SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

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. And figure out if they really are great: For your prospective VP of Sales, did her top 2 hires at least crush it and blow out their quotas ? Recruiting.

Part-Time VPE 312

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 312

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 321

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital CTO Hire CTO 321

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2022

Investments I've made that didn't work out: – Momentum investment – CEO a bit of bulls**t artist – CEO good at sales but weak product team / CTO. Some sales-y, some very technical. CEO good at sales, but CTO not that great. So now I try to only invest in Great CEO + Great CTO combos.

Investment 260

Investment Sales Recruiting CTO Startup 260

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and management team : SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. She can be your CTO forever. That’s a different, and critical, job than CTO.

Part-Time VPE 233

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 233

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales? Continuing the conversation on effective team members, it’s important to hire the right people to manage SDRs. A VP of Sales might seem the logical place to have your first SDR team report. But if they’ve never managed a higher turnover SDR team, they often melt.

CTO Hire 170

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 170

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Sales. Positions Needed: Enterprise AEs, Mid-Market & SMB AEs, SDRs, Sales Ops, Sales Engineer. Positions Needed: Demand Gen, Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, Events/Community.

CTO Hire 239

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 239

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. You can do this.

Part-Time VPE 261

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 261

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. Lead generation tools do change, but the basic motions of sales and marketing haven’t changed much.

Scale 234

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 234

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. This also will make you appear to be a much stronger manager. Especially, don’t try to talk over your weakest VPs and managers. All-hands meetings, board meetings, whenever.

Sales Recruiting 324

Sales Recruiting New CTO Scale CTO 324

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. From $1m to $10m ARR or so, as you build your first management team: You shouldn’t be the VP of Sales Anymore As You Scale. But — You May Still Need to be The Chief Customer (and MRR ) Officer.

Part-Time VPE 277

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 277

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

What makes a bad CTO? How did Mark Zuckerberg manage to own 25% of Facebook? 1% equity considered low as a startup Director of Sales? I’m Head of Product and I think our CEO is actively recruiting a VP of Product. How is the ‘decoy effect’ used to increase add-on and bundle sales?

Software Review 286

Software Review CTO Coach Technical Review Sales Recruiting 286

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. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had to recruit a lot of types of folks over the years where my domain knowledge was limited. I’ve had to recruit Ph.Ds. Architects.

Sales Hiring 253

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 253

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales. The sales leader that did well, but their startup still didn’t quite make it. The sales leader that did well, but their startup still didn’t quite make it. That CTO that doesn’t quite have the traditional background.

Part-Time VPE 235

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 235

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

Founders were able to recruit on-site. 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. VPs were able to recruit and make new hires. VCs were able to meet with Founders.

Scale 275

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 275

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. To get to $5m-$10m ARR and beyond, we’ll need a real VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 348

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 348

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2021

“Recruiting Your Sales Team with Brex Chief Sales Officer Sam Blond” Brex was just valued at $7B just 4 years after founding. Learn how CRO Sam Blond build their first sales team here: #10.

Sales Recruiting 144

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Scaling 144

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

More on that here and a great video discussion below: You’ll probably be ready for your first VP of Sales by $1m in ARR. We’ve talked about this a lot on SaaStr, but hiring a true VP of Sales before you have 2 reps hitting quota (and thus a repeatable, if not yet fully repeating process) is too early. Earlier is better.

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2019

Third, I then managed a small team. This was critical to learning what management really was. The first team I managed I inherited, and I was terrible at it. But I started to learn what it took to recruit, inspire, and yes fail a team. And I learned to recruit. To hire our CTO, our first VPE, etc.

Part-Time VPE 160

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 160

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 153

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 153

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

With power, snacks, and more, we’ll have lounges just for Founders; just for Sales + Marketing professionals; just for Builders (Dev + Product), and just for VCs to issue term sheets. Recruiting Fair. Outside of SaaStr Square park, we’re adding the first-ever SaaStr Recruiting Fair. Be there!! It could be you!!

New CTO 255

New CTO Sales Recruiting CTO Coach Scale 255

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Account Managers: They serve as the lead point of contact for all customer account management matters. Product Marketing Manager: This person is tasked with developing product marketing campaigns , crafting compelling marketing messages, and coming up with ideas to retain customers. Average salary: $46,035/yr.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 93

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

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. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 171

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 171

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 141

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 141

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

A big part of why we are seeing this growth is that our customers have found that when they use Intercom to engage their website visitors, conversion rates and sales increase by more than 80%! We are laser focused on driving breakthrough innovations which help our customers grow their businesses efficiently.

Scale 195

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Engineering 195

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 8, 2018

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Chris Degnan , Chief Revenue Officer of Snowflake Computing, one of the fastest growing SaaS platforms in the world. Chris walks us through his habits, his principles, and his system for enterprise sales. How to manage your career to solve for upside.

Scale 69

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 69

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

If you missed episode 130, check it out here: Turning Junior-level Talent into Top Sales Professionals with Eddie Baez. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Sales enablement is easy. REGIE uses artificial intelligence to create entire outbound inbound, and even follow-up sales campaigns faster. We’re on iTunes.

Marketplace as a Service 98

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 98

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

A thanks to [Marsh 00:00:34] for stepping in at the beginning of the month, and a great session with our own Jason Warner and Adrian, the CTO of Zendesk. Lionetti, the CMO at Confluent, and most recently, the CTO from Zendesk, Adrian. We don’t incentivize our recruiters on just hitting hiring targets.

CTO Coach 127

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 127

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

Then we needed to hire a sales guy who had experience selling to enterprise. We got the guy who ran enterprise sales at Rackspace. Dialpad effectively integrates with Google apps or Office 365 to give a cohesive product. UberConference started as this freemium, kind of funnel builder for later sales product. Nikos : CFO.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 255

SmartKarrot

MARCH 4, 2021

What makes a chief product officer (CPO) different from a CTO or a VP in the product department. A chief product officer looks to make sure that products are delivered in a smooth manner. A CTO is one who investigates the product development aspect. A CPO is one who makes all the ‘product’ decisions.

Part-Time CTO 16

Part-Time CTO VP of Engineering CTO CTO Hire 16

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 11, 2019

I’ve had roles in almost every function from sales to product to customer success. For the first four years, we didn’t even need to build a professional sales organization. This approach meant that the HR buyer only had to go to the group holding the purse strings—the board, finance, CTO, VP of Engineering, etc. – once.

Sales Hiring 40

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Technical Review 40

ProfitWell

JANUARY 24, 2020

From its beginnings in 2017, the Canoo team knew they wanted to run an urban electric vehicle company, offering an all-new pod-shaped EV to its subscription offering, which forgoes sales or traditional leases in favor of a recurring revenue model that allows anyone to get into a Canoo vehicle (for as long or as short as they like).

Sales Recruiting 40

Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO Sales Hiring 40

ProfitWell

OCTOBER 1, 2019

When HubSpot first launched its culture code, Dharmesh Shah, CTO and Founder of HubSpot, felt it was important to share it with candidates. Chances are, that plan will fall short on actually retaining and recruiting top talent. Mistake 6) Mismanaging your people managers. Sales managers were the best reps.

Company Culture 40

Company Culture Sales Recruiting Scale Software Review 40

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2020

365: The Office of the Future, How Everything’s Changed and What 2021 Will be Like with Justin Bedecarre, CEO @ HelloOffice and Jen Nguyen, Founding Partner @ TEAMWERC. Centralized HQs with all the perks and amenities “under one roof” have traditionally been used as recruiting tools to attract and retain top talent.

Sales Recruiting 147

Sales Recruiting Cloud CTO Hire Sales Hiring 147

Point Nine Land

APRIL 9, 2021

A technical co-founder or CTO is always a great-to-have at this stage and becomes a must-have as the business scales beyond seed. Early signs that sales and marketing can scale: At the seed stage, we usually see founder-driven sales as opposed to a well-oiled sales machine. Proven ability to recruit.

Marketplace as a Service 59

Marketplace as a Service Payments B2B SaaS Payments 59

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Sales enablement is easy: all you have to do is create perfectly targeted content, stay informed on email best practices, drive more engagement quarter over quarter, spend less money, and do all of this with less time. More sales meetings, start creating better sequences faster, go to go.regie.io

Scale 112

Scale CTO Hire Scaling CTO Coach 112

OPEXEngine

JUNE 16, 2020

Yes, there is a board of directors but the board/CEO relationship is not the same as the manager/employee relationship with which corporate execs are so familiar. Yes, boards provide strategic and financial input, support, guidance, help with recruiting, and occasionally help with sales, but boards don’t run companies.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Venture Capital Technical Advisors 59

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

Over the course of that fund, I recruited in, who is effectively my co-founder, he runs Amplify with me, is Mike Dauber. Then, over the course of that fund, we had promoted up David Byer to partner and recruited Lenny Pruss away from Redpoint to join us. One person, 50. I want him or her. Yet, what if it’s their biggest check?

Sales Recruiting 172

Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Technical Review Sales Hiring 172