SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2025

A smaller number of high-quality leads that convert at higher rates is vastly superior to a flood of poor-fit prospects. You assembled a talented team, built an amazing product, and established a growing SaaS business. Mix in the classic conflict between sales and marketing teams, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Sales Hiring 202

Sales Hiring Marketing Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team 202

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 12, 2021

As a support leader, you already know how important it is to take care of your customers – but it’s just as important to take care of your support team. Here’s why human support is so crucial for any customer-centric organization, and how it can have a significant impact on your team, your business, and your customers. Here’s why.

Underperforming Technical Team 222

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Payment Methods Payments 222

Incredo

MARCH 20, 2020

The Incredo team switched to a fully remote working system in September 2019. At the beginning it was a bit hard to track the progress of tasks and communicate with team members effectively. Since you started working from home, your whole team already saves around 1 hour of their day.

Underperforming Technical Team 227

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Systems Review Software Review 227

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

So let’s take a look back to a deep dive with the CEOs on what they learned building their first senior teams: ———-. As a founder/CEO, building your first management team is something that you often lose sleep over. What makes you feel that you need to level up your management, set up your first management team?

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 265

BetterCloud

MAY 13, 2025

Every IT team is grappling with the same reality: the ever-widening chasm between the demands placed on IT and the resources at their disposal. Automated systems, on the other hand, can provide continuous vigilance, ensuring consistent application of security updates and proactive identification of potential weaknesses.

Headcount 52

Headcount Scale Underperforming Technical Team Scaling 52

User Pilot

OCTOBER 31, 2024

A product analytics strategy is essential for any business looking to make informed decisions about product development and user experience. Plus, there are many reasons why you need a product analytics strategy: Aligns product development with user needs and business goals. Lack of team resources. Outdated technology.

Strategy 105

Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Government Customer Lifetime Value 105

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

sales team. As everyone left to work for an investment bank in California or New York that summer of ’99, I went to work at a startup in Ann Arbor. I did all sorts of things there from sales, to project management, to running the engineering team, hiring. We have team selling here that extends beyond the sales team.

Scale 287

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 287

FastSpring

JANUARY 23, 2025

How selling an investment business is very different from getting VC funding. They’re interested in the return on investment, they’re interested in the growth opportunities, they’re interested in the strategies and the synergies that those businesses can bring them, either as individuals or as companies.

Scale 121

Scale Entrepreneurship Scaling Underperforming Technical Team 121

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2024

It’s one thing to invest in an area where only 5% of your business is today. Then, you’ll have enough folks and experience to put a small team on a new initiative / segment / market. Micromanaging Your First (and Second) Management Team. Bad operational model / misunderstanding the burn rate. And stymie all of them.

Scaling 307

Scaling Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Market Segmentation 307

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

These nine sales concepts, when done correctly, will greatly improve your sales and sales teams. #1: Most people think you need to hire more salespeople in a demand-poor environment. Demand-poor environments lead to problems like: Sales reps clinging on to opportunities for too long. That’s the wrong answer.

Sales Recruiting 297

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 297

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

If someone is working hard but isn’t working out, invest in them and see if you can get them into the high-performing category. The underperformers who aren’t putting in the effort get a conversation, and if things don’t change, it’s not a good fit. Others are doing little work and not working out. Guess what? Jameson called that guy.

Sales Hiring 287

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Revenue Sales 287

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2022

Recovery from COVID has taught us that adapting and learning how to thrive in new ways in the face of change, whether good or bad, can lead to exponential growth. . Develop a well-defined vision. If you have a comprehensive, compelling vision, it will be easy for your teams to trust it and rally behind you. Define your crisis.

Travel 276

Travel Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Scale 276

Casey Accidental

MARCH 29, 2022

A common issue leaders in product management, design, or engineering face is justifying investment in the “non-sexy” stuff. Non-sexy things include general user experience improvements, performance, developer velocity, infrastructure, technical debt, and, fortunately less than it used to be, growth. User Experience.

Investment 139

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Scale User Experience 139

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

After three months, this talented guy came to Harbaugh with the recognition that LaunchDarkly’s customers were developers. He didn’t like to sell to developers, so he quit. because they needed to rebuild the sales team. They rebuilt the sales team and closed some big deals. A bad one can torpedo you.

Sales Recruiting 300

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 300

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2021

Pomel focused his session on: Making your SaaS startup customer-centric: Hw event marketing has helped him integrate his engineering and sales teams. How many of you guys’ product rely on the highly functioning engineering team? Helping the engineering teams run smoothly and being super productive thanks to mentoring.

Scale 322

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Engineering 322

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

The second is pulling more around values, and how we approached team building. Even as a three person team, we went through an exercise to figure out what do we stand for, as a team? Sam : This is not my insight, but someone else says… I really do believe it, that the team you build is the company you build.

VP of Engineering 300

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 300

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 20, 2021

As a result, much of the evaluation, investment, and rollout of virtual training technology in 2020 was rushed, limited in scope, and poorly planned. Businesses must take a step back, evaluate their software investments, and rework their implementations. How to maximize customer training investment. Today, not much has changed.

Investment 122

Investment Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Artificial Intelligence 122

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

A mentor of mine suggested that I reframe my search to seek out companies that I would invest in, instead of the other way around. He told me, you can invest time, talent, or treasure. Unfortunately for me, I had little experience, not much talent, and lacked the treasure/money to invest. It seemed like the best investment! .

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Underperforming Technical Team 291

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

The highs and lows always come, usually involving the people on your team. For Erica, the bad days are when they’re not executing or achieving growth the way they want. But you don’t carry any numbers, so your success is predicated on your team’s success. Each of these CROs describes what their worst day is.

Scale 306

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 306

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2020

What you really want if your deal size isn’t tiny are at least somewhat qualified leads for your team to follow-up with. What you really want if your deal size isn’t tiny are at least somewhat qualified leads for your team to follow-up with. After all, no one on that list opted in to hear about your product.

Underperforming Technical Team 239

Underperforming Technical Team Content Marketing Innovation Investment 239

SaaStr

AUGUST 1, 2022

The developed world revolves around e-commerce. Push yourself and your team to keep an open mind when you’re considering whom you can serve and how you can serve them. Embed innovation into your team’s DNA. Innovation should happen across the entire company, not just in the product team. Global approach. it can’t be done.

Underperforming Technical Team 264

Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Innovation Investment 264

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2023

Management teams must determine how to thrive in a downturn to position their businesses for profitable growth. However, management teams that pursued growth at all costs were punished severely. As a result, it’s crucial to evaluate the right blend of long-term investments and target the core methodically. Key takeaways.

Consulting 49

Consulting Underperforming Technical Team Management Marketing 49

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2024

You don’t want conflict with the sales team. How do you leverage that offer to develop relationships with partners? This is where they started, but startups weren’t adopting the product as much with a discount, and there was a lot of conflict with the sales team. During SaaStr Annual, Zendesk Sr. Do they have a CRO in place?

Startup 267

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team AWS 267

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

What Nobody Tells You About Seed Investing with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Cowboy Ventures Founder and Partner Aileen Lee. I think it gives us a perspective that maybe we don’t get in some other places, in addition to many great investments over the years. Personally, our team has been holding back a little bit.

Investment 205

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 205

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. To do the first, we had to hire, train, and write a playbook – the building blocks of any team. Relentlessly measure impact.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

MARCH 23, 2020

Companies which don’t use mental models risk unleashing mayhem with poor choices or becoming bloated and bureaucratic by reducing the volume and speed at which decisions are made - both scenarios are undesirable and will impact growth. OKRs are a useful mental model - they make it crystal clear what people and teams should be striving for.

Underperforming Technical Team 213

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service 213

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

They are hiring leaders, building teams, and attracting advisors in the US while devouring the SV SaaS playbook. AI is likely the next platform, dev tools are strategic given the scarcity of developers, cybersecurity is front and center for enterprises, and the data stack is still going strong. Proximity to customers helps too.

Scale 299

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Cybersecurity 299

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2021

If you’re a senior engineer and want to further your career, what skills should you develop? Moving forward in your career, avoid the trap of doing work that feels high-impact, but it’s actually not , or work that makes you look good at the expense of the project and the team. How do people move into staff engineering roles?

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 8, 2021

According to one Microsoft Global State of Customer Service report , 90% of consumers surveyed said that customer service is an important factor in their choice of, and loyalty to, a brand, while nearly two-thirds (58%) would sever their relationship with a business due to poor customer service. Conversational support is the new normal.

Technical Review 222

Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Customer Support Marketplace as a Service 222

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2022

Jason Lemkin: Yeah, I think if you ask how applicable is SEO, programmable is maybe a different question, but I tell you every single SaaS company I have invested in or worked with that has made a commitment to building at least one high quality piece of content per week has seen significant ROI from SEO over a period of months or a year.

Scale 299

Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 299

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2021

” The secret to shipping successful product, then, is clearly defining for your team the problem that you’re setting out to solve. A great problem statement supercharges product development. It inspires and guides your design team, it makes evaluation simple, and it creates direction for scoping and iteration.

Transportation 279

Transportation Travel Underperforming Technical Team Finance 279

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 4, 2019

More recently, however, I’ve realized that the technology industry at large struggles with such clarity and consistency – in marketing terms, there is often a difficulty developing a clear value proposition that aligns with product and brand identity. 1 Poor definition of value proposition and feature focus. 2 First-mover disadvantage.

Branding 209

Branding Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Airlines 209

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2021

Hmmmm … well, to me, that’s not a bad place to be once a space, a category, gets to $100m+. With less capital and a tighter team … you won’t be able to spend as much on marketing. You’ll have to develop a very lean sales culture. But the bottom isn’t all bad. They want to experiment.

Scale 282

Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 282

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2024

The three core areas to focus on are: Evolving your growth engine Building and solving for when to become a multi-product platform Investing in your people and team #1: Evolving Your Growth Engine Let’s start with some context for Bitly’s journey. You might have to rebuild your marketing team. Optimize your acquisition funnel.

Scale 307

Scale Scaling Underperforming Technical Team User Experience 307

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

You can have the great product and a great team, but the market of small or very niche. The second one is the team, obviously depending on how earlier the team has a huge factor because you may be so early in your journey that there’s nothing else to point to, but the track record of the team. So that’s easy.

Sales Recruiting 265

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 265

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2019

If your SaaS business has a sales team, there’s no way to grow 100% year-over-year without also growing your sales leadership. Knowing the common pitfalls won’t stop you or your team from making them, but it will help build the most important skill any manager can have: resiliency. Want to see more content like this? Overwhelmed.

Scale 179

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Underperforming Technical Team 179

Sales Hacker

MAY 9, 2025

Many venture capital firms shifted their investments almost entirely into AI startups. They kept the focus on the core value proposition of helping teams write, plan and collaborate to create better workspaces, while still having the AI inclusion. Bad: We use AI to streamline sales workflows.

AI Search 86

AI Search AI Scale SaaS 86