SaaStr

JULY 13, 2020

Some of my best investments had zero revenue the first 2 years or even longer. Great CEO But Mediocre CTO. Sometimes, you can grow quickly at $1m-$2m+ ARR growing quickly even with a mediocre CTO. A mediocre CTO can’t keep up. That they need to burn too much for each new $1 they bring in. Cofounder conflict.

Technical Cofounder 305

Technical Cofounder Investment New CTO CTO 305

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Customer count growing as fast as revenue — a good sign for the future. Some leaders like Slack have seen the same, but most Cloud leaders at scale with high NRR end up getting more and more of their revenue from their existing base, not new customers. CEO Spencer Skates owns 8.5%, CTO Curtis Liu 8.0%. This is rare.

Scale 307

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 307

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

Combining Strong Growth With A New Level of Efficiency. Revenue Up 30%, but Employee Count Only up 10%, to 7,055. At the end of the day, in SaaS, efficiency really comes from growing revenue faster than headcount. But maintaining 100%+ NRR allows them to grow meaningful faster in revenue than in customer count, even from SMBs.

Scale 322

Scale SMB Headcount New CTO 322

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2021

There’s so much incredible new content on the SaaStr YouTube Channel and podcast — check it all out here ! And with 20+ sessions from the recent SaaStr Enterprise to dig into alone, as well as an incredible new session with the CEO of Klaviyo. OK — now on to The Top 10. The 10 most watched videos of the week.

New CTO 256

New CTO CTO Cloud Enterprise 256

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2023

A great CTO usually can solve this problem just in time to save the customers, but without one, revenue stalls. Sometimes, in a new or emerging category you can be slow at first. The best CEOs and founders are just fast. Fast to iterate, fast to learn, fast to fix. But you usually at least have to speed up after that.

Startup 259

Startup New CTO CTO Investment 259

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 28, 2024

On Monday, at TC Disrupt Colin Zima CEO of Omni , Jordan Tigani CEO of Motherduck , Daniel Svnova CEO of Superlinked & Toby Mao CTO of Tobiko Data who are leading the evolution of the Post Modern Data Stack discussed the trends they are seeing. Customers are excited about new architectures that significantly reduce cost.

Trends 243

Trends Data New CTO CTO 243

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

1,000 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue Leaders, and VCs will join us for 1.5 The goal is to help each other learn something new, find mentorships, create partnerships, and exchange strategies. days of tactical content, networking, and epic evening events when the Cloud comes to Singapore.

VP of Engineering 293

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder Outsourcing Services CTO Coach 293

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

We did it by focusing on second-order revenue to generate low-cost leads, and by taking in 110%+ of our MRR each month in cash. 5/ Moving from CTO-led -> VPE-led dev team. This is pretty well understood today, but was fairly new to me. And a high close rate, and more revenue per lead. Less and you under-invest.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

. “That it was much easier to do more in order to keep that customer than to get a new “top” customer. That you can’t have a majority of y our revenue dependent on one customer. ” — Echeyde Cubillo, Co-founder and CTO, Acme Ticketing. ” — Siva Narayanan, Co-founder/CTO, FyleHQ.

CTO Hire 325

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 325

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

States are consistently looking for ways to generate more tax revenue, and a fast-growing company (or industry) can provide excellent opportunities. Our first introduction to sales tax was dealing with it as a liability,” CTO and Co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson says. “We It’s part of doing business!

Payment Services 335

Payment Services compliance SaaS Payments Scale 335

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

Revenue leaders were able to network once again. Fast forward to today, and there is an amazing amount of B2B-centric content out there, and many others have put together amazing events around the hard-learned lessons of scaling revenue and scaling SaaS companies. VCs were able to meet with Founders. Now a staple!)

Scale 307

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 307

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2023

What public (and private) SaaS companies are valued at as a multiple of revenue. Don’t count deals that haven’t closed as revenue. Another month of progress, another set of new customers, etc. Share up front why your first CTO left. And really worst of all is multiples. And low multiples make fundraising hard.

New CTO 300

New CTO CTO Banking Cloud 300

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

It’s too much to learn on the fly for most new VPs of Sales. So, as leaders, you have to start from scratch and hire new people who weren’t trained in horrible ways or hire people who have been around long enough to know that sales are hard and deals can take six months to close. UiPath took ten years to get to $1M in revenue.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2021

They know how to take an established brand and grow it faster, and build or expand a new core offering around it. But Slack is past $1B in annual revenues with a dominant brand and very high net revenue retention (120%+). Salesforce may not be great at creating brand new things anymore.

VP of Engineering 189

VP of Engineering New CTO CTO Acquisition 189

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Since 2010 we’ve seen more startups, funds, and capital than ever before, but with this drastic increase, investors are seeing unexpected new trends reshaping the future of the industry. The panel that we are in is called Is Seed the New Series A, and this is a question that I’ve been asking informally yesterday and today.

New CTO 179

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 179

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) Check that out here. What’s your most recent disclosed investment?

Management 273

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 273

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah shared with us how they got there — and the top mistakes they made — just 3 quarters after their IPO. We have someone that probably 98 percent of you know virtually or socially in some sense, Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

Some are decades-old problems, while others have emerged from this new world we’re in. The product marketer doesn’t make sense between $2M and $10M in revenue. 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.

CTO Hire 209

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 209

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

You’re not building a product or getting any new customers. Q: What are the Odds of Success for a Startup to Hit $100M in Revenue? Some of these had a little revenue, and others had none. Get a good CTO and commit to understanding your market and staying in the game. Product marketing is neither marketing nor product.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 3, 2024

More time on LinkedIn = More engagement = More ads seen/clicked = More revenue. Tagging your partner organizations, influencers, or thought leaders at your company (your CEO, CTO, etc.) If I left each day to find something new to publish on social, I would have struggled to keep up and certainly would have missed some days. 

Social Media 105

Social Media B2B Interviewing New CTO 105

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

We identified some “ known unknowns” too; problems we needed to solve, but didn’t know how just yet – like integrating the new region into our billing system. And so our former CTO and co-founder Ciaran Lee decided we were just going to start. We introduced virtually no new software, services, or approaches into our Europe buildout.

Scale 234

Scale New CTO Engineering CTO 234

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

But as time went on, we shared lessons, what best practices were in customer success and revenue retention and all these things are, right. Jason Lemkin: I think I noticed a pattern, and I wrote it up a couple of years ago and refreshed it, and then I’ll add a new anecdote. And the best CTO I know in the world is the CEO.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

Hitenism

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

run rate business and has made up for an incredible 67% of Amazon’s operating revenue last quarter. In a Quora thread , Ian McAllister, Director of Airbnb and former GM of Amazon describes the process: “ For new initiatives a product manager typically starts by writing an internal press release announcing the finished product.

AWS 189

AWS New CTO Scale CTO 189

USIO

JUNE 28, 2024

is committed to empowering businesses to build powerful enterprise grade applications without the need for extensive coding expertise,” said Ben Hubbard, CTO at ues.io. This will allow our users to streamline their workflows, improve customer experiences, and unlock new revenue opportunities.” application.

Payments 130

Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payment Services 130

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

What sets apart some of the most successful, high-growth companies we see today—Slack, Dropbox, Atlassian—has been their ability to tap into and master a new GTM strategy: B2C2B. We saw inside the company this tension between our classroom business and this new B2C digital business, and we knew we had to make a decision.

B2B 173

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 173

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

So for us it’s users, which drives our data and then employers, which ultimately will drive our revenue. And by the time the song comes out, you’re not even going to really appreciate it because you’ve written 20 new songs, and those are the ones that you can’t wait to hear.

Marketplace as a Service 113

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 113

Sales Hacker

MARCH 25, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we interview Simmone Taitt , CEO of HeartSpace Consulting , and a longtime sales leader and consultant in the New York community. How to Increase Revenue by 19% [36:37]. I’m an advisor at some of the best tech accelerators here in New York. And on Stitcher. Show Agenda and Timestamps.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring Revenue CTO Coach CTO Hire 93

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

I’ve learned so much … most importantly, I think, that I love being a fractional CTO, a role that allows me to make use of everything I’ve learned and experienced over a long technology-focused career. What’s changing, rather, is the entity I’m delivering through – a new company called Crafty CTO.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Headcount 40

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

So even the freshest new SaaS startup celebrating their 50th customer may find themselves dealing with sales tax in multiple states. . Last but not least, if your sales tax noncompliance gets too out of hand, dealing with multiple states’ sales tax laws means that 46 state departments of revenue can potentially come after you for back taxes.

Merchant Services 202

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 202

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Well, in the past several years, there’s been a tremendous number of companies that have built specifically for developers and use this as a way to get into these new markets, to displace incumbents and disrupt the competition. You have the opportunity to upsell new features and capabilities to them. The contract size grows.

Outsourced Development 210

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 210

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Many people are doing great, even private companies like Netskope, which are growing over 30% at $500M in revenue. Canva is growing at 40% and has a revenue of $2.3B. Klaviyo is growing 42% at $750M, coming up on a billion in revenue, and number one in the Shopify ecosystem. Samsara is growing 39% at $1.1B. What happened?

CTO Hire 144

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 144

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Last night I read this question on Quora : In general terms, what is the ideal size and make-up of a team for a pre-revenue SaaS startup? It's a question I've been pondering about a lot already, and seeing it posted on Quora prompted me to try an answer. I think the second part of the question is more important.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

Stax

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

As CTO, Sundt will accelerate the delivery of new products, features, and functionality that unlock and drive increased value for Stax customers and partners. As CTO of Clearent by Xplor, he helped grow its transaction processing from $2 billion to over $20 billion annually. To learn more about Stax, visit staxpayments.com.

CTO 88

CTO Stax Payments Merchant Services 88

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

When the company was first founded, two of its co-founders, Wade and CTO Bryan were freelancing on web projects and soon noticed a pattern around their clients who were asking for more and more integrations built from one app to another This is where the idea for Zapier was born. The Deep Dives ??.

Payment Services 113

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 113

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

As you said, people take it hard if suddenly you say, “Hey, this is your new EVP. X amount of revenue, X amount of churn, X amount of growth in marketing, etc. 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. That’s it.”

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

FastSpring

DECEMBER 22, 2020

On average, our customers’ revenue grew by nearly 20% relative to 2019. With this new investment, we are already increasing our pace of innovation and have a very exciting roadmap of things to come over the next 12 months. We added three new executives to our team. We helped facilitate record growth for our customers.

Payment Methods 131

Payment Methods Payment Services Payment Solutions Payments 131

Stax

AUGUST 19, 2024

Neiconi brings more than 15 years of experience in risk and fraud management leadership to his new role, with a deep background in developing fraud risk solutions, risk data collection and analysis, and compliance. Stay Payments , a leading payment technology provider, has appointed Valentin Neiconi as Chief Risk Officer.

Merchant Services 88

Merchant Services Stax Payments Payment Services 88