SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer. They never invest the time after they start, either. 50% of what a VP of Sales really does is recruiting.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 306

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

The result was a 5x increase over initial projections – growing from an $8M revenue target to $40M actual results – driven by a belief that market demand justified the investment. This approach required immense trust from the CEO to invest millions ahead of proven results.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 188

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Dedicated Slack Channel For Every Metric From the early days at Secureframe, they have had a dedicated Slack channel for every metric: every net new sale, every expansion, every churn, and every expense. Invest in People You want to keep the bar high on talent, especially in hypergrowth, and not just in the early stages.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 302

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

Founders are responsible for ensuring a startup always has enough money, setting the vision for the company, and driving things forward. Lesson #1: If You Aren’t Making Mistakes, You Aren’t In A Startup If you do things that always work and maintain the status quo, you’re likely at a major company like Microsoft. And it was true.

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SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development. Is a CRO right for you?

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 302

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

On the investing side of life, the toughest meeting of all for me at least is probably the Right Co-Founder, Wrong CEO start-up. But after that, it starts to break down when you have to recruit a true management team, and in many cases, additional capital. They’ll know … Who can best recruit a management team?

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Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 276

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2021

Q: I’m a startup founder weighing multiple VC term sheets at similar valuations. Who can help me find that first VP of Sales? A lot of folks will want to invest in the next round of their startups. This does help with recruiting and partnerships. There are just so many startups. How should I choose?

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SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

What are the top 10 mistakes founders are still making today when hiring their VP of Sales? In this post, we’ll delve into the common pitfalls founders encounter when hiring a VP of Sales. 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. . #1: 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. This one is newer.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 307

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Today, she advises and invests in companies on these topics and others. Should you hire a COO for your startup? How you should you go about recruiting the right person? Allison is an incredible builder of teams. She’s written extensively on the topic and co-authored a book The Customer Success Economy.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Customer Success 299

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. Turning over a sales team is very hard on the organization. A great VP of Sales is worth her weight in gold.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 363

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2023

The most successful entrepreneurs I’ve invested in (6+ unicorns, 3 billion+ exits) are very different in many ways. Some engineers by training, others in sales or product originally. But a few uniting characteristics of the very best: Relentless Recruiters. You have to be constantly recruiting the best. No Excuses.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling Engineering 246

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 9, 2013

One number investors use to benchmark SaaS startups across sectors and industries is sales efficiency. There are a handful of variants of this metric, sometimes called the magic number, but ultimately they all aim to provide some sense of the incremental revenue returned by sales and marketing investment.

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Benchmarks Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 160

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

So there’s a sort of org chart you’ll probably end up with at least twice as you start scaling in SaaS: The “Headless” Sales Org. It’s a bunch of sales reps without anyone to manage them other than … you. But if you end up not hiring a VP of Sales at that perfect moment in time (and most don’t), you’ll end up headless.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

It’s been a fun experience being on Quora for … a decade We’ve crossed 60,000,000 views of our answers there, so let’s take a look at the Top 50 most viewed SaaStr Answers on Quora in 2020: Why do many startup owners sell their firm and move on instead of planning on making it a big player like Google, Microsoft, etc.?

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Software Review CTO Coach Technical Review Sales Recruiting 296

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.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 287

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Q: What are the top 20 pieces of advice for building a successful SaaS startup? Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2. A bit more here.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 315

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

In 2020-2021, many SaaS startups faced a unique challenge. CRO at Wiz, Colin Jones, shares how this traditional startup evolved, thrived and grew from 0 to $100 million in just two years. Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 263

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: SaaS Capital: Across 1,500 SaaS Startups, Yearly Contracts Don’t Actually Increase NRR Dear SaaStr: How Long Should a CEO Continue Being the Head of Product? SaaStr CRO Confidential: Howard Lerman, Founder & CEO @ Roam on Founder-led Sales 3.

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Sales Recruiting Startup Investment SaaS 246

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later. Here’s why. Thanks to Jenny – our very own HR lady! -

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

It’s the most common objection you’ll get in SaaS sales … Not Right Now. It can’t strategically improve sales software, financial software, quoting software, recruiting software, QA processes, call center software, etc. And when you hire a real, great VP of Sales. Truly qualified leads and prospects. I Don’t Have Budget.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Software Review 314

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2023

So backstage at SaaStr Annual this year, and in a number of other conversations since, I’ve had a chance to get a few quiet moments with maybe two dozen top CROs and VPs of Sales. Yes, macro issues come up, and how they have to sell to more stakeholders now, and sales cycles are longer. But the best long ago adapted.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Onboarding Sales 300

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. Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales?

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CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

David Sacks: SaaS Background and Investments. David’s first foray into SaaS was in 1999 when he joined a startup that would become PayPal, starting as the product leader and later as the COO. In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Sales.

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CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 287

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. We were coming off an environment where startup funding was as fruitful as ever. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 304

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

So the other day I looked back at about 25 SaaS seed investments I’d made that had scaled well past $10m-$20m and reflected on the top themes. They are all avoidable : #1: Stepping Out of Sales Ok really this is mistake #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5. Instead, how they spend time in sales changes. And so sales goes down.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 315

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

For example, sending a kickoff gift tailored to a customer’s recent experiences or interests shows you’re paying attention and invested in their journey. GTM 120: Avoid the AI Sales Skills Atrophy Trap with Peter Kazanjy Pete Kazanjy is a serial founder, and seasoned early stage Saas executive, advisor, and investor.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring AI Search 113

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

They talked about product adoption, sales alignment, freemium models and lessons they have learned throughout their successful SaaS careers. As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. And then some track record of execution either as the new startup or in the past. Dev Ittycheria : Thank you.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 263

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

He completely misunderstood the value prop of the startup. It’s so, so easy to stand out in recruiting if you’ve actually done your homework. Invest those extra cycles. Then I’d let them know how I prepared for the meeting so they knew I invested my time to get ready. A week later, he emailed me back — “Aha!

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Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting 276

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

Accountants are responsible for ensuring the company has clean financial statements and data. This function can be outsourced in the early days of a startup, but it is usually brought in-house after Series B. This role can be recruited through headhunters or your network. Invest in next-gen finance tooling.

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Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

1: How Sales and Marketing Have Shifted Since 2020 Expectations and the types of people working in SaaS have shifted over the past few years, and much more in sales, marketing, and customer success. . #1: I can leave my horrible sales job making $240k OTE and be a solopreneur. You can listen to the full podcast here. #1:

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 305

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Co-founder and CEO at Greenhouse, Daniel Chait, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin to share what’s new at Greenhouse, a successful recruiting software company at $200M in ARR today. Getting off the ground is one thing — an easy pitch of being an HR tech startup focused on improving hiring. Multi-Product vs.

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Sales Hiring AI SMB Scale 284

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2019

Keith Rabois is an investment partner at Khosla Ventures where he focuses on consumer Internet, education, enterprise, financial services, and digital health investments. Lloyed : Startup-. Join him as he shares his top lessons in building great teams. Lloyed : Awesome. Keith : Started Opendoor. Keith : From scratch.

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Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 274

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 13, 2014

I’ll never forget the first time I met Paul Graham in that very same room right after the first Startup School. Nor the management class on having difficult conversations with colleagues, among countless others. It’s wonderful that massively profitable, public companies can make these investments.

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Investment Startup Scale Sales Recruiting 100

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2022

We took the series A, interesting enough, the first executive hired by, thanks to the sales coaching, actually was marketing. Luciana: I had been telling people that the inflection point came when Accel invested, but I guess it was market and product and all that good stuff. The technology is perfected. No, I’m joking.

Sales Hiring 276

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 276

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

There’s a time and a place for it, but a startup, the lifeblood, is getting s**t done. I want to come be your VP of sales and, you’re going to meet me for the first time. Spencer : For me, the key things for a VP of sales is, “OK, tell me about your best reps. We are all builders. Talk is cheap.

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VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 296

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. As a startup, it’s tempting to try and do everything.

Scale 276

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 276

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

I recently wrote that investors (myself included) should do a better job of making their investment criteria transparent to founders. Today I'd like to tell you a bit more about what we at Point Nine Capital are looking for in SaaS startups (other sectors are something for another blog post). along the way.

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Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155