SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

200+ dedicated workshops and braindates with the best in SaaS, Cloud and AI, from intimate small sessions to 20-50 person workshops from the best Our CRO + CEO Poker Night where we bring 200 top revenue leaders together with CEOs and founders of B2B / AI companies attending Our 4th annual CMO Summit for top CMOs and the CEOs that want to meet them!

Sales Recruiting 180

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 180

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

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. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. I Need a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 363

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Customer count growing as fast as revenue — a good sign for the future. 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.

Scale 307

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 307

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. Less and you under-invest. More here.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

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. There are roughly 2 types of start-up management teams.

Part-Time VPE 269

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 269

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

Ode to the $100,000,000 Exit Dear SaaStr: Should You Hire Someone That Seems Good … But Always Job Hops? SaaStr 638: Lessons Learned in Scaling Your Team & Revenue from $1M ARR to $1B+ with Cloudflare CRO Chris Merritt  2. But What Really Matters is That You Believe You Can Hit $100m ARR in 7 Years. If So, How Much?

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 246

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. UiPath took ten years to get to $1M in revenue.

CTO Hire 241

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 241

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 you can’t have a majority of y our revenue dependent on one customer. ” — Ankit Sindhi, Founder, Spurt.

CTO Hire 325

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 325

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Scaling a PLG company While it’s great to figure out a PLG model that allows you to scale your revenue with inbound, it cannot stop there. Strategy: To get started, identify playbooks that yield the highest revenue. The next hiring focus should be growth marketing. Hire a CTO and unify the entire data function.

Scale 244

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 244

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. There are no Cloud magicians, and you can’t hire a PLG magician. Let’s jump right into the questions.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

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 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

Many teams got to come together and meet each other in person for the first time. Revenue leaders were able to network once again. 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. Now a staple!)

Scale 307

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 307

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) Especially in this macro environment, investors don’t just want to see top line revenue growth; they want to see that you can achieve that growth with sound business fundamentals. #4. Why did you do the deal?

Management 273

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 273

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

You have to see: A couple of good hires brought in Improvement on some metrics A big deal or two hanging out there, brought in and closed Things taken off your plate. More time may make them better if they’re already progressing, even if it’s just 10-15% in the first sales cycle. Hiring someone too junior. That often compounds.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

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. to working for smaller brands.

SMB 108

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 108

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2019

I remember my CTO once arguing with a Fortune 500 company on a “security” concern they had which really made no sense. More here: I Never Lost a Customer I Actually Visited | SaaStr Not hiring a full-time RFP person. Not hiring a full-time Chief Security & Compliance Offer. Didn’t matter. They were concerned.

Sales Hiring 174

Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 174

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 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

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

JUNE 26, 2024

Many people are doing great, even private companies like Netskope, which are growing over 30% at $500M in revenue. Canva is growing at 40% and has a revenue of $2.3B. Klaviyo is growing 42% at $750M, coming up on a billion in revenue, and number one in the Shopify ecosystem. Samsara is growing 39% at $1.1B. It’s a rocket ship.

CTO Hire 144

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 144

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 210

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 210

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

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

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. Our Chief Revenue officer, another one of our senior leadership lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 171

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

Hiring managers are also just trying to sell as well. Users come to us all the time and they say, Hey, this company looks awesome. Are they hiring? That goes to the hiring manager. And if you get hired, RepVue will actually pay you $500. And it’s easy to inflate that for companies during the hiring process.

Marketplace as a Service 112

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 112

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

Last but not least, if your sales tax noncompliance gets too out of hand, dealing with multiple states’ sales tax laws means that 46 state departments of revenue can potentially come after you for back taxes. hiring in-house talent). For example, you hire a developer to move you over to an ERP like NetSuite.

Merchant Services 194

Merchant Services Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring 194

Sales Hacker

MARCH 25, 2019

Simmone talks about her experience building Gilt City and Kidpass as a woman of color and how she advises companies to build diversity and inclusion into their hiring practices and sales teams. How to build diversity into your hiring practices. How to Increase Revenue by 19% [36:37]. How to Increase Revenue by 19%.

Sales Hiring 90

Sales Hiring Revenue CTO Coach CTO Hire 90

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Last night I read this question on Quora : In general terms, what is the ideal size and make-up of a team for a pre-revenue SaaS startup? I think the second part of the question is more important. This can be a huge advantage, especially for a bootstrapped startup that can't afford to hire many people.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Today on the show, we’ve got Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, a company that applies AI to your contract. Sam Jacobs: Today on the show, we’ve got Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, a company that applies AI to your contract. Sam’s Corner [28:45]. Show Introduction [00:10]. What is LinkSquares?

Scale 119

Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 119

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Well, we did the heavy lifting and highlighted a few here for you… “When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster. Prior to South Park Commons Ruchi was an engineer at Facebook, co-founder of Cove which was sold to Dropbox in 2012 at which time she became a VP of Operations at Dropbox.

Payment Services 108

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 108

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

If I look at where we’ve invested in companies, we’ve done a Series A where there’s no revenue and we’ve done a Series A where there’s mid-single digit recurrent revenue. It’s known that you can probably sell those first couple of contracts. ” That’s not proven. .”

New CTO 170

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 170

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. Andrew Chen: Exactly.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

After four months of an unprecedented global crisis, SaaS companies are bouncing back while product led growth businesses are trading at almost 2x higher revenue multiples they started with. Now’s the Time to Revisit Your Pricing. Don’t leave revenue on the table, drive growth by optimizing your pricing. Do you agree?

Pricing 135

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 135

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

That was when we realized we had to go hire some experienced enterprise go-to-market leaders, like Heather Zynczak who runs marketing at Pluralsight. We realized that what the CTO and the CIO need to know is what skills do I have, what technology skills exist in my business, what skills are missing relative to my tech strategy?

B2B 158

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 158

Stax

AUGUST 14, 2024

Krahl’s appointment cements Stax’s commitment to investing in its team and bringing on new team members with deep industry knowledge and is the latest executive hire at Stax. Stax helps drive incremental revenue through frictionless, secure, and reliable payment processing and recurring billing solutions.

Payments 88

Payments Stax Payment Solutions Payment Services 88

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

While Baremetrics was fulfilling the desire for public transparency, internally the team was using Looker almost exclusively to track and report revenue metrics. Joel had what he calls “an honest conversation” with Buffer’s CTO Dan. Joel shares that at the time, the Average Revenue per Account (ARPA) was only $18-19.

Payment Solutions 113

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Social Media 113