article thumbnail

What Order Should You Hire Your Management Team In?

SaaStr

IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m He asked which to hire first. If you have a few nickels in the bank, and you somehow find a great VP a half stage or even full stage early, just hire her. Hiring is so hard as it is. Make the hire now. ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m More here: [link].

article thumbnail

Dear SaaStr: What’s The Number One Challenge for Scale-Up Stage Founders?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: What’s The Number One Challenge for Scale-Up Stage Founders? You will need a VP of Product to scale your roadmap. You can smother customers with love alone in the early days, but as you scale, you need a seasoned customer success team and VP that has done this before. She can be your CTO forever.

Scale 248
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Dear SaaStr: What Makes a Bad CTO?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: What Makes a Bad CTO? While there is no legal definition for CTO or bright line between CTO and VPE, I’d suggest a start-up CTO really only has to do a few things — which are very hard: Assemble a small team (3–9) of very good engineers. That often were never anticipated and aren’t part of the job spec.

CTO Hire 231
article thumbnail

VPs That Can’t Hire … They Aren’t Real VPs. At Least, Not Yet.

SaaStr

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?

article thumbnail

Top SaaStr Content for the Week: Gusto CEO, RevenueCat CTO, Intercom CEO, Notion CRO, and More!

SaaStr

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Be Careful Hiring “Dualies” — Folks That Are a VP of More Than One Thing. SaaStr 565: Classic Episode: The Importance of Company Values, a Great Hiring Process, and Ownership Culture with Gusto Co-Founder & CEO Josh Reeves.

CTO Hire 222
article thumbnail

What’s The #1 Challenge After $1m-$2m ARR?

SaaStr

Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders? You will need a VP of Product to scale your roadmap. You can smother customers with love alone in the early days, but as you scale, you need a seasoned customer success team and VP that has done this before. She can be your CTO forever.

article thumbnail

Extreme Product Design: Building Things People Actually Use with Stripe CTO David Singleton (Pod 636 + Video)

SaaStr

Many companies believe excellent product design comes from hiring the best engineers and signing up for the latest software instead of building from the users’ perspectives. Stripe’s CTO, David Singleton, shares how they use a system of feedback, iteration, and fast shipping to create products that meet users’ expectations.

CTO Hire 234