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. Jason shares that he would love to see more focus on logo retention and GRR and fight this toxic trend of CS reporting to sales. Give everyone x amount of money to go find the best one.

AI 304

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 304

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 296

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 296

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

They’re able to actually swipe a credit card, and what starts off similar to a freemium self-serve product can turn into a six-figure contract in just a few months. It might even be months later that a VP of Engineering or a CTO or CFO realizes that they’re built on a new platform. The contract size grows.

Outsourced Development 214

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 214

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. I had my CTO and everyone would be like, “You can’t do this. For example, I referenced hiring a Chief Revenue Officer, Bill. This is never going to work.”

CTO Hire 178

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 178

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

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

But as time went on, we shared lessons, what best practices were in customer success and revenue retention and all these things are, right. 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. We have a 60% chance that we can do it.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. What to do before building a team for your SaaS company You can’t just jump into hiring without some forethought, or you’ll make many mistakes. Before the hiring process, take some time to decide on your current needs and hire as your company grows.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

So one qualitative is when the customers love the product and the metrics for measure the love is phenomenal engagement, great retention, let them expand dynamics into the customers, growth led by expansion MRR more than the new business MRR, and ideally negative share. That’s also retention and upsell.

New CTO 182

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 182

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

“The biggest thing I can do for Slack is to hire people who know a lot more than I do and give them free rein to do their best work” Adam Risman: You mentioned the team started with performance marketing. And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2019

That means lots and lots of hiring and I don’t want to say firing, we did fire anyone, but people get reshuffled, you know? We just stayed the course, but we did and do have a recurrent revenue model, we had predictable revenues, we weren’t maybe hiring as fast as we would have otherwise, but we never had to lay off. We did not.

Scale 207

Scale Business Sales Hiring CTO Hire 207

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

Time and time again SaaS companies are promising customers that they will save hundreds of thousands of dollars, but their pricing strategies are only capturing a tiny fraction of that savings. Learn how raising prices can actually result in more profitable customers and higher retention rates.

Pricing 135

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 135

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2020

This will be a really strong indicator of retention and recruiting. One of the things that you and I talk about a lot is hiring for skill and impact over proximity, right? Jason Lemkin: Box Shield has a rule-based hire, I can pick rules. And then obviously, I think there’ll be more remote hiring in this environment.

Sales Recruiting 213

Sales Recruiting Cloud CTO Hire Sales Hiring 213

ProfitWell

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

When Co-founder and CTO of Chargify , Michael Klett isn’t brewing his own beer, he’s crafting billing experiences. This can range from help with pricing, retention, and churn, as well as providing subscription financial metrics so a customer can see everything that is going on from acquisition all the way through to retention.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 98

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

To stay on top of the fast paced, evolving digital world, issues like hiring and managing a diverse and highly skilled SaaS workforce, as well as security and privacy concerns impacting everything from customer contracts to product strategies and new market development, HR and security management is being elevated into in the C-Suite.

Part-Time CTO 69

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Hire Management 69

Valerian Tech

MAY 30, 2023

Improving Order Fulfillment and Shipping Efficient order fulfillment and shipping processes are crucial for customer satisfaction and retention. By analyzing order data, shipping times, and customer feedback, businesses can identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and recommend improvements.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Data Business CTO 52

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

Accurately forecast revenue retention and expansion. In HubSpot’s case, we eventually hired a world-class data science team, but our scoring only improved by a few points,” notes Redbord. You’ll need someone familiar with your data—perhaps a CTO or someone responsible for business operations. Do you have a retention issue?

Startup 91

Startup Scale Systems Review Technical Review 91

Casey Accidental

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Retention & Engagement. A deep dive on how to understand, measure, and improve retention through activation, engagement, and resurrection. Cross-Functional Growth: Growth Series , Advanced Growth Strategy , Retention & Engagement , Monetization & Pricing , Experimentation & Testing. Retention & Engagement.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO Scale 52

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Will Larson , CTO of Calm. Des Traynor , Co-founder and CTO of Intercom. We chat with Maggie about all things sales – from laying down a solid foundation to hiring the right people and, finally, scaling the team into hyper-growth. Liam Geraghty: Will Larson is the CTO of Calm , the mindfulness app.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Technical Review Scale Outsourcing Services 118

ProfitWell

JANUARY 2, 2020

Because the contracts are typically much higher in these sales agreements, B2B subscriptions often require a much longer sales process before your customer will consider making a purchase. Contract length. The length of a contract defines how often subscription payments recur. B2C contract length. B2B contract length.

B2C 52

B2C Payment Features Subscription Payments 52

Natalia Luneva

APRIL 30, 2021

Announcing new features, increasing customer satisfaction and retention are among the top functions of an online community. . #1 Of course, our team is involved to an extent, and we have an external part-time moderator for support. SaaS Community Marketing: 11 stories from software companies.

Marketing 98

Marketing Social Media SaaS New CTO 98

Point Nine Land

APRIL 9, 2021

A technical co-founder or CTO is always a great-to-have at this stage and becomes a must-have as the business scales beyond seed. Net revenue retention * of over 100% (for one or both sides of the platform) is a VC’s dream! As liquidity on the platform increases, we should also see cohorts getting better and better over time.

Marketplace as a Service 59

Marketplace as a Service Payments B2B SaaS Payments 59

Outseta

OCTOBER 15, 2018

The company had for a few years prior followed a growth-first path, hiring aggressively and prioritizing projects designed to make an immediate impact on their growth rate. After the Series A, Buffer fell into a similar trap to Wistia - they hired too quickly, specifically to accelerate product development. The company even took $2.5M

CTO Hire 65

CTO Hire CTO Coach SaaS New CTO 65

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 21, 2020

We were part of the office of the CTO. At that time, Marc Andreessen, the founder was the CTO of the company and there were only three of us in the group. It was pretty easy being an SDR for Marc Andreessen because he’d been on the cover of Time magazine.

Payment Methods 62

Payment Methods Scale CTO Coach SMB 62

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 9, 2022

More and more people are hiring leaders, not for past experience, but for capability and capacity. We hire a third-party firm. Gabby: We probably track 50 to 60 KPIs, so I’m not going to multiply that times four. We also need to change the way that we make hiring decisions. That would just be crazy.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

How many CSMs should you hire? We also have an episode of the ProfitWell Report that looks at the data from almost 2,000 companies to uncover how customer success impacts retention and churn, linked here. The question is not whether a CSM is a valuable asset to a SaaS business, but rather, how valuable are they? What is their ROI?

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

Mucker Capital

APRIL 6, 2023

Obviously if you target enterprise customers, you usually have a very large ACV (Annual Contract Value) and the product usually is complex. We talk about using the product complexity, your target customer size, your contract value, and whether there's individual use case–those four things--to help you decide if PLG is a fit.

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

SmartKarrot

OCTOBER 18, 2022

Serve as senior-level advocate for all customer issues and provide ongoing management to ensure timely resolution. Direct the hiring, orientation, and training plan for Relationship Management team members as applicable. Nurture key relationships internally – product team, BD team, COO, CTO, etc.

Customer Success 19

Customer Success Sales Hiring CTO Hire New CTO 19

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

Public valuations are still at a fraction of their 2021 peaks, but seed rounds are more expensive than ever. Investors should immediately engage with the CTO to assess their technical capabilities and potential, as great CTOs can demonstrate their exceptional skills quickly. Is it sustainable?

CTO Hire 297

CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 297

SmartKarrot

AUGUST 16, 2022

These annual executive business meetings are a wonderful time to discuss contracts. Whatever suits the customer would be the right time. If the product is very technical, you can even include the CTO or such C-executives to get the best outcomes. Discuss terms of renewal. It need not always be the chief customer officer.

Technical Review 10

Technical Review Systems Review Business CTO Hire 10

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

One of the top SaaS influencers is Dharmesh Shah , co-founder, and CTO of HubSpot. His insights on SaaS sales, hiring sales reps, and finding customers are a gold mine for anyone in the SaaS space. The entrepreneur helps generate more revenue through customer retention and acquisition. Dharmesh Shah. Steli Efti. Bottom Line.

VP of Engineering 10

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10

User Pilot

AUGUST 17, 2024

Hiring expensive consultants or setting up innovation labs doesn’t fly anymore. To increase your retention and renewal rates. Product is now at the C-level: More than 50% of Fortune 100 have a Chief Product Officer (CPO) who no longer reports to the CTO but directly to the CEO. There’s more. That’s not the case anymore.

Underperforming Technical Team 104

Underperforming Technical Team AI Technical Review CTO Coach 104

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. They talk about the culture code that was created in HubSpot’s early days and how they have continued to have strong retention rates and overall happiness in their employees.

Part-Time CTO 290

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 290

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. The company had to retrench and restart their global efforts multiple times. Focus obsessively on churn.

Scale 165

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Scaling 165

Sales Hacker

MARCH 11, 2025

Pursuit helps companies hire elite go-to-market talent on a non-retainer basis. If you’re hiring for sales or marketing roles, reach out to Pursuit at pursuitsalessolutions.com/gtm or message a GTMfund team member. And I would say detractors are 10 times louder in the market than the promoters are. And I call it.

Scale 81

Scale Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Technical Review 81