SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

It’s not the most common path, but now we can see that a number of leaders have done it: Zoom, Zscaler, New Relic, Fastly, Elastic, etc. And second, I really worry when there isn’t a great CTO on the team. If the CEO is also the CTO, that can work. That doesn’t mean the founders did it all alone :).

New CTO 276

New CTO CTO SaaS Leadership 276

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 15, 2018

On day one as Reddit’s new VP of Engineering, Nick Caldwell faced a dilemma. He had to quickly determine which team members displayed a potential for leadership and teach them the fundamentals of management so they could make new hires and scale – without ruining the culture. Short on time?

Leadership 141

Leadership Engineering Part-Time VPE CTO Coach 141

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2021

But what they don’t have is a good enough founding team: Sometimes, if the prospective founder isn’t super technical, then the CTO/VPE isn’t really great. They’ve got a rent-a-CTO. Or sometimes they are great, but the team members are just not great enough for their new C-level roles (CEO, CTO, CMO, CSO, CBO, C?O).

Part-Time VPE 263

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire New CTO CTO 263

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Mike Wiacek, CEO at Stairwell, Mo Jebrini, CTO at Mashvisor, and Michael Ermolenko, CTO at Inworld.ai, discuss with Helene Ambiana, Global SMB and Startups Marketing Director at Google Cloud, how they overcame the hurdles of scaling and reached their goals. . Accordingly, training programs to hone new skills should be introduced. .

Scale 263

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 263

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2020

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 there are 1,000+ new firms since 2016 alone. All-hands meetings, board meetings, whenever. Yes, you are the CEO. But everyone hears from you all the time. Bring Your Investors Together.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting New CTO Scale CTO 363

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

5/ Moving from CTO-led -> VPE-led dev team. Most of us hire a VP of Engineering to take over from our CTO because we see the CTO is getting burnt out, or has trouble building a dev team > 8-9 folks, or gets disinterested in solving technical debt, bugs, etc. That’s when you want to lean in. More here.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 299

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. Something new to boost your ACV and TCV. Double your pricing for new customer, on the largest deals. At least by the time you are hiring 1 new employee per month. Add a layer. At least on the big customers.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 290

Infinicept

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

New Role Extends Infinicept’s Leadership in Embedded Payments and Drives Advancements in Embedded Finance DENVER – February 9, 2023 – Infinicept, a leading provider of embedded payments, today announced that it has appointed Anne-Jeanette LeBell as the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

CTO 98

CTO New CTO Payments Embedded Payments 98

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. In my first start-up as a founder, I had a great CTO and VPE and a pretty darn good VP Ops from the very beginning. This friend is one of the hardest working people in the industry. 20×7, near as I can tell.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 299

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. This can be a useful option for startups or small businesses that may not have the resources to hire a full-time CTO or may not need one on a permanent basis.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

Some are decades-old problems, while others have emerged from this new world we’re in. Also, determine whether you have the right CTO to handle these changes. If they aren’t sure how to integrate AI into your product, ask if you need a new CTO. What are the biggest GTM mistakes founders make? Let’s jump right in.

CTO Hire 211

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 211

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

Is the CTO involved in these decisions? But if you want to grow fast, you want to innovate and take care of those customers and the energy that goes into these pricing games, especially for new CROs and revenue teams. And funds aren’t just coming from new folks, but existing investors with bigger funds.

AI 304

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 304

Scytale

MARCH 12, 2025

With many years of corporate leadership experience and a deep-rooted passion for sustainability, Tessa has become a prominent voice in the circular economy. a next-generation AI-driven autonomous driving system that adapts to new environments through data-driven learning.

Startup 59

Startup Scale Cybersecurity AI Search 59

Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Given that their guidance is so universal — both for people just stepping into new roles and those at fast-paced companies like Buffer — I thought I’d share their wisdom here. I've always been one to jump on the new thing as soon as I discover it. Social Media is always changing, and platforms come and go.

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VP of Engineering Part-Time CTO New CTO CTO 126

Kellblog

SEPTEMBER 21, 2024

They never have any new ideas about how to fix our problems.” They’re pretty darn good at doing that,” the CEO chuckled, pensively gazing over the whitecaps from the patio of the luxury resort where the executive leadership team (ELT) was huddled. And maybe even what new products we should build.”

New CTO 92

New CTO Sales Leadership Headcount 92

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. The best ways he found to learn leadership skills was to hire a management coach to meet him once per month, to talk through the issues facing him at Optimizely. Pete was a Google Associate Product Manager for AdSense and launched Google App Engine.

CTO Coach 114

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 114

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

No, the amazing innovation of the iPhone was simply to bring a new generation of user interface to market with the touchscreen – and to really enable a different interaction that people have with the computing devices. At the enterprise level within companies, this is why you’re always going to need technology leadership.

Artificial Intelligence 169

Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

For Slack, that was clearly the engineering and dev communities, who love new tools. They love new ways of working and were happy to bring Slack into their functional teams and say, “Let’s experiment with this new way of working.” “Great leadership hinges on some sense of predictability. And it was very successful.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

Great to see a lot of repeat attendees and some new ones. 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. Lionetti, the CMO at Confluent, and most recently, the CTO from Zendesk, Adrian. I’m Travis Bryant.

CTO Coach 161

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 161

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

Today I interview Cynthia Del’Aria and we talk about leadership in the SaaS world. She is currently on the verge of starting a new FinTech startup which will be her fifth but she has built close to 100 startups for other people over the years. The importance of leadership for SaaS companies.

CTO Coach 40

CTO Coach New CTO Leadership CTO 40

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Throughout the year, we’ve talked to business leaders, experts, and pioneers about all kinds of topics: from creating world-class customer experiences to the challenges of running a business during the pandemic, from being an ally and addressing gaps in diversity to building technical leadership careers. Will Larson , CTO of Calm.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Technical Review Scale Outsourcing Services 118

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

So I would say that’s a leadership failure for a lot of CEOs, right? QUESTION 6: My company is a very technical product and somebody serious software and it’s a new category you were creating like scratch. New category. So he’s the CTO? So coach toward the leadership piece of it. What do I do now?

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 232

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

As you said, people take it hard if suddenly you say, “Hey, this is your new EVP. If I wasn’t at the programming background, probably a CTO was a good idea, but for us it was sales, definitely sales and marketing. It makes sense that that would be the role that comes in as the CTO. That’s it.”

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 264

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

The catch was he had just moved his family four kids to New York city. We had no New York city presence. I had my CTO and everyone would be like, “You can’t do this. So, we decided to be flexible and through that we actually opened a New York office. Real connection, but there was a catch. This was a problem.

CTO Hire 178

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 178

OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

It became clear after a month that our young team had a lot of enthusiasm, but lacked senior leadership. Does a new senior member have the right to challenge a historical decision made by a junior developer? We needed a CTO. But we can hire 3 x junior developers for the cost of a CTO!” Let’s talk about the CTO.

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

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. Also – live by your cultural values.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

Valerian Tech

MAY 4, 2023

In this article, we'll explore the benefits of DevOps for legacy businesses and how a Fractional CTO can help overcome the challenges of DevOps adoption. First, legacy businesses often face cultural barriers and resistance to change when it comes to implementing new technologies and practices.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Business 52

Neil Patel

AUGUST 23, 2021

Why You Should Follow Gary: With video content that delivers day after day, Gary sounds off on the latest trends, serving as a weathervane for the digital community, as well as informational videos about leadership and self-care. Why Larry is Successful: Founder and former CTO of WordStream, Larry has tenured experience in the digital realm.

Marketing 128

Marketing CTO Coach Entrepreneurship AI Search 128

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 173

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 173

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 147

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 147

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

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. And then you keep resources on them because for the next three to six months, you’re taking feedback from customers and feeding it back into that new functionality or that new product.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

362: The Future of the Customer with Bernadette Nixon, CEO @ Algolia, Jay Snyder, Chief Customer Officer @ New Relic, and Nick Mehta, CEO @ Gainsight. Nick Mehta: On a boat in Rhode Island and then our second guest Jay Snyder, who just recently took over as Chief Customer Officer of New Relic, publicly traded SaaS company.

Payment Methods 273

Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 273

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! I’ll do whatever it takes.

Part-Time CTO 8

Part-Time CTO CTO New CTO Technology 8

User Pilot

MAY 1, 2024

He worked as a Product Lead at Airbnb for 7 years, where he managed a number of teams, supported strategy for the anti-discrimination team, and built new tools for hosts. How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs) – Lenny interviews Sam on the journey toward building Google Docs.

Underperforming Technical Team 102

Underperforming Technical Team New CTO Interviewing CTO 102

BetterCloud

MAY 17, 2021

Prior to joining BetterCloud as our new VP of quality, Waithe was a director of engineering at MailChimp. Secondarily, I had a chance to chat with [CTO Jamie Tischart ] even before he joined the company. ” That was the catalyst for me to think about leadership and management. That was very exciting to me.

New CTO 52

New CTO Part-Time VPE CTO Coach CTO Hire 52

Sales Hacker

MAY 5, 2021

Whether they started out as SDRs, marketers, engineers or even lawyers, their winding paths ultimately brought them to RevOps where they can solve new and challenging problems. In fact, she says that you will probably be thrown new software tools every three months in a RevOps job. 36 RevOps Leaders You Need to Follow.

Scale 121

Scale Technical Cofounder Technical Advisors Sales Hiring 121

BetterCloud

JUNE 10, 2021

A few weeks ago, [ CTO Jamie Tischart ] and I talked about this fork in the road that engineers typically get to where they either move into management or commit to writing code for the rest of their careers. What got you interested in taking the executive leadership path? How have things like your smart camera helped people adjust?

Engineering 52

Engineering DevOps as a Service New CTO CTO Coach 52