SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team. This practical, observable metric drove more decision-making than sophisticated dashboards or forecasting models.

Scale 191

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 191

Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2021

In terms of time cost to the startup, a failed executive hire is roughly similar, 9 months. That’s a reason the Redpoint SaaS metrics template includes Glassdoor score. The better the management hires for a business, the greater candidates' interest to work for a company. That’s at the individual contributor level.

Sales Hiring 197

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Branding 197

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. Live: SaaStr Workshop Wednesday with Battery Ventures on SaaS Metrics.

Sales Recruiting 296

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 296

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.

Benchmarks 160

Benchmarks Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 160

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 22, 2015

On December 2, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Maia Josebachvilli , VP of Strategy and People at Greenhouse, a fast growing recruiting software company. Before Greenhouse, Maia founded Urban Escapes, a DC-based startup she sold to LivingSocial. She was also selected for Inc’s 30 under 30.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Metrics SaaS Sales Funnel 100

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.

Sales Hiring 317

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 317

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2022

Investments I've made that didn't work out: – Momentum investment – CEO a bit of bulls**t artist – CEO good at sales but weak product team / CTO. Some sales-y, some very technical. CEO good at sales, but CTO not that great. — Jason 2022 SaaStr Annual Sep 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) August 6, 2022.

Investment 312

Investment Sales Recruiting CTO Startup 312

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. The go-to-market segment worked together on key metrics across the revenue board. For this, they made their BDRs laser-focused on behavior-based signals, ICP, and recurring processes to help them become account executives. .

Scale 241

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 241

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.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 306

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

So read on, and hopefully, your SaaS sales journey will be less about trial and error and more about steady progress toward success. Whats important to note is that each model targets a distinct customer persona and, therefore, has a unique approach to the customer journeyfrom brand awareness to sales and, ultimately, conversion.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

Check out this 2018 Europa session with Guillaume Princen, Head of France and Southern Europe @ Stripe, where he talks about the metrics you need to be focused on in your startup. If you don’t have the time to watch the whole session, here are the main metrics you should be mindful of. MRR, obviously. Lifetime value.

SaaS Payments 246

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 246

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. If you’re hiring a sales leader, you don’t pass up an awesome sales leader that has a killer track record of closing deals just because in their previous company they sold success software, and then with your company, they’re going to sell MarTech.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Startup 263

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 240

Kellblog

MARCH 17, 2020

Rephrasing Lewis Carroll, “if you don’t know what you’re recruiting for, any candidate looks great.” ” I liken executive recruiters to Realtors. ” That know-not-what, by the way, is that it’s for sale. Let’s switch to executive recruiting. Sound judgment and maturity.

Sales Recruiting 86

Sales Recruiting Sales Enablement Startup Pricing 86

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.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 264

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2021

– did their #1 key metric improve? Or if you hired someone that talked the talk, but isn’t the right fit for your startup? 50% of the job of a real VP is recruiting. Criterion #2: Did their #1 key metric improve? But you can expect in the first 60 days for one key metric to improve.

Part-Time VPE 252

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Metrics 252

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2024

Back then, remote first was a recruiting advantage. The way the co-founders looked at the stages in the early days of no funding and a community-focus were: Step 1 – No sales or customers, only building freely available open-source software. All they sold was the visualization layer with no sales team. Today, not so much.

Scale 297

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 297

OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups. It’s an extremely competitive market filled with hundreds of “hot startups” calling on all of the same candidates. It’s an extremely competitive market filled with hundreds of “hot startups” calling on all of the same candidates. It’s a lot.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 3, 2017

Every startup’s sales commission plan is different. But it’s key to understand the theory and the benchmark data that governs the creation of sales commission plans to create a good one for your business. Sales compensation is communicated in OTE, On Target Earnings. At the upper end, they spent 11.5%

Sales Recruiting 160

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Data Sales 160

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2021

“The 5 things that kill startups after their seed rounds with Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator” A SaaStr classic from the last SaaStr Annual. #4. “The 5 Metrics You Should Track to Maximize Your Company’s Valuation with Tomasz Tunguz” A great session from the recent SaaStr Build with Tomasz. #9.

Sales Recruiting 191

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Scaling 191

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 18, 2024

Jonathan Moss (EVP at Experity) showcased an Account Plan GPT that streamlines sales and marketing account research for outbound efforts. Examples of automating workflows to solve ongoing challenges: Everyone shared use cases they’re trying for sales account research and lead generation workflows. Link to GPT.

Sales Recruiting 109

Sales Recruiting Software Review Scale AI 109

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

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). One could almost say that CAC and CLTV are for a SaaS company what wholesale price and sales price are for a retailer. Trial-to-paying-account conversion rate.

Sales Recruiting 155

Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

There’s a time and a place for it, but a startup, the lifeblood, is getting s**t done. When we do all hands meetings, we go through every KPI, every metric, ARR, margin, with every Gustee. I want to come be your VP of sales and, you’re going to meet me for the first time. We are all builders. Talk is cheap.

VP of Engineering 299

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 299

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

An open discussion with Sam Blond, CSO at Brex, and Kristen Habacht, VPS at Atlassian, about adjusting their sales process during Covid-19. Kristen Habacht runs EDR sales at Atlassian, which I got a check today, $40 billion-$50 billion company. She manages a huge global team. Four, people in the sale? Jason Lemkin: None.

Merchant Services 265

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 265

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

I started a software company in college to make it easy to update websites called Content Management Software Now, and I had this idea for Pardot, I wanted to make it easy for marketers to run campaigns online and measure their results. SalesLoft, why was that Pardot, I tried to recruit this guy, Kyle Porter, to come run sales at Pardot.

Sales Recruiting 202

Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 202

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

It’s an approach that’s served him well along the road to building the HubSpot sales team, where he was CRO for nine years. That experience led to his bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. Yet in Mark’s experience working with and mentoring startups, he’s found that many entrepreneurs go with intuition over information.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

Kellblog

MAY 10, 2021

In this post, I’ll present what I view as the minimum sales management framework for an enterprise SaaS startup — i.e., the basics you should have covered as you seek to build and scale your sales organization [1]. Pipeline management rules, with an optional stage matrix. Quarterly metrics.

Sales Hiring 116

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Enterprise 116

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2017

How much revenue do you want to book for your SaaS startup next quarter? It’s another thing altogether to have the sales team staffed to close that amount of business. The bookings capacity of the business is the amount of business a sales team should book in a certain period. So does recruiting time.

Sales Hiring 124

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 124

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

Opening video: Hey, all these startups, they have a lot of trouble getting corporate credit cards. Anu: So, without further ado, Henrique, I know that when you first applied to YC, you actually applied with a VR startup idea, but the video showed all about credit card. Expense management was something people care about.

Sales Hiring 218

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 218

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2019

Lloyed : Startup-. Keith : The other thing someone said to me that really resonated and has become an important lesson is you can raise the odds of success at any startup from the very early days from something like the proverbial one to 10 percent that people talk about to probably 30 to 40 percent just by changing the team composition.

Merchant Services 274

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 274

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2022

We took the series A, interesting enough, the first executive hired by, thanks to the sales coaching, actually was marketing. What we do is look at all those metrics and our hope, goal is that every one of them continues to show this. We do have a network of recruiters. The technology is perfected. We added 0.8

Sales Hiring 279

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 279

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

One of the hardest but least spoken about transitions in a startup’s life is crossing people management chasm. At the outset of the startup, there might be three people, then eight, then fifteen. As they grow, startups often create ad hoc managers I call team leads. Team leads manage 3 to 5 people.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Scale 100

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

To some extent, if you have the hottest startup in the world, the full package, you can play some games with investors. 99% of startups aren’t that. For 99% of startups, when you want money, tell VCs you want money. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” But you have to see progress in one sales cycle.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 242

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

In fact, Peter Thiel wrote about brand as a core asset of the best startups in his recent book, Zero to One. This long term view shapes the culture of a startup’s workplace and reinforce values that will attract talented people whose mission aligns with the business. They capture part of the concept, but not the essence of it.

Sales Recruiting 113

Sales Recruiting Startup Branding Acquisition 113

Baremetrics

JUNE 30, 2021

You've got a brilliant SaaS startup idea. A startup financial model is the plan. In fact, we've already built the SaaS financial model you'll actually use — but let's take a look at why this is especially important for SaaS startups. 1 What Is a Startup Financial Model? What Is a Startup Financial Model?

Startup 98

Startup Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Deferred Revenue 98

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 7, 2015

LinkedIn attracts hundreds of millions of consumers to post resumes online and sells this data and access to its audience to advertisers and recruiters and salespeople. Recruiters buy Talent Solutions to find, connect with and acquire talented people. In 2007, online sales generated 63% of revenue.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Benchmarks Metrics SaaS 100

Sales Hacker

MAY 20, 2021

You should approach this tactically with honed and consistent metrics. You need to measure and repeat so you and your sales team only put effort into promising prospects abroad. Develop a focused sales approach. More than any other time, with limited travel, companies must be very focused in their international sales approach.

Scale 119

Scale Metrics Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 119