SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

In SaaS, once you have even a few million in ARR, the #1 challenge is recruiting top-tier VPs and building a truly top-tier management team: SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales.

Scale 279

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 279

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2021

Did you hire a good enough VP? 4 part test: – who great did they hire in the first 60 days? – did they take part of the job off your plate? If they don't pass the 4 part test, they aren't good enough. Hiring your VPs as a founder is tough. Sales — for a VPS.

Part-Time VPE 250

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Metrics 250

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. A Rockstar engineer really is 10x better than the next tier. And a Rockstar VP is really what you need in every position. So I’d hire earlier here rather than wait. The very best of the best. It’s true.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 290

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

A VP of Sales and Success A VP of Sales and Marketing A VP of Sales and Anything Else. Is usually not really a VP of Sales. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had to recruit a lot of types of folks over the years where my domain knowledge was limited. You get the picture.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 259

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2023

Ok now that some time has gone by I can reflect a bit more thoughtfully here. My top mistakes as a SaaS founder/CEO: Not convincing the very, very, very best VPE I knew to join as our VPE. I had a great CTO, but I also needed a truly great VPE to scale past $10m ARR and deal with all those issues. Selling the company.

Part-Time VPE 246

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting CTO Scale 246

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

But I think the biggest, #1, mistake successful first-time entrepreneurs in SaaS make time and time again these days is they micromanage too long. I think it’s a byproduct, in part, of the fact that founders are just so much better these days. Engineering. Go hire them. In every single function.

Part-Time VPE 321

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Finance 321

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales. But most of us are first-time founders, or close to it. But most of us are first-time founders, or close to it. Veterans of the SaaS journey.

Part-Time VPE 282

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 282

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

And if your team knows how to spend it, correctly — find a way to get them the capital they need to grow even faster than plan. A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 290

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2019

We then had our own mini rocketship, hitting challenges and being acquired, and then being part of an IPO. But I got to part of the management team and make mistakes, and work cross-functionally with the other leaders and managers. Third, I then managed a small team. And I learned to recruit.

Part-Time VPE 206

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 206

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2019

Pick a few that work for you: Get That Key VP Hire Done in Q1. Enough with the excuses for not having hired your real VP of Sales, or that VP of Engineering, or whatever. Hire a real recruiter. Drop other stuff to get this hire done. But anyhow — in January, find a way.

Part-Time VPE 328

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 328

SaaStr

AUGUST 23, 2022

My general learnings: By 20-30 employees, you should have 1-2 good managers in place such that at least 50% of the company can run based only on weekly staff meetings, 1-on-1s, and “grab me when you need me-s” E.g., a great first VP of Sales that can just handle sales. management team by 50 employees or so.

Part-Time VPE 271

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 271

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

No one has time to have coffee with all of those folks. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. But you have to see progress in one sales cycle. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 242

The Angel VC

JANUARY 4, 2015

At the beginning of December we had the idea that it would be cool to put together a "recruiting advent calendar" with job openings from within the Point Nine Family. Contentful has an open position for a Sales Manager Referral bonus: A weekend trip to Berlin! Do you know a VP of Marketing for Gengo ? Tweet it!

Sales Hiring 133

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Engineering 133

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2019

And that’s really good when you’re scaling part of the team that looks like yourself. So if you’re an engineer and you need more engineers, having a network of engineers is an awesome thing. You don’t know where to find them. You guys are awesome. You don’t know how to interview them.

Merchant Services 274

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 274

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2019

And that’s really good when you’re scaling part of the team that looks like yourself. So if you’re an engineer and you need more engineers, having a network of engineers is an awesome thing. You don’t know where to find them. You guys are awesome. You don’t know how to interview them.

Merchant Services 220

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 220

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

We’ll have some time. It sounds minor or technical, but if you want to due diligence on a human being, I get to do it a few 100 times a year. I used it in kind of my breakfast pre warm-up, the crazy times we’re in. From Satya from Homebrew, we just heard that seed’s at an all time high.

Investment 213

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 213

Outseta

MAY 8, 2020

I find that refreshing. Beyond just being smart, I’ve routinely come across people in tech that are tenacious, objective, and have high emotional intelligence—so much so that I often find myself thinking, “It’s too bad so many of these smart people are building email marketing software!”

Part-Time VPE 102

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 102

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 11, 2019

Pricing is an incredibly important part of any SaaS product’s go-to-market strategy. At Hired, we started out with a transactional model that was—at the time—a super disruptive approach and one of our key differentiators. I’ve had roles in almost every function from sales to product to customer success.

Sales Hiring 40

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Technical Review 40

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2019

But with it comes immense benefits and competitive advantages such as the diversification of ideas, speedier product development, and representation in important regions and time zones. We got a chance to celebrate our initial public offering on the New York stock exchange back in September, which was a really exciting time for me.

Engineering 184

Engineering Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 184

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

356: Pete Kazanjy is the Co-Founder @ Atrium, the startup providing proactive, always-on insights for sales operations, managers, and leaders. Alongside Atrium, Pete is also the Founder of Modern Sales Pros, a community of 15,000 focused on sales operations and sales management. Stop asking questions.

Part-Time VPE 288

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 288

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2021

Ep: 413: Join four-time Founder and CEO Auren Hoffman as he breaks down how businesses can become the right model for explosive growth, emulate their strategy, and join the path to Unicorn potential in eight simple, hand-made steps. So hopefully we’ll have a lot of time for questions. This is also true with people you hire.

Part-Time VPE 279

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Outsourcing Services 279