Tom Tunguz

JULY 13, 2022

Yesterday, Office Hours welcomed Lars Nilsson, VP Sales Development from Snowflake to talk about his learnings across 5 companies he helped take public. Throughout the hour, Lars provided insightful perspectives on how to build sales organizations. At Snowflake, sales development lives within the marketing team.

Scale 324

Scale Sales Hiring Development Sales 324

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

5 Key Learnings from Scaling from 3 to 75 Go-To-Market Team Members in Less Than 12 Months The latest SaaStr CRO Confidential is out and Sam Blond did a great deep dive with Graham Mareno, VP of Worldwide Sales at Codeium. Their product is generating an impressive 45% of developers’ code on average.

Sales Recruiting 247

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 247

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2024

Cloudinary VP of Developer Experience Sanjay Sarathy shares his journey to more than $100M and the lessons he learned along the way for building a PLG motion and an Enterprise sales motion. It was founded by three developers who owned a consulting firm previously, helping startups come to market. It wasn’t the focus.

Scale 316

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Development 316

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

What’s Changing in Sales: The AI Revolution is Here — and Coming Fast After analyzing 139,000+ conversations through SaaStr’s New AI, it’s now clear from the data: AI is about to fundamentally transform B2B sales. This isn’t some distant futureit’s happening right now.

AI 204

AI Underperforming Technical Team Sales Technical Review 204

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2024

Okta’s VP of Engineering, Monica Bajaj, and Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing, Priya Ramamurthi, share Okta’s playbook to PLG, developer experience, and Enterprise ARR. Product-led outperformers generate ten percentage points higher in ARR and 50% higher in valuations than sales-led growth outperformers.

Underperforming Technical Team 288

Underperforming Technical Team Enterprise Scale Payments 288

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Many mid-market software companies price with the goal of revenue maximization, negotiating for the highest possible price in each sale. Price low to minimize adoption friction, grow quickly, and then move up-market after developing broad adoption. Penetration pricing leads to land-and-expand sales tactics.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

The Journey: From WiFi to IoT Fleet Management Sekar’s journey began unexpectedly when he joined Meraki (founded by MIT researchers Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket) to help them figure out marketing and sales “from first principles.” This cross-pollination effect accelerated product development in unexpected ways.

Scale 245

Scale Transportation Scaling SMB 245

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

From Sales-Led to Product-Led: How Apollo.io This analysis examines their journey from a struggling sales-led organization to a successful product-led growth company, resulting in over 880,000 paying customers and substantial revenue growth.

Scale 165

Scale Scaling Outsourced Development Sales 165

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2024

How Many Sales Reps You Really Need for Next Year #4. What It Really Takes to Sell To Developers and Engineers with Komodor CRO Jim Hunnewell #3. From Outbound to Channel Partnerships: Your Burning Sales Questions Answered by Jason Lemkin #5. Top Posts: #1. Inherent Churn vs. Fixable Churn: You Have to Attack Both #2.

Churn 278

Churn AI B2B Engineering 278

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

GitHub, founded in 2008, is a leading platform for software development and version control that has made waves since 2018 with its AI Copilot. Copilot is a code completion tool so developers utilize it by starting to type code, and the copilot offers the rest of that coding suggestion based on the prompt.

Scale 264

Scale AI Scaling Marketing 264

SaaStr

MARCH 2, 2023

Dear SaaStr: When Do You Start to Develop a Brand in SaaS? A little more here : heard good things image from here The post Dear SaaStr: When Do You Start to Develop a Brand in SaaS? In my experience, probably about $2m worth of happy customers. At that point, you don’t have a world-famous brand or anything. appeared first on SaaStr.

Branding 289

Branding Development SaaS Investment 289

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

The most consistent sales leader I’ve worked with hit plan 27 consecutive quarters. How can a sales leader develop similar repeatability? Each business’s PQR funnel will differ depending on their sales cycle, ACVs, and overall motion. Will the sales leader attain plan? Demo/meeting: sales meeting.

Scale 331

Scale Sales Forecasting Outsourced Development 331

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2023

Dear SaaStr: None of The 3 SaaS Products I Developed Have Any Sales. A related post here: The 10 Ways to Get Marketing Going in the Early Days The post Dear SaaStr: None of The 3 SaaS Products I Developed Have Any Sales. What Am I Doing Wrong? You may not have product-market fit. There are 100,000+ SaaS apps out there.

Development 244

Development SaaS Sales Content Marketing 244

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2025

Or a great growth marketer paired with a great sales team will punch above their weight class. In sales, t he more SMB you are, the more you should lean on your bench. “One of the things we did is when we hired a new sales rep, their training wasn’t sales training. Nothing else matters.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review Interviewing 290

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2024

If you are sales-driven, youll usually stall out at $1.5m-$2m in ARR or so if you dont start growing the team to the next level, The First 50. Theres just physics here to get to $10m in ARR in a sales-led model, even a partially sales-led model: After $1.5m Youll need another sales rep at least per every $500k in new ARR.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS AI 264

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

For restaurants, it’s the back end, front end, point of sale, payroll, ERP, and workforce management. Mangomint has one onboarding manager for every two sales reps, but with no contracts and a 30-day free trial, onboarding starts during the trial. Most sales reps hate it. There will likely be multiple Toasts for SMBs.

SaaS Payments 260

SaaS Payments Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 260

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2025

But what if your competitor gets the same gains, and then goes around and reinvests that output into even more great developers? The Second “Problem” With Small But Mighty AI Teams … Is Enterprise Sales A tiny team can be fairly efficient with a 100% self-serve and PLG motion. And can it sell and scale sales?

AI 288

AI Sales Hiring Scale B2B 288

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2024

How much more could you accomplish with your sales organization? Justworks CRO, Robert Lopez, and Director of Sales, Valeria Avila, show you how to create longevity in your sales organization and why it matters. Theme 2: Invest in Team Development Team development can happen in two powerful ways. They’ll step up.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Education 293

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

​Accurate sales forecasting is more critical to business success than most realize. During SaaStr Annual , Eric Huff, VP of Sales Strategy and Programs, and Theresa Stevens, Regional VP of the SMB sales team, shared an “under the hood” look at how Salesforce does its internal forecasting using Salesforce.

Forecasting 290

Forecasting SMB Sales Technical Review 290

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2025

Look for an innovative enterprise customer who: Is willing to be a development partner Has clear needs you can solve today Will give you access to testing environments Can help shape your roadmap The goal isn’t to build custom features – it’s to deeply understand enterprise requirements and bake them into your core product.

Enterprise 244

Enterprise Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 244

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Do You Become Successful at Enterprise Sales? If you haven’t done enterprise sales before, the biggest thing to understand: you can do it. But for enterprise sales, you’re going to have to get your arse out of your home office and go close some real live human beings: Listen — often in person.

Scale 311

Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 311

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

Sam Blond, the former CRO at Brex with 15 years in tech sales, took the stage at SaaStr Europa 2024 to share nine easy sales concepts that so many get wrong. Sam got his first job in tech sales as an SDR for Jason Lemkin’s company, EchoSign, which later sold to Adobe and launched his career. They did this right at Brex.

Sales Recruiting 296

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 296

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2024

So you’re hiring your first few sales reps in the early days? Before you have a great VP of Sales? So you need a very certain type of sales rep. Not during founder-led sales. The #1 trick to making sure your first sales reps work out? But I’ve just never seen early sales rep execl that do this.

Sales Hiring 308

Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing compliance 308

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2024

What Does AI-Enhanced Sales Look Like In Two Years Everyone’s thinking about it. What does the future of AI-enhanced sales look like from Amit’s perspective? Will a sales executive be able to manage the entire life cycle with AI? Can we get away with fewer sales professionals permanently? First, no drudgery.

Scale 311

Scale AI Sales Underperforming Technical Team 311

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2023

Sales-led vs. product-led is a hot topic right now, and Jason Eubanks, Chief Revenue Officer of Harness, shares the answer during this week’s Workshop Wednesday — held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. What’s his response to startups figuring out which strategy to begin with, product-led or sales-led? “It How do you achieve both?

Startup 302

Startup Sales Sales Funnel Education 302

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

At SaaStr APAC 2023, Scott Pugh, VP of Sales at Figma, shared how to scale these two sales teams while building culture. Pugh’s strategy is simple, albeit not always easy: Recruitment — how to hire the best talent to scale your sales organization. Helping your sales team doesn’t mean you must spend all your time coaching them.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 278

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2025

Key points about SaaStr Annual : Focus on SaaS: Primarily focused on all aspects of SaaS business including sales, marketing, product development, and customer success. Large Audience: Considered the biggest SaaS conference with a large number of attendees from leading SaaS companies, startups, and venture capital firms.

Software 246

Software Scale Venture Capital SaaS 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

They: Started with clear use cases Built a strong data foundation Focused on measurable customer value Invested consistently over time Maintained a human-centric approach For SaaS companies looking to leverage AI, the key is to start building your data advantage now, even if you’re using third-party tools.

AI 267

AI Scale Government compliance 267

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2022

From a venture capital perspective, there’s now a premium on driving efficient growth rather than growth at any cost. . “Sales and marketing alignment is a terrific place to figure out and improve efficient growth.” . From the get-go, ensure alignment between sales and marketing teams on goals and anticipated outcomes.

Scale 328

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Marketing 328

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2024

So just a little while back, Lenny Rachintsky had me on his hyper-popular podcast to talk about scaling sales, from the perspective of a founder who hasn’t really done sales. They really are a great checklist when you are starting to scale sales in SaaS: #1. And sales go down, not up. #2. It’s a tough job.

Sales Hiring 315

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 315