SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Including: CEO Snowflake CEO HubSpot CEO DropBox CEO Descript CEO Clio CEO Flock Safety CEO Own CRO ServiceTitan CMO Databricks CMO Infinite Reality CTO Rubrik CCO Canva CCO Bill CCO GitHub VP AI Wiz CEO Calendly and 100s more!! In addition, this year Mayfield is sponsoring our VC AI Pitch Stage and will invest from $500k-$5m in the winner!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

I’ve invested in 5 start-ups that had a $1,000,000,000+ cash exit or IPO. Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Dear SaaStr: What Qualities Make a CEO The Best In Their Industry?

CTO Hire 285

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 285

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

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. If you joined a startup at $2M and wanted to get to $6M with reps doing $400k, that VP of Sales would need to hire ten reps. 90% of the time, sales falls when a founder steps out of it.

CTO Hire 210

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 210

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.

Part-Time VPE 296

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 296

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. Technology staff management: A fractional CTO is responsible for managing the technology team, including hiring, training, and motivating employees.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

Valerian Tech

JANUARY 5, 2023

It can be beneficial to hire a fractional CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in a variety of situations. They can provide guidance on which technologies to invest in and help you create a roadmap for the future.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

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. His answers didn’t disappoint. They wanted a one-call close.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? We are currently investing out of our 9th Early Stage fund, a $650M vehicle.

Management 276

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 276

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

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Investing at a breathtaking pace. 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. In my first start-up as a founder, I had a great CTO and VPE and a pretty darn good VP Ops from the very beginning. 20×7, near as I can tell.

Part-Time VPE 296

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 296

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. 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.

CTO Hire 327

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 327

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

It starts at the beginning when someone interacts with your brand.” – Kim Walsh Hiring and collaboration for growth The product marketing team is the first function to hire for. The next hiring focus should be growth marketing. Once this is in place, start investing in paid channels.

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 287

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 287

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 231

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 231

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. Obviously, I can’t imagine a chief executive not having loss of sleep over building a management team. Mallun : Sure.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 263

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.

Sales Hiring 174

Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 174

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They were aware of it, but startups that I work with closely or invested in, if they got all the way to 25 million with 75% NRR, I would tell them to quit today. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. VCs can only invest in outliers. I want to invest in her.”

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

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 293

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 293

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. Bootstrapped because nobody in their right mind would have actually invested in us back then and took it up until 2014 as a bootstrapped company. It is much more painful to have to fire people and contract as a company than it is to grow. Turned out it became who I am.

Startup 287

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 287

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

OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

Getting hiring right is absolutely critical. I’d like to talk about two different companies with two very different approaches to hiring post-seed raise. To get the team started we hired several junior developers. There is a binary feeling that comes from making those first few technical hires. We needed a CTO.

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

They’ve invested in all of these other businesses. 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. We might’ve touched on this one too on the hiring and the people.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

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. I thought, wow, the system works.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

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

AUGUST 2, 2020

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. Bootstrapped, because nobody in their right mind would have actually invested in us back then and took it up until 2014 as a bootstrapped company. It is much more painful to have to fire people and contract as a company than it is to grow. Turned out it became who I am.

Startup 225

Startup CTO Hire Scale CTO Coach 225

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Deals are contracting, not because of layoffs, but because people are managing budgets so tightly. It Takes Time To Bounce Back Jason was the first investor in RevenueCat , a company that automates mobile subscriptions on your phone. Maybe if you have the ex-CTO of Github, but that’s still a super speculative bet. in 12 months?

CTO Hire 146

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 146

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

This can be a huge advantage, especially for a bootstrapped startup that can't afford to hire many people. Also, I have already invested in 1-person and 2-person founder teams, which became very successful, so my preference is only a light one.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

Julian Lemoine, Co-Founder, and CTO of Algolia will share his lessons learned on how to stay focused and innovative as you scale while also avoiding the innovation for innovation’s sake pitfalls. Julien Lemoine | Co-founder and CTO @Algolia. So I’m Julien, Co-founder and CTO of Algolia. Want to see more content like this?

Scale 171

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 171

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

I immediately left the office, went home, packed a bag, went the airport, booked flights, showed up there at mid night, met with the individual. 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. This is never going to work.”

CTO Hire 178

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 178

CloudGeometry

JULY 8, 2021

When you treat your cloud provider as a fractional colo. See a useful background talk from their CTO Pini Reznik here ). Either way, focus your attention on the most important part of your architecture: how well does it serve the goals of your business? Look out for FrankenCloud How can you tell when you live on a Frankencloud?

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework Payment Methods CTO Hire Payment Solutions 130

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2021

That question has been on Will Larson ‘s mind for a long time. For those who don’t know him, Will has over 10 years of experience in the likes of Yahoo, Digg, Uber, and Stripe, and he’s currently the CTO of Calm , the mindfulness app that helps millions of people to lower their stress levels and sleep better.

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Join this panel of investors from Connect Ventures, Blossom Capital, Dawn Capital, The Family, and Indico Partners as they provide an overview of the current investment landscape, and discuss whether the seed stage is emerging as the new Series A. We are a $50 million fund based in Lisbon, and we invest mainly in seed stage.

New CTO 181

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 181

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. David Sacks has a long history in tech from his time as a Founder and CEO of Geni.com and Yammer to his stint as COO of Paypal. Delores Brown is LaunchDarkly’s Chief of Staff.

Payment Services 113

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 113

Outseta

APRIL 11, 2019

Why most SaaS companies are blind to some of the best talent on the market By Geoff Roberts 9 min read I believe that most SaaS companies are missing out of a major opportunity when hiring—the opportunity to hire more part-time help, where the employee acts as a fully integrated (albeit part-time) member of the team on an ongoing basis.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Sales Hiring B2B New CTO 52

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. His leadership will be integral as we continue to foster and grow this segment of our business.”

Payments 88

Payments Stax Payment Solutions Payment Services 88

Valerian Tech

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

However, they are still relatively new and their value can be extremely volatile, making them a high-risk investment for some people. How can CTO’s help ensure the Success of a Cryptocurrency Project? Foster community engagement: The CTO should engage with the community and seek to understand their needs and feedback.

Part-Time CTO 52

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Coach CTO Hire 52

Scytale

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

By integrating automation into your compliance strategy, your business can achieve and maintain ISO 27001 compliance at a fraction of the cost and in significantly less time. This includes the cost of productivity to get (and stay) compliant and the practical requirements related to ISO 27001 compliance. The result?

Systems Review 52

Systems Review Software Review CTO Hire compliance 52