SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. A sign to hire a real sales leader. Over the years at SaaStr we’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales, when it works, when it does, and how it moves the needle. To stick with founder-led sales longer than most folks do, i.e. past $1.5m-$2m ARR or so.

Sales Hiring 328

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 328

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team. Colin observed that “everyone’s calendar was full of customer calls,” providing an immediate, tangible signal of product-market fit.

Scale 191

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 191

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2021

Are you both willing to go 18–24 months before initial product market fit? But one of you has to lead on Customers/Sales/Marketing and the other likely on Product/Engineering for it really to work. Most products do not sell themselves. Better recruiter than you. Are you both 100% all-in?

Sales Recruiting 290

Sales Recruiting Engineering Product Marketing Marketing 290

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

Great product, driven team, good early product-market fit, great vision. But after that, it starts to break down when you have to recruit a true management team, and in many cases, additional capital. They’ll know … Who can best recruit a management team? Check, check, check and check.

Sales Recruiting 278

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 278

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development.

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 305

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 Hiring 223

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

Dig deeper on a lot of titles during recruiting. A "VP of Product Marketing" rarely knows anything about demand gen, ABM, etc. A "VP of Revenue" often knows nothing about inside sales or building a sales team. A "CRO" often doesn't want to do sales anymore. Sales is hard.

Sales Hiring 328

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Growth Hacking Product Marketing 328

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2023

We’ve discussed most before individually, but let me throw ’em together: It may well take 24 months to get to true product-market fit and Initial Traction. You have to love, or at least commit to, recruiting constantly. If you’re not willing to constantly recruit cross-functionality … you’ll never attract the talent.

Part-Time VPE 300

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 300

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 304

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 304

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.

Sales Recruiting 338

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Branding Product Marketing 338

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. Consider a try-and-buy.

Sales Recruiting 110

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Finance 110

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 21, 2020

The customer story typically originates from two founts; either the founders or product marketing. Regardless, the message should be promulgated through every channel: sales, marketing, press, recruiting, events, etc. The more you can spread the narrative, the greater the potential force for your business.

Sales Recruiting 347

Sales Recruiting Banking Engineering Customer Support 347

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

Product-Market Fit: There’s no shortcut –– finding the perfect target will always take time and hard work to get right. Finding the product-market fit is still the same iterative process. Recruitment: Getting the right talent onboard is a critical step. In fact, you need both to optimally grow your sales efforts.

Sales Recruiting 281

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 281

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. VP Engineering, VP Product, VP Sales, VP Customer Success, VP Marketing, or VP Operations. After establishing product market fit, the startups grow their management team to scale.

Sales Recruiting 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 255

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2019

Are you both willing to go 18–24 months before initial product market fit? But one of you has to lead on Customers/Sales/Marketing and the other likely on Product/Engineering for it really to work. Most products do not sell themselves. Better recruiter than you. Are you both 100% all-in?

Sales Recruiting 247

Sales Recruiting Engineering Product Marketing Marketing 247

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

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

When You Fall Out of Product-Market Fit. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. 5 Interesting Learnings from Duolingo at $360,000,000 in ARR. Top Podcasts This Week: 1. Top Videos This Week: 1.

Sales Recruiting 296

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 296

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 279

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 279

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 290

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 290

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. Prioritize demand discovery Demand is a strong indicator of product market fit.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 264

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

The backup of 2020 was great, 2021 comes in and somehow we have 600 unicorns and everyone can burn 500 million a year or have huge sales teams. But the meta point is this, if you’re recruiting in 2024, beware of the “Lost Generation” candidate and persona you may come across. It’s part of the job now.

Sales Recruiting 317

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 317

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

It takes a year to figure something out (sales, next-gen product, marketing, etc.), the next year to optimize it and get the first next-level managers in place, and then you want a couple of years to just scale the heck out of a great hire’s skillset. You need to spend 20%+ of your time recruiting.

Sales Recruiting 352

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Scaling 352

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2020

I meet with great VPs of Sales and Product in particular who are Ready. I’d like to recruit you to be a VP at one of my companies, but I get it. You’re going to have to be the VP of Sales, Customer Success, Marketing and probably Product in the early days. It’s time. I get it.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting SaaS Interviewing Consulting 363

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. Maia is especially well known for her thought leadership in developing best in class recruiting metrics. She was also selected for Inc’s 30 under 30.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Metrics SaaS Sales Funnel 100

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

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview Lizzie Mintus Founder and CEO of Here’s Waldo Recruiting and host of The Heres Waldo Podcast about her thoughts on: The most effective recruiting strategies for SMBs. So during the intro, I kind of talked about how you run here’s Waldo recruiting.

SMB 95

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 95

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. A great VP of Engineering that can just ship the product from spec with no drama, etc. That’s great. Engineering.

Part-Time VPE 321

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Finance 321

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 119

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 119

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

The most frequent mishire in startups is the first head of marketing. Many different disciplines fall under marketing’s purview. The question facing founders recruiting marketers is: which is the most important to prioritize? Each of these kinds of marketers have critical skills for a startup. Why is this?

Scale 255

Scale Startup Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 255

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. The head of product would prefer someone with product marketing experience. And when I say pillar, I mean like a product marketing problem, a growth problem, or brand marketing problem.

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 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 264

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2024

At the same time, you want to give trust and power to people who recruit, and you do that by ensuring they understand what the culture is. How Can You Tell When You Have Product Market Fit? Over time, you establish product-market fit and determine how to sell at scale. She still works at Remote.

Scale 264

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 264

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

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. In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Product. Head of Sales. Head of Marketing.

CTO Hire 290

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 290

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 225

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Engineering Product Marketing 225

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 they don’t, they never will , and they’ll never learn the product.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 306

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 21, 2020

The customer story typically originates from two founts; either the founders or product marketing. Regardless, the message should be promulgated through every channel: sales, marketing, press, recruiting, events, etc. The more you can spread the narrative, the greater the potential force for your business.

Sales Recruiting 248

Sales Recruiting Banking Engineering Customer Support 248

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

If you don’t think you need a great VP of Sales, Product, Marketing, Customer Success, and Engineering — then all that all that means is you’ve never worked with a great one. Head of Sales – What Corners Can I Cut? A bad VP of Sales is a total disaster. And to some extent, vice-versa.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 290