SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders? You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. You will need a VP of Product to scale your roadmap. 95% of the time, your super-smart hacker co-founder is not that person. She can be your CTO forever.

Part-Time VPE 310

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 310

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2021

There’s a slide I see again and again from start-ups: 2 of the early sales reps are at 100% of quota, sometimes 150%-200%. You’ll continue to see that over time to some extent. So why so often, do only 2 of the first 8-10 sales reps perform? They get CTO training. You have to join their first few sales calls.

Scale 348

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 348

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

To convert an idea into a successful venture, startups need to be equipped to scale. Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . Build an irreplaceable team .

Scale 259

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 259

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2023

You’ll never truly understand how to lead a SaaS company until you’ve done it firsthand. Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares five essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. Leadership needs to delegate to the talent they have hired. Want more content like this?

CTO Coach 242

CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 242

TechEmpower SaaS

DECEMBER 11, 2023

Do you anticipate scale issues presently or in the future? Are specific technologies or platforms involved in your project? While the appearance matters, remember you are hiring the development firm primarily for its development skills, not its graphic design skills. Will you have direct access to a lead developer?

Software Development 443

Software Development Development Software Review Software 443

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Our 10th Annual Meet-a-VC program to opt-in ahead of time, to set up VC-Founder matchmaking, Note: the above programs are only for Cloud / SaaS / AI founders and executives. Speakers share their playbooks on everything from achieving product-market fit to optimizing CAC:LTV ratios and scaling go-to-market strategies.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Founded by Sanjit Biswas, former CEO at Meraki and John Bicket former CTO at Meraki[link] Samsara builds software to manage physical operations: truck fleets, mining, food & beverage, oil & gas. Sales Efficiency. -. But these contracts produce compelling economics. Revenue, $M. Revenue Growth. -. Gross Margin.

CTO Hire 362

CTO Hire CTO Coach Benchmarks Scale 362

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. Q: What is the Future of Lead Generation, and How Do You Stand Out? But they should.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Lightspeed Partner, Anoushka Vaswani, is joined by Raj Sarkar, CMO at 1Password, Kim Walsh, SVP, Sales, Partnerships and Customer Success at Apollo.io, and Chris De Vylder, CRO at Sentry, to pass along key lessons from their growth journey. Then build your segmentation and sales processes around that. 20 million?

Scale 244

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 244

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

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. Rather, it uses overage events to trigger a call from sales to buy more. #4.

Scale 307

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 307

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. 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.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

I hear again and again from SaaS founders growing to $5m, $10m ARR or even more that they don’t need a certain VP — with the exception of a VP of Sales. Basically, in SaaS, everyone “gets” that they need a VP of Sales. in ARR, get to Initial Traction , we then realize we have to scale. With less drama.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 363

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

A VP of Sales and Success A VP of Sales and Marketing A VP of Sales and Anything Else. Is usually not really a VP of Sales. Sales managers back when I never managed sales. Anyhow the one thing I learned, beyond getting help screening and hiring for these positions from domain experts, is to look for Flags.

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 257

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Sales.

CTO Hire 284

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 284

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. SaaStr 639: Scaling a SaaS Sales Team While Building Culture with Figma VP of Sales Scott Pugh   3.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 246

SaaStr

JUNE 12, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: What All First-Time CEOs Should Know About Fundraising. Why It Matters Who Your “Lead” Investor Is. SaaStr 559: Secrets to Building Your Marketing Engine To Drive Scale with Airtable CMO Archana Agrawal.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO 237

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

In the past, we’ve touched on several different ideas to help you scale, to do Even Better: Imagine capital doesn’t matter. But — You May Still Need to be The Chief Customer (and MRR ) Officer. And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. the prospects).

Part-Time VPE 284

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 284

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales. But most of us are first-time founders, or close to it. And if you are, you are going to naturally start off hiring up-and-comers to your first leadership team.

Part-Time VPE 284

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 284

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

They’ll revolt when you make a senior or mid-level hire that as a group, they simply cannot suffer one day longer. He was literally the only person on the planet with the specific scaling experience we needed. It did work — we got the scaling done. A senior product lead that engineering wouldn’t work with.

Part-Time VPE 284

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 284

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2022

The Ultimate Guide for Hiring a Great VP of Sales. Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? Top Podcasts This Week: SaaStr 568: Mind the Gap: Balancing Growth and Efficiency in Tougher Times with Point Nine Managing Partner Christoph Janz. 10 Common Misconceptions About Getting Funded. Top Videos This Week: 1.

CTO Hire 258

CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Scale 258

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. Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales?

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

We do that with a combination of industry-leading content and community connections. This led to our first meet-ups in 2013 and 2014, the first SaaStr Annual in 2015 , the industry’s leading podcast in 2016, the first SaaS founder coworking space in 2017, and SaaStr Pro , the first learning management system for SaaS founders in 2018.

Scale 307

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 307

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So to serve both segments at the simultaneously, ZoomInfo has been rolling out a Product-led sales motion, that gives the ability for an SMB customer to sign up directly on their website for a free trial and grow into a paid customer, without ever having to talk to an sales rep or go through a demo process. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo?

New CTO 312

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 312

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.

Sales Hiring 229

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 229

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. 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. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 242

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

When it comes to seamlessly scaling your applications, a top-notch engineering team will be your foundation. 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. Of course, not at scale.

Scale 169

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 169

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

Just like filing your income tax returns or hanging that state-mandated safety poster up in your break room, sales tax is a back-office pain point, not a profit center. . That makes sales tax compliance easy to ignore… until it becomes a problem. . Why is sales tax such a pain for SaaS companies? There are a few reasons.

Merchant Services 202

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 202

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

AI is coming for sales and marketing, and Jason is a super fan of AI in marketing. Because hundreds of the best founders are radically ripping through post-sales AI, and now it’s time for marketing. It’s challenging to find super high-quality folks unless you’re in B2C, where customer support is sales.

AI 299

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 299

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 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

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. It got much better over time. A SaaStr Classic!!

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

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. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Keys to success when scaling a company [10:56]. Keep the promise of sales enablement and keep your team doing what they do best, which is winning.

Scale 119

Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 119

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

WorkOS CEO Michael Grinich, Developer Success Manager Betsy Calender, and VP of Developer Experience Zeno Rocha share how to price your product for developers, how to market it to developers, how to how to support them as they scale and use the products. Bottom-up sales. The contract size grows. Doing Business with Developers.

Outsourced Development 210

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 210

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 27, 2018

Being on call regularly can lead to burnout, apathy or a general desire to never see a computer again. Back in the early days of Intercom, our CTO Ciaran was the entirety of the on call team, both in and out of the office. The history of on call at Intercom. As Intercom grew, we built an operations team to help Ciaran out.

Engineering 209

Engineering Software Review Technical Review Systems Review 209

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. When you find the right partner, the right investor, what they can do in terms of helping you grow and scale a company is just invaluable. year sales cycles. You have to learn things like how do I scale my sales force? Therese : Turned out I liked it.

Startup 284

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 284

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

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

AUGUST 2, 2020

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. When you find the right partner, the right investor, what they can do in terms of helping you grow and scale a company is just invaluable. year sales cycles. You have to learn things like how do I scale my sales force? Therese Tucker: Turned out I liked it.

Startup 222

Startup CTO Hire Scale CTO Coach 222