SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

Nothing matters but recruiting and using your personal network. Sam Blond, CSO at Brex explains why recruiting, networking and employee happiness is the key to this playbook on recruiting your sales team. Sam Blond | Chief Sales Officer @ Brex. I’m doing The Playbook To Recruiting Your Sales Team.

Sales Recruiting 196

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 196

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

As Colin describes it, “I went to the CEO and asked to generate more revenue and hire more people, which is counter-intuitive to the standard approach where revenue leaders may sandbag to over deliver and crush numbers.”

Scale 192

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 192

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

When building a list, try to define your potential customer as granularly as possible – size, location, industry, ideal buyer, sales process, technology stack, etc. This will allow you to be much more targeted with your messaging when reaching out and will help you optimize your sales funnel. Pricing is always evolving.

Sales Recruiting 326

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 326

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. The three things that led to ramping up sales at Flock Safety were: Achieving product-market fit.

Sales Recruiting 261

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 261

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Speakers share their playbooks on everything from achieving product-market fit to optimizing CAC:LTV ratios and scaling go-to-market strategies. Finding and recruiting top talent is consistently ranked as one of the biggest challenges for growing SaaS companies. Competitive Intelligence and Market Insights and New!!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. Sales execution deficiency manifests itself at roughly the same time as product market fit.

Sales Hiring 184

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Compensation 184

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Dedicated Slack Channel For Every Metric From the early days at Secureframe, they have had a dedicated Slack channel for every metric: every net new sale, every expansion, every churn, and every expense. Work with Great Executive Recruiters ”The first time I saw an invoice for an executive search, I think I had a heart attack,” Shrav joked.

Sales Recruiting 305

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 305

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. Q: Should Product Marketing Work for Product or Marketing?

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 291

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2021

Own product marketing. Own customer marketing (hopefully). Support and partner with sales. And part of being a good marketer is … well, marketing yourself. Many of the top CMOs are out there are always marketing. Many of the top CMOs are out there are always marketing. The real job.

Sales Recruiting 338

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Branding Product Marketing 338

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later. Let’s say you want to hire 10 people in the next 12 months.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

So an amazing founder CEO often can also be the VP of Sales, VP of Product, hack Marketing, fly across the globe as the VP of Customer Success, and sometimes, even continue to write some code. In SaaS, that means not hacking being a VP of Anything as soon as you hit Initial Traction and can afford to hire a full management team.

Part-Time VPE 322

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Finance 322

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

I see this all the time in marketing hires that come out of non-demand gen roles. Sometimes a marketing lead with a corporate marketing or even product marketing background actually signs up for a lead or other commit. A head of sales that doesn’t recruit at least one strong rep in the first 90 days.

Sales Recruiting 349

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SMB Engineering 349

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2019

If you must choose a long term headquarters for your startup, call an executive recruiter who focuses in that city. Ask her about each of the key roles your company will need to hire in the next 2 to 3 years. VP Engineering, VP Product, VP Sales, VP Customer Success, VP Marketing, or VP Operations.

Sales Recruiting 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 255

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2024

As it grows, it changes significantly, especially as you move from hiring people who can do everything to hiring more specialized roles. What is the CEO’s role in hiring during different stages? What is the CEO’s role in hiring during different stages? How Can You Tell When You Have Product Market Fit?

Scale 264

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 264

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success. Hire a leader who will not only agree with you but someone you can disagree with in a respectful and productive way. Each employee hired at Wiz is individually a personal brand.

Sales Recruiting 265

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 265

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

Once you get bigger, the best you can do for your lay employees is hire great VPs, create the best culture you can, and inspire your troops. It takes a year to figure something out (sales, next-gen product, marketing, etc.), It takes a year to figure something out (sales, next-gen product, marketing, etc.),

Sales Recruiting 352

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Scaling 352

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. She can be your CTO forever.

Scale 280

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 280

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. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales. If that’s true, then you should absolutely hire more salespeople.

Sales Hiring 307

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 307

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? David’s first foray into SaaS was in 1999 when he joined a startup that would become PayPal, starting as the product leader and later as the COO.

CTO Hire 291

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 291

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

If you’re running a smaller digital business, you may find it challenging to hire great talent. Larger technology companies can pay more, offer more benefits, and provide a more marketable brand on a candidate’s resume. So during the intro, I kind of talked about how you run here’s Waldo recruiting.

SMB 107

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 107

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. The CEO wants to hire someone with demand generation experience. The head of product would prefer someone with product marketing experience. What’s your advice when hiring a CMO? And so you hire for that.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Startup 263

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. Recruiting is easier, but the things that don’t change are customers don’t care.

Sales Recruiting 265

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 265

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

1: How Sales and Marketing Have Shifted Since 2020 Expectations and the types of people working in SaaS have shifted over the past few years, and much more in sales, marketing, and customer success. . #1: He had a friend help him hire an email marketer to send ticket emails to the events. There’s no choice.

Sales Hiring 307

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 307

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

The question facing founders recruiting marketers is: which is the most important to prioritize? Marketing expertise falls into three segments: product marketing, demand generation, and brand marketing. Each of these kinds of marketers have critical skills for a startup. Which should you hire first?

Scale 255

Scale Startup Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 255

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

How do you win with a high-velocity sales strategy in a fast-moving, competitive market? In a special session of Workshop Wednesday, Gorgias Founder & CEO Romain Lapeyre and Gorgias VP of Sales & Partnerships Aasif Osmany share their learnings, advice, and hacks for optimizing your sales process.

Sales Hiring 203

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 203

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 16, 2018

Despite the mountain of evidence contradicting the mantra of “if you build it, they will come”, it’s still extremely prevalent among product-first companies. In this article, you’ll learn how to: Understand the role of product marketing. Start creating your product marketing plan.

Product Marketing 223

Product Marketing Strategy Marketing Sales Recruiting 223

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

In this Ask Me Anything Part 1, Lemkin answers the questions: Many VCs talk about funding, yet you’re so focused on sales. Question #1: Why Are You So Focused On Sales When Other VCs Are Focused On Funding? That VP of Sales came out of Salesforce. Lemkin’s Hail Mary was hiring Brendon Cassidy when that first VP of Sales quit.

Outsourcing Services 292

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 292

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Emboldened by this seeming endorsement, I dashed off what turned into a lengthy email on interviewing and recruiting, a topic about which I am passionate not because I think I am good it, but because I think I am not. Thoughts on The Recruiting Process. Remember it’s a mutual sales process. Use work test samples.

Sales Recruiting 110

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Finance 110

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

For us, it’s about fixing this problem, serving the customer well, so a very service driven mindset, which I gave a talk on a few days ago here, has been a big part of Gusto and affected our hiring from the early days. Certainly, at YC where our version of hiring is basically choosing which founders to fund. Get tickets here.

VP of Engineering 300

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 300

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Solving High Volume, Low Conversion at Lattice Dini Mehta joined Lattice at $3M in revenue when it had just 10 people in seat for Go-To-Market and 7 salespeople. She was hired because they saw a bit of softening in new business growth, and she came to help diagnose what was going on and help scale the business.

Scale 279

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 279

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

Able to close first $1m in revenues (sales); or. Able to architect and lay out The Next Big Thing (product); or. Able to magically bring customers and users to almost any product (marketing). If the founder/CEO is a magician in one area, and is tenacious and driven, she or he can recruit the rest. engineering); or.

Sales Recruiting 226

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Engineering Product Marketing 226

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2023

The first goal of sales at a startup isn’t to bring in revenue — it’s to get customer feedback. I’ve spent the last year working to find product-market fit for my startup, Dock. I’ve used our sales process to iterate our way to product market-fit and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way.

Sales Recruiting 121

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

GTM 120: Avoid the AI Sales Skills Atrophy Trap with Peter Kazanjy Pete Kazanjy is a serial founder, and seasoned early stage Saas executive, advisor, and investor. He currently leads Atrium, makers of sales performance management software to help organizations measure and improve sales performance.

Scale 113

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring AI Search 113

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

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

From B2C consumer-focused tech to the next B2B enterprise cloud giants, B2B, and B2C technology companies are springing up left and right and sprinting toward multi-billion dollar valuations (whether on the private or public markets) faster than ever. What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)?

VP of Engineering 122

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 122

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2022

Jason Lemkin: You certainly can hire a whole content team and build 10,000 pieces of content, but I will tell you what I have always seen work is one incredible piece a week. Jason Lemkin: I’ll answer it, but are you thinking more on sales or technology or broadly speaking in the question? That’s a great example.

Scale 299

Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 299

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. The framework consists of three elements: product-market fit, go-to-market fit, and growth and moat.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226