SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. I just see this time and time again.

Part-Time VPE 322

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 322

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

And that means your initial leadership team often takes you faster, and further, than you might ever think. The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. And if you are, you are going to naturally start off hiring up-and-comers to your first leadership team. And that’s great.

Part-Time VPE 285

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 285

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? You can find the full slide deck from David’s presentation on Slideshare. Positions Needed: FP&A Analyst, Accountant, HR, Ops, Recruiter.

CTO Hire 291

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 291

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

Co-founder and CEO of Plato, Quong Hoang, the #1 mentoring platform for engineering leaders , helped moderate a discussion between CTO of Change.org, Elaine Zhou, and Head of Engineering at Notion, Michael Manapat, on this subject. On a purely human level, most employees like to settle down if they find a place that feels like home.

CTO Coach 279

CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO Engineering 279

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. How do we fix it?”

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Or at least where the co-founder CTO is a true equal partner to the CEO. You need to recruit a great engineering team. You’ve got to recruit a much bigger, and more expensive, engineering team in many cases. Unless again, you have a true CTO as well, that is also leading the company. But — Jobs had Woz.

Outsourcing Services 300

Outsourcing Services Engineering CTO Scale 300

TechEmpower SaaS

AUGUST 21, 2023

We hear them explain that their current software development is expensive, deliveries are rarely on time, and random bugs appear. The explanation from software leadership is often unsatisfying or unclear. Findings Sessions : A review meeting to decode findings, gauge their business implications, and chalk out a roadmap for the future.

Technical Review 390

Technical Review Software Review Development Team Review Systems Review 390

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

I’ve been reminded of this question in several meetings lately where founders are doing pretty well, getting to and past Initial Traction, but with hindsight it’s interesting that the founder that took the CEO gig perhaps was better suited to a different role, say CTO or SVP of Sales or President or COO or SVP Product.

Sales Recruiting 329

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital CTO Hire CTO 329

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR.

Part-Time VPE 300

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 300

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . “A Hiring in a streamlined manner with a rigorous selection process initially builds momentum for long-term goals.

Scale 263

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 263

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

MARCH 5, 2023

Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Good but not great CEOs just can’t find a way to iterate fast enough. But what made them great: Ability to attract amazing co-founders and execs. Not just great, but epic. Ability to iterate pretty darn quickly. Not overnight. But eventually.

CTO Hire 289

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 289

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

That means we’ll be hiring 350 people over the next 18 months across our offices in San Francisco, Dublin, London, Chicago and Sydney. We are committed to finding the best people and talent, no matter who they are, and fostering an authentic and diverse environment where we all can do our best work.

Scale 195

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Engineering 195

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2019

“Juggling People, Processes, and Priorities: Leadership Lessons from Intuit, SurveyMonkey & Stitch Fix” with Heavy Bit GM Dana Oshiro Intuit CTO Marianna Tessel, SurveyMonkey CTO Robin Ducot and Stitchfix CTO Cathy Polinsky. ” When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster.

CTO Coach 191

CTO Coach Engineering CTO Hire Development 191

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2023

And the few that don’t generally had a founder that decided to bring someone else in themselves (often a CTO type): This doesn’t mean it is easy. I thought several times about bringing in a CEO to replace me at Adobe Sign / EchoSign. I know I get behind on recruiting. It never really gets easier. But I don’t now.

Technical Review 280

Technical Review CTO SaaS Scaling 280

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2024

Wait and find a co-founder just as committed as you are. If you’re a “business” founder, know it’s really, really hard to win without a truly great CTO. At least, not to get enough paying customers from Code Zero. Almost always. Someone else great already has the same idea. Like, always.

Startup 313

Startup CTO SaaS Interviewing 313

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 265

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 265

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

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. Second, hire the best management team you can as early as you can. But don’t wait a moment after that to hire the best senior help you can. If you haven’t experienced this yet, you don’t know.

Part-Time VPE 300

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 300

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

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. If you joined a startup at $2M and wanted to get to $6M with reps doing $400k, that VP of Sales would need to hire ten reps. 90% of the time, sales falls when a founder steps out of it.

CTO Hire 212

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 212

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 staff management: A fractional CTO is responsible for managing the technology team, including hiring, training, and motivating employees.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 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… Jean-Michel Lemieux, Shopify CTO. Here is a glimpse at just a few of our standout unicorns.

Part-Time VPE 205

Part-Time VPE CTO Leadership Cloud 205

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

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. Well, let’s transition then to leadership. Excited to be back emceeing.

CTO Coach 164

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 164

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.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Tim: I was hired in 2010, when Facebook was what I like to call a “teenage company”. There were about 1,400 people, just under a billion dollars in revenue, and I was hired as the CIO of the company with the mission of driving the productivity of the workforce. That was actually a pretty tall order at the time.

Artificial Intelligence 169

Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2019

We tend to find that there are three key technology initiatives that we can help our customers with when they’re undergoing a digital transformation. And for that, you need leadership and the right kind of leaders. Hire builders who are experienced, strategic, and agile. So, good luck with your hiring efforts.

Scale 240

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 240

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

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

Adam Risman: What were some of the aha moments you experienced in those early days when you were trying to find a product/channel fit? And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team. You find a bunch of nuances in there that are very interesting. Here’s Andrew.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

At Pluralsight, my Chief Experience Officer who runs product and content has developed a user centered methodology for developing product called directed discovery that is completely organized around the voice of the customer. It’s in that, that we find the win, we find the progress. Where’s the skills gap?

B2B 173

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 173

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 15, 2022

Darragh Curran , our Chief Technology Officer, emphasizes how promoting diversity has to be more than just a question of how we hire. Darragh Curran , our Chief Technology Officer, emphasizes how promoting diversity has to be more than just a question of how we hire. Investing in education.

Software Engineering 104

Software Engineering Engineering CTO Software 104

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. This is never going to work.”

CTO Hire 179

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 179

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 the people you hire and lead are absolutely essential to the success of your business. Recruit on your cultural values.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. First, hire a management coach to work with you as the company grows. 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.

CTO Coach 113

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 113

Chart Mogul

OCTOBER 17, 2024

"Singular events can distort reality, but ChartMogul helps us see the bigger picture", says Patrick Craston, Intruder's CTO. Intruder provides ongoing monitoring to find security weaknesses in networks, websites, APIs, and cloud setups. The leadership team also relies on ChartMogul to keep their decisions grounded.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payment Features Payments 52

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. We might’ve touched on this one too on the hiring and the people.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 1, 2023

⏰ Time at Buffer: 11 years, 6 months Andy was one of Buffer’s earliest hires. While he has worked mostly in iOS and apps, he’s also dabbled in marketing, too — Andy’s had a hand in building almost every part of the Buffer website! ” 3. ” 12.

VP of Engineering 124

VP of Engineering Part-Time CTO New CTO CTO 124

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. As co-founder and CEO of Lottie , he has built a trusted platform that helps families easily navigate, find, and finance later-life care.

Startup 59

Startup Scale Cybersecurity AI Search 59

Stax

AUGUST 14, 2024

Experienced payments and sales executive joins Stax leadership team to drive accelerated growth for Stax Connect and embedded payments. a leading payment technology provider, has appointed Jeremy Krahl as the SVP, ISV Business Development. His leadership will be integral as we continue to foster and grow this segment of our business.”

Payments 88

Payments Stax Payment Solutions Payment Services 88