SaaStr

JULY 21, 2020

But everyone hears from you all the time. Your investors and others will learn a lot more hearing about sales from your VP of Sales, your CTO co-founder … and not you. But that aside, usually one investor will be the one that helps you most recruit the team, recruit more capital, promote the company, be its biggest champion.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting New CTO Scale CTO 363

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. It’s too much to learn on the fly for most new VPs of Sales.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

TechEmpower SaaS

AUGUST 21, 2023

It provides findings and recommendations intended to foster a mutual understanding between business and software leaders, shedding light on the current state of your technology and your team. Random or persistent bugs: “The menu bar has been fixed three times now!” It also provides concrete recommendations for improvements.

Technical Review 390

Technical Review Software Review Development Team Review Systems Review 390

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. You’re not building a product or getting any new customers. You can’t hire a magician Head of Product.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 278

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 226

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 226

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 28, 2024

On Monday, at TC Disrupt Colin Zima CEO of Omni , Jordan Tigani CEO of Motherduck , Daniel Svnova CEO of Superlinked & Toby Mao CTO of Tobiko Data who are leading the evolution of the Post Modern Data Stack discussed the trends they are seeing. Customers are excited about new architectures that significantly reduce cost.

Trends 242

Trends Data New CTO CTO 242

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on. “That it was much easier to do more in order to keep that customer than to get a new “top” customer.

CTO Hire 321

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 321

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

The goal is to help each other learn something new, find mentorships, create partnerships, and exchange strategies. with Olivier Adam, Chief Growth Officer at ReferralCandy Successful Scaling Across Markets, Lessons in Marketing & Building GTM with IvyCap’s MP with Ashish Wadhwani, Co-founder and Managing Partner.

VP of Engineering 286

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder Outsourcing Services CTO Coach 286

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Recently, I spent several hours with a new but great friend who has been on a vaguely similar journey to me. Investing at a breathtaking pace. And he made an observation to me that I’d been thinking about for a very long time, but didn’t know how to express. 20×7, near as I can tell.

Part-Time VPE 286

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 286

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal?

Management 268

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 268

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

Some are decades-old problems, while others have emerged from this new world we’re in. They hire a VP of Sales who doesn’t want to sell or learn the product. You also don’t want to hire a VP of Sales who won’t carry a bag. There wouldn’t be enough time for them to carry a bag for six months and hire those ten people.

CTO Hire 204

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 204

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. Technology vision and strategy: A fractional CTO is responsible for developing and implementing a long-term technology vision and strategy for the company.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

Valerian Tech

JANUARY 5, 2023

It can be beneficial to hire a fractional CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in a variety of situations. They can provide guidance on which technologies to invest in and help you create a roadmap for the future.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

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 258

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 258

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 31, 2023

Click here to join the beta waitlist for our AI features or receive AI news from Intercom. We’ve built some exciting new features into Intercom using this new GPT technology and have given access to several hundred customers – and the response has been astounding. Our team has been using the new AI Inbox features a lot.

AI 188

AI Artificial Intelligence New CTO ChatGPT 188

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Alex Kayyal and Julie Kainz, Partners at Lightspeed, shared at SaaStr Annual a framework they developed around how to think about this new era of Artificial Intelligence in SaaS, what opportunities are out there for startups, and how to think about incumbents. CRM wasn’t a new category, but they were done on-premise.

AI 282

AI Artificial Intelligence New CTO Healthcare 282

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They were aware of it, but startups that I work with closely or invested in, if they got all the way to 25 million with 75% NRR, I would tell them to quit today. So I think my learning is just know the rules, know the KPIs, they’re all public, find public comps and copy them. VCs can only invest in outliers.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Since 2010 we’ve seen more startups, funds, and capital than ever before, but with this drastic increase, investors are seeing unexpected new trends reshaping the future of the industry. The panel that we are in is called Is Seed the New Series A, and this is a question that I’ve been asking informally yesterday and today.

New CTO 174

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 174

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. You’ll find out tomorrow.

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 283

Valerian Tech

DECEMBER 14, 2022

There are many benefits to hiring a fractional CTO, also known as a part-time or interim CTO. A fractional CTO can bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to your organization without the added expense of a full-time executive.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Technology 52

OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

Getting hiring right is absolutely critical. If you push them, what a VC will also tell you is that they back founders who have the ability to attract and recruit singular talent. I’d like to talk about two different companies with two very different approaches to hiring post-seed raise. We needed a CTO. Full disclosure.

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

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!

Part-Time CTO 8

Part-Time CTO CTO New CTO Technology 8

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

If you find this valuable, check out more episodes of our podcast. Some of the things we talked about were operational overhead and cost of various data stores we were running, along with whether or not we needed to hire dedicated database administrators for various different technologies. I thought, wow, the system works.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

What sets apart some of the most successful, high-growth companies we see today—Slack, Dropbox, Atlassian—has been their ability to tap into and master a new GTM strategy: B2C2B. So we kept investing, we knew we were onto something, and little by little we saw our traction improve. Then something really interesting happened.

B2B 173

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 173

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

You can watch the full session , and if you missed the podcast with the first half of the interview, you’ll find that here. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin. They’ve invested in all of these other businesses. Henry Schuck.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

If I think about the founders of "my" SaaS startups, these are the three qualities that all of them have – in addition to a huge amount of intelligence, motivation and commitment, which allows them to quickly acquire new skills as the company grows. The second best option is two, and the third best option is one, four or five.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2021

That question has been on Will Larson ‘s mind for a long time. For those who don’t know him, Will has over 10 years of experience in the likes of Yahoo, Digg, Uber, and Stripe, and he’s currently the CTO of Calm , the mindfulness app that helps millions of people to lower their stress levels and sleep better.

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

Panintelligence

JUNE 7, 2024

In this blog, we asked Panintelligence CEO Zandra Moore and CTO Ken Miller what they think are some of the most frequent mistakes in SaaS development and offer actionable insights to help you steer clear of them. But keeping what you’ve got is as important as bringing in new customers. Recruit on your cultural values.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Though our second day of the event is focused on mythical creatures of all kinds, you’ll find that there are unicorns hiding in our agenda every day this year. Well, we did the heavy lifting and highlighted a few here for you… “When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster. Check it out below!

Payment Services 113

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 113

Scytale

MARCH 12, 2025

His investment portfolio spans fintech, biotech, and deep tech, reinforcing his passion for driving progress across industries. Recognized as the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman of the Year, she continues to drive policy change and invests in impact-driven ventures as a Venture Partner at Mustard Seed Maze.

Startup 59

Startup Scale Cybersecurity AI Search 59

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin. Interesting for a couple reasons, but Sunil’s been investing in cloud internet since before almost anybody. So, his insights I find very helpful. This episode is sponsored by Outgrow.

Sales Recruiting 213

Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Technical Review Sales Hiring 213

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

Great to see a lot of repeat attendees and some new ones. We’re excited to continue the Month of Scale here for Redpoint Office Hours. 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. I’m Travis Bryant.

CTO Coach 157

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 157

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

Again, we felt that there was much greater value in being authentic than trying to be someone that we weren’t and try to find positives. It’s never a waste of time to find a great customer and take care of them and that’s led to frankly a lot of our success to date. We had no New York city presence.

CTO Hire 174

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 174

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

Adam Risman , a former host of the podcast, asked Rachel what made that point when Rachel joined Slack in 2016 the right time to invest in growth marketing? For Slack, that was clearly the engineering and dev communities, who love new tools. They had occasional advertising here and there. Here’s Rachel.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

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. Julien Lemoine | Co-founder and CTO @Algolia. So I’m Julien, Co-founder and CTO of Algolia. Want to see more content like this?

Scale 164

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 164

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Growth is still good for them, but they had no net new customers last quarter. HubSpots NRR has fallen to 100%, so to grow 23%, they must add 23% net new customers. Are brand-new companies that seem epic with no revenue really worth $1.5B Maybe if you have the ex-CTO of Github, but that’s still a super speculative bet.

CTO Hire 141

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 141

Stax

AUGUST 14, 2024

“Stax’s mission and commitment to unlock partner and customer success through its innovative technology really resonates with me,” said Krahl. “I Krahl’s appointment cements Stax’s commitment to investing in its team and bringing on new team members with deep industry knowledge and is the latest executive hire at Stax.

Payments 88

Payments Stax Payment Solutions Payment Services 88