SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. Cash was tight and I didn’t know any great VPs of Biz Dev, so between myself and my VPs of Sales, Product and Customer Success, we all jointly managed our key partners. Less and you under-invest. 5/ Moving from CTO-led -> VPE-led dev team. More here. It always works.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 299

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2023

A few that I’ve seen across the handful of investments I’ve made … that didn’t work out: Not really committed to going long. Sometimes, a non-technical CEO is so great at sales and the vision that sheer force of will allows them to sell several million of a product that just isn’t there, or isn’t very good. Too slow.

Startup 262

Startup New CTO CTO Investment 262

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 248

Trends Data New CTO CTO 248

SaaStr

JANUARY 22, 2021

Ciara Peter (Gainsight VP of Product & Design) and Mickey Alon (CTO & Founder of Gainsight PX) share their practical tips for product leaders looking to achieve business growth. Every year, millions of new products are created and launched. The return on marketing investment is much faster.

Scale 290

Scale New CTO CTO Acquisition 290

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2020

As the year starts to wind to a close, one exercise I go through with many CEOs I’ve invested in or am close to is this: Did you ship at least 3 truly game-changing features this year? Not launching 3 Truly Game-Changing Features doesn’t mean you didn’t ship any new code or features. Not just at $0.1m

New CTO 271

New CTO CTO Engineering Investment 271

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

There was also a highly efficient inbound sales model. In fact, there is currently no field sales organization! If the PLG strategy is implemented well with a quick time to value, the cost of acquiring new customers and upselling the customers provides for a very efficient business model.”.

New CTO 287

New CTO CTO Benchmarks Consulting 287

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

. “That it was much easier to do more in order to keep that customer than to get a new “top” customer. We all know this, but we forget about it, especially when the Hot New Deal and the sales team’s wants and needs consumes all of management’s resources. Did we prioritize the roadmap right?

CTO Hire 328

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 328

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales? A VP of Sales might seem the logical place to have your first SDR team report. It’s too much to learn on the fly for most new VPs of Sales. Sales leaders who have only done inbound and responded to leads aren’t those people. Likely within the hour that day.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

Some are decades-old problems, while others have emerged from this new world we’re in. GTM Mistake #1: A VP of Sales That Can’t Sell or Demo the Product Mistake number one has always been an issue, and it’s the number one reason startups struggle in today’s world. They hire a VP of Sales who doesn’t want to sell or learn the product.

CTO Hire 211

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 211

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 182

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 182

SaaStock

MARCH 8, 2019

Before getting into the investment world, she started and sold two successful companies in edutainment, and made a prominent name in the tech field around the world. After five years at Ernst & Young in New York, she served as Vice President at Citigroup in the Big Apple. She is in charge of the full SaaS solution sales cycle.

VP of Engineering 264

VP of Engineering CTO Coach Venture Capital SaaS 264

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. They have service and all this, but the second cloud for them was sales. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

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. Which brings me to sales and marketing.

Part-Time VPE 296

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 296

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2024

Some of the biggest use cases for AI in the enterprise are across customer support, sales and marketing, and engineering — ie helping developers test code and troubleshoot issues. Benjamin added, “I think a lot of people think about this new AI technology as something that’s gonna just come in and like work from day one.

AI 298

AI Enterprise Artificial Intelligence compliance 298

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

They’ve invested in all of these other businesses. Jason Lemkin: 50 reps in a new city that you’ve never met, and hired in 60 days when you’re in the low millions ARR. So number six, thinking you’re getting away with under investing in management, up scaling in HR. We all under invest.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

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 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 150

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 150

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. UberConference started as this freemium, kind of funnel builder for later sales product. As you said, people take it hard if suddenly you say, “Hey, this is your new EVP.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 264

Scytale

NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Whether you’re a new entrepreneur in the software industry, scaling your startup, or a seasoned SaaS provider, securing a SOC 3 audit report can be a game-changer for your business , helping you strengthen customer trust while demonstrating your unwavering commitment to data security. The good news?

compliance 52

compliance Underperforming Technical Team Scale Technical Review 52

FastSpring

DECEMBER 22, 2020

We dramatically increased our investment in product development. As such, we increased our investment in Product Development far in excess of any other business investment in 2020, as part of a two-year plan to approximately double our Product Development team’s size. We added three new executives to our team.

Payment Methods 131

Payment Methods Payment Services Payment Solutions Payments 131

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

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Growth is still good for them, but they had no net new customers last quarter. Even though HubSpot grew 23% at $2.5B, there was weaker demand and longer sales cycles, and they had to do pilots with CEOs and CIOs. HubSpots NRR has fallen to 100%, so to grow 23%, they must add 23% net new customers. Every VC wants to invest.

CTO Hire 147

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 147

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

Interesting for a couple reasons, but Sunil’s been investing in cloud internet since before almost anybody. So, not that many people have started so early in the career, so long in the space, and great investments that we know like Datadog and Fastly, and good at it. GP and founder of Amplify Partners. Jason Lemkin: Crazy.

Sales Recruiting 225

Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Technical Review Sales Hiring 225

Stax

AUGUST 14, 2024

Experienced payments and sales executive joins Stax leadership team to drive accelerated growth for Stax Connect and embedded payments. 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

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

We do that by: Investing in your trust through compliance with industry security and privacy ISO standards or frameworks such as SOC 2. Investing significantly in safeguarding our customers’ trust. We’re committed to meeting the highest standards of security to protect our customers’ trust and love for our product.

Data 118

Data CTO Hire Technical Review Scale 118

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

In the last two years there have been so many new services around security, around machine learning that literally did not exist. But they are actually accompanying us in the sales cycle and it’s certainly something that’s accelerated our time-to-market but also our success as well. So the conversation is changing.

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 173

Outseta

MARCH 21, 2018

Team: Co-founders Andy Taylor (CEO) and Navtej Sadhal (CTO). is a New Jersey based online property management platform built for both landlords and tenants. Team: Co-founders Joe DiNardi-Mack (CEO), Joseph Haddad (CTO), & Chris Finn (COO). Team: Founder & CEO Charles Hadsell. dwel.co - dwel.co Team: Founder Tyler Cubell.

Outsourcing Services 75

Outsourcing Services New CTO Outsourced Development CTO 75

The SaaS Garage

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

The product development is led out of Germany by Jan Riedel, a software engineer virtuoso and veteran, who Loyalty Prime was able to win as their new CTO at the beginning of 2019. Christoph Straub, Loyalty Prime’s founder and CEO is excited about this new chapter of his company. link] Contact BayBG: josef.krumbachner@baybg.de

Generative AI 90

Generative AI Artificial Intelligence CTO Coach Venture Capital 90

Scytale

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

What happens if you add new services or locations? Better attract and retain new clients ISO 27001 is known as “The Golden Standard”, proving that your organization has implemented the highest security standard. Proving due diligence regarding information security can drag out the sales process.

Systems Review 52

Systems Review Software Review CTO Hire compliance 52

Neil Patel

JULY 7, 2021

Experience is kind of the holy grail when it comes to customer interaction, from marketing and sales to customer service and brand loyalty. Is it something we just have to continually improve and build on as new opportunities roll out? Do I need to bring data from sales, inventory, and other departments into my marketing platform?

AI Search 124

AI Search CTO Hire Scale Artificial Intelligence 124

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 113

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 113

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 13, 2018

OpenView is thrilled to announce our recent $9M Series A investment in Loopio , a software platform that helps sales teams respond to RFPs, RFIs, and security questionnaires seamlessly with up-to-date, accurate, and approved content. Loopio co-founders from left to right: Matt York, CTO; Jafar Owainati, COO; Zakir Hemraj, CEO.

Investment 40

Investment CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 40

Valuize Consulting

OCTOBER 7, 2021

For many Chief Customer Officers and Customer Success (CS) leaders, this marks the beginning of a very stressful time as you prepare to have the challenging conversation with your CFO about how to properly invest in your Customer Success teams. This makes it challenging to secure investment.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success New CTO Scale Headcount 52

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Customer Onboarding Specialist: Responsible for helping new customers get up and running with the company’s products. For example, a startup might not need a sales manager or a fully-fledged sales team in its early days, but a UX designer is an absolute necessity. Average salary: $95,566/yr. Average salary: $46,035/yr.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

With that in mind, before we welcome the new year and all the good things to come, we’ve gathered our favorite insights and nuggets of wisdom from 2021 in a special wrap-up episode. Will Larson , CTO of Calm. Maggie Hott , Director of Sales at Webflow. Des Traynor , Co-founder and CTO of Intercom.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Technical Review Scale Outsourcing Services 118

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

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

Which is why you should sign up for the 2 for 1 Insider Sale and get two people for the price of one. Don’t overextend your resources when testing new SaaS growth ideas. Here is what he writes: Kieran Flanagan , VP of marketing at HubSpot, shared some interesting insights on approaching new ideas for scaling up your business.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103