veeva, Amplitude, HubSpot, Gainsight and More What Your First 100 Hires Will Look Like Top Podcasts This Week: 1. SaaStr 667: The 2023 Mid-Year State of the Markets: Why Efficient Growth is Key with SaaStr CEO & Founder Jason Lemkin   3.

CTO Hire 246

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Startup 246

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. Q: Should Product Marketing Work for Product or Marketing? Let’s jump right into the questions.

Scale 290

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 290

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

JANUARY 4, 2024

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) What’s your pulse check on the venture markets right now, today?

Management 278

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 278

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

The phase from $2m to $12m ARR … once I had a great VPS, VP Product, VP Marketing, and VP Customer Success … that phase … and man it was hard … and I worked 24×7 … but my “Quality of Life” was so very, very. Second, hire the best management team you can as early as you can.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 299