SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2024

Ask the founders this question when you interview them: How supportive has X person been as an investor? And there’s a rough metric you can use to meter this: for each 10% of your company you sell roughly, you’re going to give up a board seat. Nobody has time anymore, but you don’t want them to control it.

Venture Capital 306

Venture Capital Software Review Investment Startup 306

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2025

The CRO Hiring Playbook Has Forever Changed The interview process for revenue leadership roles now at Owner includes a mandatory AI component. They’ve increased revenue-generating activity time by 25-30% by automating CRM updates, note-taking, and pipeline management. Digital Sales Engineers (SEs) that join every customer call.

Sales Hiring 223

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team AI Scale 223

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 22, 2025

Interviewers also face a new challenge: developing golden standards to evaluate AI fluency. The metrics for success are evolving as rapidly as the tools themselves. The metrics for success are evolving as rapidly as the tools themselves. 1 Fueled by AI. Will they feed legal briefs back into AI systems for cross-examination?

Interviewing 113

Interviewing AI Sales Recruiting Construction 113

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

Codeium made this a centerpiece of their recruiting strategy: Competitive comp plan openly discussed during interviews 7 out of 10 sellers who’ve been with Codeium 6+ months have already exceeded annual targets Several on track to earn $500K+ in W2 income One seller closed $1.6M

Sales Recruiting 220

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 220

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2020

But often, they don’t really have all the data and metrics, or even really know what they are getting themselves into. But I’ve generally found that candidates who bash their prior boss in an interview tend to do it again at their next gig. And sometimes, those folks can be the perfect candidates for your stage and company.

Sales Hiring 362

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Startup 362

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

The SDR Interview We’ve determined the profile we want to hire for dedicated outbound folks, so now, let’s look at the interview itself. It’s usually a simple interview with a hiring manager screen first and then an actual interview panel. It can go in two different directions: What is the right performance metric?

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 305

User Pilot

MARCH 30, 2025

Without measuring and aggressively improving the right mobile app metrics, youll struggle to stay afloat. This article will cover 14 metrics to help you achieve just that. Overview: Mobile app analytics metrics Below is a quick summary of the mobile metrics every PM should be tracking. The competition is stiff.

Benchmarks 93

Benchmarks Mobile Metrics Software Review 93

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2024

Jason Lemkin has interviewed some of the best founders on his podcast, SaaStr Annual. He approaches interviews with profound respect for the founders he interviews. He believes that he is good at interviewing founders because he is better at interviewing than they are.

Sales Hiring 286

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Technical Review Scale 286

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

Here’s what I look for to try to get a sense if they’ll perform: Do they call out top performance with metrics ? Metrics are a good indicator here. If all of these look good, the interview usually goes well. The best reps are often quite precise. E.g., hit 152% of Quota last year, 143% year before, etc.

Sales Hiring 269

Sales Hiring Interviewing Pricing Metrics 269

User Pilot

MAY 30, 2025

Tracking mobile app performance metrics can feel daunting. But you find yourself puzzled, overwhelmed, and uncertain about which metrics truly matter. Ive been there too You’ll learn to identify and use the right metrics to make smarter decisions. Then, select 3-5 mobile app performance metrics tied directly to it.

Mobile 82

Mobile Metrics Customer Lifetime Value Software Review 82

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2023

It’s time to do them again: First, have the best VP in that role you know interview the VP candidate you want to hire. Have the best CRO you know interview your potential VP of Sales. Get numbers and metrics, and push on them. Ok so what do you do? A few thoughts. We used to do these things.

Sales Hiring 297

Sales Hiring SaaS Interviewing Startup 297

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 2, 2024

Userpilot’s SaaS Product Metrics Benchmark Report has found that compared to other industries, healthcare SaaS companies perform lower across most of the 6 metrics we studied. You will also learn how healthcare companies can improve their product metrics. In the report, we look into 6 metrics: New user activation rate.

Healthcare 105

Healthcare Benchmarks Metrics Onboarding 105

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

I sent cold emails and LinkedIn messages and ended up with nine interviews. From those nine interviews, I received four offers. Going into the interviews, I knew what I wanted out of a job– that part was simple. There are two things that help me analyze data: metrics and filters. . Build A Machine.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Underperforming Technical Team 278

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2022

In the areas of your business where you have metrics to show you how well members of your team are performing, it’s easy to be vigilant about your talent. In these instances, you will want to set up informational interviews with strong department heads external to your company in the areas where you’re not an expert.

Scale 268

Scale Sales Hiring Interviewing Engineering 268

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2024

Not only do you have to pass the hiring interviews as a Founder, but everyone on your team does, too. Brett has seen deals where the founder and a couple of employees are great, but most of the team failed the initial interviews. 2 Hit Your Metrics Another thing is milestones. Hit your metrics.

Software Review 268

Software Review Technical Review Acquisition Scale 268

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2023

What would you ask in an interview, to see whether they’re good? People don’t actually know what they’ll buy, or at least you’re probably not good enough to use interviews to figure it out. Even professional interviews get it wrong all the time. So for example, at Smart Bear I knew we needed better SEO. Do less, better.

Engineering 285

Engineering Sales Hiring Interviewing Scale 285

User Pilot

MARCH 9, 2025

It could include conducting user interviews and surveys, analyzing product usage data, and tracking customer feedback , to name a few. User interviews: Conduct in-depth one-on-one conversations with customers for personal insights about a product or issue. Let’s go back to the goal of improving onboarding.

SaaS 77

SaaS Social Media Interviewing Scale 77

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2022

In the first session of the eye-opening CRO Confidential series, SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin interviews Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond about the current economic climate. In 2021, there was much less focus on efficiency and more on revenue metrics like ARR. A New SaaS Playbook.

Sales Recruiting 257

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 257

User Pilot

MAY 2, 2024

You will also learn how to build a retention strategy, what metrics to track, and 10 bulletproof retention tactics for SaaS companies. Key metrics to measure customer retention include customer retention rate , customer churn rate , customer acquisition cost, and customer effort score. Customer retention metrics: Retention rate.

Retention 111

Retention Metrics Strategy Scale 111

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Do at least 20–30 customer interviews before you start writing too much code. Make NPS a top company metric. Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. Great at engineering. Great at marketing. More here. Otherwise, you often are building for an imaginary customer. A bit more here.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 306

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

But the metrics, especially for an SMB-focused SaaS business, are breathtaking. At SaaStr we’ve been super fans for a long time and a little ways back we did an amazing interview with CEO Andrew Bialceki here: Our 5 Interesting Learnings here: #1. 50k+ customers are growing almost 100% a year now. #4.

Scale 277

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Interviewing 277

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2022

Lots of SaaS founders are preoccupied with employee headcount as an important growth metric, but this indicator is not always true. As an example, Expensify includes a portion of their interview process where candidates solve a math problem on a whiteboard alongside their potential teammates.

Compensation 258

Compensation Leadership Company Culture Headcount 258

User Pilot

DECEMBER 18, 2024

Throughout this traditional definition, you’ll notice an emphasis on data, typically taken to mean quantitative metrics. Instead, for a more accurate analysis, it’s time to make room for qualitative data too, like user interviews and feedback. Think about what this means for a second. I will discuss why in just a second.

Data 105

Data Underperforming Technical Team Outsourcing Services Technical Review 105

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

One of the first things that stood out at the time was JFrog’s highly efficient financial metrics. Finally, I had a Zoom interview with JFrog’s Yoav Landman, who is the co-founder and CTO, and Jacob Shulman, who is the CFO. But even more appealing was the product vision the founders outlined.

New CTO 267

New CTO CTO Benchmarks Consulting 267

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2022

The original function of demand generation was about the top-of-funnel awareness and vanity metrics. Rather than operating on our own in silos, marketers must extend our focus beyond top-of-funnel metrics and partner with sales to create a pipeline velocity. . The purpose and limitations of demand generation.

Scale 269

Scale Revenue Scaling Marketing 269

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

This requires effort from your entire organization, and Handshake VP, Employer Partnerships Jessica Peluso outlines some changes that you can make to your brand, and your application, interview, and offer process that will help find the talent you are trying to attract and hire. Below is the transcript of Jessica’s session.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 258

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2022

To this end, their hiring journey—from sourcing to interviewing to offering—should be as seamless as possible. Know your metrics, and develop a robust qualification method to identify the best opportunities. Optimize the hiring process to keep up with growth. Try to attach data to every action and make your plays repeatable at scale.

Scale 268

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 268

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2020

” But okay, if there’s not enough sales roles, it’s … people still have muddy lead generation metrics. They wanted to triple that growth rate and valuation, so what they were hyper-focused on are really three main metrics. In lead generation, it’s really hard to get accurate metrics that you can trust.

Scale 263

Scale Outsourcing Services Revenue Outsourced Development 263

SaaStr

AUGUST 17, 2022

A successful, growing business depends as much on its metrics as it does on its people. It doesn’t matter what metric you use, but look at your deals every month and decide whether they were good or bad. These regular metrics provide a cadence and pace to your organization, and those twelve viewpoints per year can prove invaluable.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Sales SaaS B2C 245

SaaStr

JULY 6, 2022

This SaaStr Classic podcast episode features an interview with Mathilde Collin, the Co-Founder & CEO of Front. into one inbox, automates repetitive tasks, supports collaboration, and delivers analytics to track key performance metrics. So how can you break into the market successfully? billion valuation.

Enterprise 258

Enterprise Sales Hiring Social Media Communication 258

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

Set and reinforce them early — as early as interviews. Jameson at Gong recently received a coconut in the mail with some pun about “being nuts if you don’t want to talk to me” from someone wanting an interview to be on his team. Now, it’s become a matter of resetting of expectations that they’re no longer measuring effort only.

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Revenue Sales 273

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 17, 2024

Metrics like organic search traffic and keyword rankings went up initially but later took a decisive nosedive.  For example, I once turned a 30-minute interview between a nonprofit executive and a volunteer ELL tutor into two feature stories in local media outlets and a slew of social media posts like this one. 

Social Media 115

Social Media Scale Business Marketing 115

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2022

So a top theme across SaaStr CEO interviews since 2017 or so, and across our 5 Interesting Learnings series with public SaaS companies, is … when should you go multi-product? . — Jason BeKind Lemkin #???????????? jasonlk) April 29, 2022.

Scale 300

Scale SaaS SMB Scaling 300

User Pilot

MAY 30, 2025

Teams are drowning in the wrong usage metrics while missing important behavioral data signals. This thoughtful approach to tracking key metrics solves the decision paralysis hitting 72% of leaders who admit that the volume of app data has paralyzed their decision-making. One metric showing growth feels like progress.

Payment Solutions 104

Payment Solutions Mobile Payments Payment Methods 104

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

Schultz explained: “So I always say, ‘Think about how many hours this search is going to take by the time you do the research, talk to candidates, do your outreach, interview candidates many times, do your back channel reference checks — all of that adds up. Set the right metrics and goals to drive behaviors in a balanced way.

Sales Hiring 299

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 299

User Pilot

APRIL 30, 2024

Wes Bush , Founder and CEO of ProductLed and bestselling author of Product-Led Growth: How To Build a Product That Sells Itself, dives into this topic in an interview with Userpilot. The metric we look at here is self-serve revenue. This is just a quick sneak peek into what he discusses. It comes down to 3 basic things.

Interviewing 105

Interviewing Scale Strategy AI 105

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

When I’m hiring salespeople, I take the mission, vision, values, whether it’s helping practices thrive, whether your values are speak up, work hard, tying those into interview questions. Do they peel the onion back during the interview? Hey Dan, these are the quotas that we talked about during the interview process.

Sales Recruiting 328

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 328