SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

Co-founder and CEO of Plato, Quong Hoang, the #1 mentoring platform for engineering leaders , helped moderate a discussion between CTO of Change.org, Elaine Zhou, and Head of Engineering at Notion, Michael Manapat, on this subject. More like this at 2022 SaaStr Annual, Sep 13-15 in SF Bay Area!! The post “What Do You Mean They Quit?!”

CTO Coach 278

CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO Engineering 278

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2024

For our little team at EchoSign / Adobe Sign, now 13 (!)

Startup 316

Startup CTO Leadership Acquisition 316

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!! Investor Connections and Funding Opportunities — And $5m AI VC Pitch Stage!!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

TechEmpower SaaS

AUGUST 21, 2023

The explanation from software leadership is often unsatisfying or unclear. Getting Buy-in from Leadership Business leaders are often concerned about how their tech teams will react to an external technical review. Let’s assume that you’ve already expressed your frustrations with technical leadership.

Technical Review 390

Technical Review Software Review Development Team Review Systems Review 390

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2020

Juggling People, Processes & Priorities: CTO Leadership Lessons from the Front Lines. Tarik Faouzi. Rose Nuñez. Channel Management. IBM. [link]. 9:00 – 9:50AM. Marianna Tessel. Intuit. [link] . 9:00 – 9:20AM. How to Design and Build a SaaS Platform Pressure Tested for the Enterprise. Catherine Wong.

Technical Cofounder 289

Technical Cofounder Enterprise New CTO CTO 289

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. One reason the decision gets cloudly here is that as a SaaS company scales, the CTO needs help on product as the sheer complexity explodes.

Part-Time VPE 321

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 321

SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2024

He made many great leadership points, but one in particular rattles around my head a lot and I think deserves its own post: You usually won’t know if you’ve made a 10x hire … when you make the hire. My co-founder and our CTO were both wicked smart. They more often rise up. I saw this live in my first start-up.

Sales Hiring 301

Sales Hiring CTO Hire New CTO CTO 301

Infinicept

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

New Role Extends Infinicept’s Leadership in Embedded Payments and Drives Advancements in Embedded Finance DENVER – February 9, 2023 – Infinicept, a leading provider of embedded payments, today announced that it has appointed Anne-Jeanette LeBell as the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

CTO 98

CTO New CTO Payments Embedded Payments 98

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Or at least where the co-founder CTO is a true equal partner to the CEO. Unless again, you have a true CTO as well, that is also leading the company. But usually there is an amazing CTO from Day 1. All but one run by ex-engineers as CEOs, or, business CEOs that have a true CTO co-founder. But — Jobs had Woz.

Outsourcing Services 298

Outsourcing Services Engineering CTO Scale 298

Andreessen Horowitz

MAY 10, 2022

MongoDB CTO Mark Porter has been on all sides of the technology industry. He was most recently CTO of core technology and transport at Grab, a super-app serving Southeast Asia, and prior to that held leadership roles at Amazon Web Services and Oracle, among other places.

CTO 110

CTO Cloud Transportation Interviewing 110

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2020

1: “On Launching a Second Product with Dharmesh Shah, CTO / Co-Founder Hubspot” An incredible catch-up session with Dharmesh from this week, #2: “Churn is dead. 10: “What Being a Founder Taught Me About Leadership – Lessons from GitHub’s COO” Ok this was another session that just shut down the office.

Engineering 264

Engineering CTO Leadership Churn 264

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2019

“Juggling People, Processes, and Priorities: Leadership Lessons from Intuit, SurveyMonkey & Stitch Fix” with Heavy Bit GM Dana Oshiro Intuit CTO Marianna Tessel, SurveyMonkey CTO Robin Ducot and Stitchfix CTO Cathy Polinsky. ” When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster.

CTO Coach 191

CTO Coach Engineering CTO Hire Development 191

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

leadership #womenintech #SaaStrScale [link] pic.twitter.com/JMuRqVP3ae. Ash Finnegan Digital Transformation Officer, Conga. Mickey Alon, Founder and CTO, Gainsight PX. " Save your seat today! — Rolf Heimes (@rolfester) November 13, 2020. Our next big digital mega-event SaaStr Scale is coming up soon, Dec 8-9!!

VP of Engineering 254

VP of Engineering Scale Scaling CTO 254

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

David considers product to be its own department that should also report directly to the CEO, instead of falling under the CTO. CTO (40 Employees). CTO (114 Employees). The Org Journey: Series A – Series C. Series A (~ 50 Employees). Team Size: 12. Head of Product. Team SIze: 4 -5. Positions Needed: PMs and Designers.

CTO Hire 290

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 290

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2024

If you’re a “business” founder, know it’s really, really hard to win without a truly great CTO. Too many founders aren’t honest about why they will win. If you aren’t sure if your technical co-founder is good enough, ask the top engineering leader you know what she thinks.

Startup 312

Startup CTO SaaS Interviewing 312

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 15, 2018

He had to quickly determine which team members displayed a potential for leadership and teach them the fundamentals of management so they could make new hires and scale – without ruining the culture. I hosted Nick on the podcast, where we discussed the differences between management and leadership, fostering diversity in tech, and more.

Leadership 141

Leadership Engineering Part-Time VPE CTO Coach 141

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

And that means your initial leadership team often takes you faster, and further, than you might ever think. 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. That’s insightful @jasonlk [link].

Part-Time VPE 285

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 285

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

And second, I really worry when there isn’t a great CTO on the team. If the CEO is also the CTO, that can work. When I had a true co-founder, nothing could stop us. When I didn’t, I still did well. But I was much more mortal. But when it’s a driven CEO but with weak or outsourced technical team?

New CTO 276

New CTO CTO SaaS Leadership 276

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2021

But what they don’t have is a good enough founding team: Sometimes, if the prospective founder isn’t super technical, then the CTO/VPE isn’t really great. They’ve got a rent-a-CTO. Or sometimes they are great, but the team members are just not great enough for their new C-level roles (CEO, CTO, CMO, CSO, CBO, C?O).

Part-Time VPE 263

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire New CTO CTO 263

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

Our Dublin team is led by our co-founders Des Traynor (our Chief Strategy Officer) and Ciaran Lee (our Chief Technology Officer), along with Paul Adams, leading product management, design and research, and Darragh Curran, leading engineering. Paul needs no introduction for most of you reading this.

Scale 195

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Engineering 195

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Some wicked smart, some merely very smart. Some direct, some warm and friendly. But what made them great: Ability to attract amazing co-founders and execs. Not just great, but epic. Ability to iterate pretty darn quickly.

CTO Hire 288

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 288

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

I’ve been reminded of this question in several meetings lately where founders are doing pretty well, getting to and past Initial Traction, but with hindsight it’s interesting that the founder that took the CEO gig perhaps was better suited to a different role, say CTO or SVP of Sales or President or COO or SVP Product.

Sales Recruiting 328

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital CTO Hire CTO 328

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. This can be a useful option for startups or small businesses that may not have the resources to hire a full-time CTO or may not need one on a permanent basis.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

You or your CTO can figure this out. Can they explain every facet of how their best, and worst, features came into the world? If they can’t … For your prospective VP of Engineering, were her top 2 hires just jaw droppingly good? Talk to them. Not over Slack, not over email. Did they grow month-over-month?

Part-Time VPE 352

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 352

BetterCloud

SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

Our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Andra Milender defected from a medical career track before finding her footing on a technology path. What does your role as the CTO entail? You wear all hats as CTO. The definition of CTO is so broad and that’s what I like about this role! Go Yankees!

Part-Time CTO 8

Part-Time CTO CTO New CTO Technology 8

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Mike Wiacek, CEO at Stairwell, Mo Jebrini, CTO at Mashvisor, and Michael Ermolenko, CTO at Inworld.ai, discuss with Helene Ambiana, Global SMB and Startups Marketing Director at Google Cloud, how they overcame the hurdles of scaling and reached their goals. .

Scale 263

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 263

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2019

Well, we did the heavy lifting and highlighted a few here for you… Jean-Michel Lemieux, Shopify CTO. Prior to joining Squarespace in 2016 she was the CFO of Info and spent 17 years in leadership roles at IBM. Here is a glimpse at just a few of our standout unicorns. So, how do you choose amongst the stable of unicorns?

Part-Time VPE 204

Part-Time VPE CTO Leadership Cloud 204

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2020

Your investors and others will learn a lot more hearing about sales from your VP of Sales, your CTO co-founder … and not you. All-hands meetings, board meetings, whenever. Yes, you are the CEO. But everyone hears from you all the time. This also will make you appear to be a much stronger manager.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting New CTO Scale CTO 363

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

5/ Moving from CTO-led -> VPE-led dev team. Most of us hire a VP of Engineering to take over from our CTO because we see the CTO is getting burnt out, or has trouble building a dev team > 8-9 folks, or gets disinterested in solving technical debt, bugs, etc. That’s when you want to lean in. More here.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 299

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

No matter how great a hacker your CTO is. And this VPE role often involves zero code commits. Without a great VP of Engineering, you won’t be able to scale your engineering team. Are their exceptions here? Can you skip some of these VPs? Wait longer?

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2024

Peter had already been a CTO at Salesforce working in part on the same vertical, and Eric led engineering at WebEx. Peter Gassner was 42 when he founded $30B+ Veeva, Eric Yuan was 41 when he founded Zoom, etc. And both really benefitted from their domain expertise.

CTO 244

CTO B2B Interviewing Engineering 244

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2023

And the few that don’t generally had a founder that decided to bring someone else in themselves (often a CTO type): This doesn’t mean it is easy. In SaaS, if we look at 60+ of the top SaaS companies that have IPO’d, the vast majority still seem to have the founder CEO as CEO at IPO. Almost 90%. The vast majority.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review CTO SaaS Scaling 279

Andreessen Horowitz

MAY 10, 2022

MongoDB CTO Mark Porter has been on all sides of the technology industry. He was most recently CTO of core technology and transport at Grab, a super-app serving Southeast Asia, and prior to that held leadership roles at Amazon Web Services and Oracle, among other places.

CTO 68

CTO Transportation Software Business 68

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2020

Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, shared he was never really included when he was CTO of Stubhub … because he wasn’t 100% committed. And that it still hurts folks to think Okta isn’t “cool enough” or “big enough” … even though it’s now a $30B company! They seem so … perfect and giant.

CTO 205

CTO Startup Leadership 205

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

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. Sharing this adventure with an A+ team is just the most amazing thing. If you haven’t experienced this yet, you don’t know. I had a pretty excellent, extremely committed co-founder AND management team on Day 0.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 299

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

If you / your CTO hasn’t built a large engineering team, you may need help earlier than you think. At least by the time you are hiring 1 new employee per month. You don’t have the time. Nor does your team. Consider Hiring a VP of Engineering As Early as $3m ARR or So If You Are Growing Fast.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 290

Chart Mogul

OCTOBER 17, 2024

"Singular events can distort reality, but ChartMogul helps us see the bigger picture", says Patrick Craston, Intruder's CTO. Using ChartMogul Benchmarks , Patrick and the rest of the leadership team saw the growth slowdown was affecting the entire SaaS industry, and could compare their performance to other similar startups.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payment Features Payments 52