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. And for good reason.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

If you’re running a smaller digital business, you may find it challenging to hire great talent. Larger technology companies can pay more, offer more benefits, and provide a more marketable brand on a candidate’s resume. Why is it so hard for SMBs to hire the best talent when competing with big companies?

SMB 107

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 107

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. But you have to see progress in one sales cycle. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

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

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Building a sales team that can go from $0-$50M (Video + Transcript). Gaetan Gachet | SVP of Sales @Algolia. It’s an honor to be here with this mythical creature, this sales leader that goes from zero to 50 million in the same job. He has a whole French sales team and office that only speaks English in Paris.

Scale 146

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 146

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

APRIL 9, 2019

But also, as a sole founder, you also can make a decision in a very timely manner. Not only for the product side, but for the sales and marketing side. 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. Speed is everything.

Sales Hiring 141

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 141

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

In this article, we’ve outlined the major roles that move the needle in terms of product growth alongside their KPIs and current salary ranges. Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Account Managers: They serve as the lead point of contact for all customer account management matters.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

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. Excited to be back emceeing. That was the start of the Month of Scale.

CTO Coach 164

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 164

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

To build the initial team, to build the product, to build the initial go to market, to build the first customers and to build the ARR, the starting. Pietro Bezza | Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures. Pietro : This journey used to end at the legendary, mythical product/market fit. ” That’s not proven.

New CTO 179

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 179

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

A Couple SaaS Generations Ago… Traditional software companies managed sales, product development, finance and HR in siloed organizations by function. Cross functional management was attempted but often not effective. In the early SaaS days, management structure was essentially the same. Chief Product Officer.

Part-Time CTO 69

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Hire Management 69

Upscope

JANUARY 5, 2020

Product positioning describes the specific market you intend to win and why you are uniquely qualified to win it. It’s the underpinning of your go-to-market strategy and impacts everything from marketing to sales, to customer success and the product itself. Why positioning matters? Why should I give a damn?

Strategy 128

Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring Engineering 128

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

They are expecting a discussion on security and scalability and so we have to bring partners to the table and there are some partners we work with that are more than willing to come into that sales conversation with us and these is other partners that aren’t. And you’ve just mentioned several things.

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 173

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

This made it hard to chart a clear course: Jebbit’s message to the market was a bit too broad, causing Sales to bring in customers across a range of personas, prompting CS to invest extra resources to keep a wide variety of customers engaged.”. Identify ideal customers and hone sales personas. Get it done faster.

Startup 91

Startup Scale Systems Review Technical Review 91

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

Plus, the Product Marketing Alliance drops the Product Marketing Salary Survey. What about the ROI of spending time with your family, friends, or kids? That’s what David Apple—customer success and sales guru at Notion— is asking. Along with: What’s the ROI of your customer success manager?

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

So we didn’t have product market fit for that. How did you think about, who do I want to target for that product given where we are now. So that’s where we found product market fit and product market fit is not binary, it’s more of like the stars align and you’re just like, Oh my God.

Merchant Services 81

Merchant Services Payment Methods Payments Payment Solutions 81

Mucker Capital

APRIL 6, 2023

Or if you have products that require some configuration–think about Salesforce, Segment, things like that–someone needs to set it up. Obviously if you target enterprise customers, you usually have a very large ACV (Annual Contract Value) and the product usually is complex. Think Notion, Canva, Slack, all of those products.

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

Simply put, you conduct customer discovery interviews before launching a new product, or whenever you want to discover potential customers. User Interviews is an example of a product born out of customer discovery interviews. Speaking your customers’ language will accelerate your sales and make your brand more engaging.

Interviewing 76

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 76

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

Simply put, you conduct customer discovery interviews before launching a new product, or whenever you want to discover potential customers. User Interviews is an example of a product born out of customer discovery interviews. Speaking your customers’ language will accelerate your sales and make your brand more engaging.

Interviewing 52

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 52

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 295

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 295

SmartKarrot

MARCH 4, 2021

To handle this evolving requirement, it is important to build a competent profile to initiate progress in product development. This is where companies need another C-level executive to facilitate business growth via products. What makes a chief product officer (CPO) different from a CTO or a VP in the product department.

Part-Time CTO 16

Part-Time CTO VP of Engineering CTO CTO Hire 16

SaaStr

JULY 23, 2021

Brian Peterson, CTO @ Dialpad. Nicole Culver, Director of Product Marketing, SaaS @Bandwidth. Dave Walters, CTO, Hired. Christa Diaz, Senior Director, Customer Success, Hired. Amy Pisano, CRO, Hired. Jenn Knight, Co-Founder, CTO, AgentSync. Kimara Moodley Senior Account Executive @Demostack.

VP of Engineering 284

VP of Engineering New CTO CTO Hire Sales Hiring 284

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

He also founded SaaScribe to help founders, customer success teams , sales executives, marketing professionals, and growth hackers. Asia Orangio is a SaaS expert who helps SaaS companies and start-ups to craft a data driver strategy and implement award-winning marketing strategies to win the audience. Asia Orangio. Chris Orlob.

VP of Engineering 10

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

As for Erica, under her CRO role, she leads all go-to-market functions including Marketing, Sales, Operations, Customer Success, Services, and Support. How does the move to enterprise fundamentally impact the sales team? How does the structure of the sales team change with the move? Where do many go wrong?

Scale 210

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 210

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. We think we should hold off doing channels until we’ve debugged the sales model.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Venture Capital Technical Advisors 59

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Katrina Wong, VP Marketing and Demand Generation @ Segment. Asawari Samant, Head of Marketing @ Anyscale. Amy Appleyard, VP Sales @ VMWare. Michelle Benfer, VP, Head of North America Sales @ HubSpot. Kady Srinivasan, Head of Marketing @ Klaviyo. Jessica Weimer Vice President, Global Revenue Marketing @ Podium.

VP of Engineering 284

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder CTO Coach CTO Hire 284

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

Does Bob agree with the notion that channel sales have completely died in the world of SaaS? In terms of replacement, what does Bob believe will be the emerging trends in SaaS Go To Market that will replace it? * How does Bob think about when is the right time to hire a Head of Partnerships? Why is this?

Sales Hiring 162

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Scale CTO Hire 162

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2020

What does really effective product marketing mean to Paul? How does Paul think about driving really effective change management? When engaging with bottoms up sales models, where does Paul identify the tipping points of going from bottoms up to top down? * Is it product decisions? Is there hiring decisions?

CTO Coach 216

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Software Review 216

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

Previously, he was an operating partner at Fractal Software, helping launch vertical software companies and find product-market fit. Before that, he was the first non-founder seller at three startups, turning early traction into a repeatable sales motion. 13:17 Characteristics of top early-stage sales reps.

Sales Hiring 96

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale VP of Engineering 96

Sales Hacker

MARCH 11, 2025

Pursuit helps companies hire elite go-to-market talent on a non-retainer basis. As a key GTMfund partner, they equip sales and marketing teams with top performers. If you’re hiring for sales or marketing roles, reach out to Pursuit at pursuitsalessolutions.com/gtm or message a GTMfund team member.

Scale 80

Scale Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Technical Review 80

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

At SaaStr Annual we had a great session with HubSpot Founder & CTO, Dharmesh Shah, and their Chief People Officer, Katie Burke, on building happier employees. Companies that have great, happy, productive employees do better by every single return. Brian and Dharmesh started the company out of MIT Sloan, so who did they hire?

Part-Time CTO 284

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 284

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2025

Co-founders Dharmesh Shah (CTO) and Brian Halligan (Chairperson) shared at SaaStr Annual the unfiltered truth on building an SMB powerhouse, pivoting to product-led growth, and why the “M” segment is SaaS gold. Enterprise sales cycles were painfully long with limited data points.

Scale 194

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Scaling 194

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

Sara Hicks, VP of Product, Commerce @ Mailchimp. Devon Rutherford, Managed Services Program Manager & Pre-Sales Manager @ Leaseweb. Mariela Towers, Head of Marketing @ BEE. Jules Costa, Content Manager @ BEE. Amy Appleyard, VP Sales @ VMWare. Christine Spang, Co-Founder and CTO @ Nylas.

VP of Engineering 274

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder CTO Coach CTO Hire 274