SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” “When customers get back $100k’s in minutes and want to pay us more” — Kanat Bekt, founder/CTO, SupplyPike. 20% conversion. ” — Drew Naugher.

CTO Hire 337

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 337

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. These webinars will also be great training for the new folks. Simplify to a 1 page contract.

Scale 348

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 348

TechEmpower SaaS

JULY 24, 2023

It’s part of our job to ask questions about their plans, challenge their assumptions, and suggest paths to success. The conversations are interesting and varied because they’re about new, exciting, different things. Will you validate new members’ email addresses and/or phone numbers?

Innovation 780

Innovation Development CTO Hire Technical Review 780

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 257

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire New CTO CTO 257

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CEO of ZoomInfo , Henry Schuck. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo? ” And there can be some truth to that, right? .”

New CTO 311

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 311

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Some leaders like Slack have seen the same, but most Cloud leaders at scale with high NRR end up getting more and more of their revenue from their existing base, not new customers. Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. CEO Spencer Skates owns 8.5%, CTO Curtis Liu 8.0%.

Scale 309

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 309

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 210

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 210

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

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

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 296

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 296

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. It was a hire I wasn’t really in favor of, but it was an experiment.

Part-Time VPE 287

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 287

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. At least on the big customers.

Part-Time VPE 287

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 287

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 232

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 232

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: About 70% of SaaS Public Companies Are New Versions of Existing Categories of Software (Updated) Growth Slowed Down About 33% On Average For Everyone in Q1 The Top 20 SaaStr Tips to Getting a SaaS Start-Up Going When Should You Add a Second Product?

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Scaling 244

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

JANUARY 12, 2022

As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on. “That it was much easier to do more in order to keep that customer than to get a new “top” customer.

CTO Hire 326

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 326

Valerian Tech

JANUARY 5, 2023

It can be beneficial to hire a fractional CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in a variety of situations. When you don't have an in-house technology leader: If you don't have a CTO or a similar technology leader on your team, a fractional CTO can fill that role.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

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!) Check that out here. What’s your most recent disclosed investment?

Management 274

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 274

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. Second, hire the best management team you can as early as you can.

Part-Time VPE 296

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 296

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

We had Lew Cirne, Founder & CEO of New Relic, Dharmesh Shah, Co-Founder & CTO of HubSpot and for the first time at Annual, we added office hours with the top VCs in SaaS. total attendees, e.g., a CEO + a VP of Sales and a VP of Customer Success, or two Co-Founders, or CEO + CTO, etc. 2020 SaaStr Annual At Home.

Scale 310

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 310

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2019

We passed a new milestone on Quora — crossing 50,000,000 total views. What makes a bad CTO? Do all SaaS companies in the USA put late payment fees in their contract? As you can see, views dropped a bit and then rebounded strongly in the past few months. What was the biggest ousting of a CEO that ever occurred?

CTO Hire 159

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Payment Methods 159

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. You’re not building a product or getting any new customers. You can’t hire a magician Head of Product.

Scale 287

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 287

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. But if you want to grow fast, you want to innovate and take care of those customers and the energy that goes into these pricing games, especially for new CROs and revenue teams.

AI 298

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 298

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 263

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 263

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. ” We didn’t do any annual contracts.

Part-Time VPE 286

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 286

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 194

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 194

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

I’ve learned so much … most importantly, I think, that I love being a fractional CTO, a role that allows me to make use of everything I’ve learned and experienced over a long technology-focused career. What’s changing, rather, is the entity I’m delivering through – a new company called Crafty CTO.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Headcount 40

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

USIO

JUNE 28, 2024

is committed to empowering businesses to build powerful enterprise grade applications without the need for extensive coding expertise,” said Ben Hubbard, CTO at ues.io. This will allow our users to streamline their workflows, improve customer experiences, and unlock new revenue opportunities.” application.

Payments 130

Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payment Services 130

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. The panel that we are in is called Is Seed the New Series A, and this is a question that I’ve been asking informally yesterday and today.

New CTO 163

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 163

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. And the best CTO I know in the world is the CEO. The 60 is probably where your core plan should be.

Outsourcing Services 236

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 236

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Well, in the past several years, there’s been a tremendous number of companies that have built specifically for developers and use this as a way to get into these new markets, to displace incumbents and disrupt the competition. You have the opportunity to upsell new features and capabilities to them. The contract size grows.

Outsourced Development 212

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 212

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Your CTO probably does not need to be on the first Demo, but instead that could be an opportune time to loop in a Manager or director. After all, a CTO can’t handhold the entire deal cycle, but they can jump in and provide clarity and an expert voice at critical points. Who doesn’t love a good combo of ham, egg and cheese?

Underperforming Technical Team 130

Underperforming Technical Team CTO Hire CTO Coach Technical Review 130

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

Fractional CTO services can be a valuable asset for businesses that want to take advantage of technology to grow and improve their operations, but don’t have the resources or expertise to do so in-house.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Technology 40

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). Expanding into new sales channels is a common growth play. For example, you hire a developer to move you over to an ERP like NetSuite.

Merchant Services 191

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 191

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

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

Some of the things we talked about were operational overhead and cost of various data stores we were running, along with whether or not we needed to hire dedicated database administrators for various different technologies. Ciaran, our CTO , came up with this magical line. Geoffrey: Let’s talk about hiring.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192