SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to make that critical hire: the VP Sales. Because you’ll lose not just some incremental revenue, but potentially far more. All the second-order revenue you could have had (6x the initial lost revenue). You’ll end up with a crummy sales team under a mis-hire.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Engineering 360

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. I wanted to take a moment to explore the flip-side … a guide to why first-time VPs of Sales that finally get their shot — fail.

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SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

What was the first warning sign your VP of Sales wasn't going to work out? A lot of veteran SaaS revenue leaders protested, but most of them, upon reflecting on it, came to agree the point was right. A new VP of Sales doesn’t always double sales in 30 days — although it can happen in SMB sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 274

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

Sam Blond, the former CRO at Brex with 15 years in tech sales, took the stage at SaaStr Europa 2024 to share nine easy sales concepts that so many get wrong. Sam got his first job in tech sales as an SDR for Jason Lemkin’s company, EchoSign, which later sold to Adobe and launched his career. They did this right at Brex.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 290

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

” – Colin Jones, CRO Emeritus at Wiz You may have seen the news that Google is making its biggest acquisition — by far — of Cloud and SaaS security leader Wiz for a stunning $32 Billion (!). It’s an incredible look back on scaling and more: Colin Jones, first Chief Revenue Officer at Wiz.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 185

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.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 322

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

In the latest episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. For context – Ashley had previously helped Sam scale Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR as Senior Director of SDR.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 311

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, continues a mini-series on founder-led sales with Colin Zima, founder and CEO of Omni. The post SaaStr CRO Confidential: Omni Founder Colin Zima on the Power of Leveraging Your Network for Sales and Recruiting (Pod 658 + Video) appeared first on SaaStr.

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SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Justin Welsh, former SVP of Sales at PatientPop explains how he started in SaaS in 2009 as the second sales hire at Zocdoc. Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. Justin Welsh | SVP Sales @ PatientPop. Want to see more content like this?

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 332

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Ah the VP of Sales. The first post is What a Great VP of Sales Actually Does. The second post is a script for you to use (and modify as you see fit) – 10 Great Questions to Ask a VP Sales Candidate. Just so you know, there are 48 Different Types of VP Sales. The toughest hire. Such a high failure rate.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 364

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2021

One of the starkest differences I see between First Timers in SaaS and Second Timers is when they hire their VP of Marketing. Most of us can’t afford to hire a VPM 12 months before we have our first customer, and we can’t survive through 10 sales reps without one. In the early days, Revenue Per Lead is critical.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 352

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 10 Things to Know Before Starting a SaaS Company? It takes 7–10 Years in SaaS to Get Anywhere. And 99% of SaaS companies will need 7–10 years to get to $100m ARR and beyond. You have to love, or at least commit to, recruiting constantly. Some SaaS companies start off with huge TAMs, for sure.

Part-Time VPE 295

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 295

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

In SaaS, #1 most common misfire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof. Because in SaaS start-ups, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2020

It seems like everyone wants to be a SaaS founder these days. I meet with great VPs of Sales and Product in particular who are Ready. Start their own SaaS company. I’d like to recruit you to be a VP at one of my companies, but I get it. And another 6-12 to get any material revenues. It’s time.

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SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

But I thought I’d take a stab at the Top 10 Pieces of Classic SaaS Advice … that, in my experience at least, are usually Just Plain Wrong. If a VP of Sales can’t improve things in one sales cycle or less — she never will. In one sales cycle, or less. SaaS compounds. Not always, but usually.

Part-Time VPE 348

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 348

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. Flock Safety is a hardware-enabled SaaS company dedicated to stopping crime.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 255

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2024

On the first episode of the Angles and Insight podcast, SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Zapier CEO Wade Foster about the future of B2B SaaS in 2024 and beyond. He is a top VC in the industry and runs SaaStr, the largest SaaS event in the world. As a manager, you have to do things differently.

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Sales Recruiting AI Search B2B Sales Hiring 292

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

The best SaaS companies Lightspeed has seen in their portfolio are maniacal about defining these key metrics and tracking them with specific targets in mind on a consistent basis. Let’s use net dollar or net revenue retention as an example. By keeping very similar revenue goals in mind. Why do they do this? What does this mean?

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 299

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and 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. SaaS products get too complex to hack a product roadmap too long.

Part-Time VPE 310

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 310

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2024

Dear SaaStr: I’m Being Recruited by a Startup That Just Raised $5m. So how you can do your own diligence as the first senior sales exec going in? It’s likely too early to judge based on revenue and a Google Search. How Do I Vet Them? First, there’s probably something there if they raised $5m. At least, usually.

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SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. Make the revenue recur, I’m interested. Who is over 20?

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Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 284

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

What are the top 10 mistakes founders are still making today when hiring their VP of Sales? In this post, we’ll delve into the common pitfalls founders encounter when hiring a VP of Sales. 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. . #1: 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. This one is newer.

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SaaStr

MAY 31, 2021

” now we have a strong team, enough revenues to start taking things more seriously, and a global (if accidental) footprint. I’ve also invested in 24+ next-generation SaaS companies, mostly successes, and had a chance to watch and learn from them as well, with a new lens. Sales — Not Easier. Maybe more.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 361

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 18, 2019

Over the last decade or so, I’ve compiled a metrics sheet to summarise a SaaS business. Redpoint SaaS Metrics Template. The template is broken into six sections: People, Bookings & Revenue, Cash, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success. This section covers employee satisfaction, headcount, and recruiting metrics.

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Metrics Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount 250

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Conversations about the state of the SaaS market in 2022 are everywhere, and it can seem overwhelming for entrepreneurs and business leaders to make sense of everything. A New SaaS Playbook. In 2021, there was much less focus on efficiency and more on revenue metrics like ARR.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 260

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. ” There were no IPOs from December 2021 until Klaviyo a couple of months ago, but even Klaviyo still barely IPO’d at 800 million in revenue. It’s part of the job now.

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Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 313

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

Brendon Cassidy, my VP of Sales wrote a version of this piece a while back. I though an updated version of this would be good for founders thinking about hiring a VP of Sales … VPs of Sales themselves … and VPs-to-be to read — Jason, ed. … 10 Rules to Being a VP of Sales in a Startup.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 301

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2019

With all that behind you … let me challenge you to 10 SaaS New Year’s Resolutions. Enough with the excuses for not having hired your real VP of Sales, or that VP of Engineering, or whatever. Hire a real recruiter. It’s really all about deal size in most SaaS companies, not raw per seat or per unit pricing.

Part-Time VPE 325

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 325

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

They hired their first VP of Sales with a wonderful pedigree and experience at some of the hottest startups. because they needed to rebuild the sales team. They rebuilt the sales team and closed some big deals. Lesson #3: Revenue Is Funding It’s harder and harder to raise money, and startups need to have more revenue.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 293

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2021

I thought updating that list would create a useful checklist for things not to do in SaaS in the early days … since they are all avoidable. – My Top 10 Mistakes Starting An (Ultimately Successful) SaaS Company. – My Top 10 Mistakes Starting An (Ultimately Successful) SaaS Company. – Launching Too Early.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 274

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 300

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

What started as a simple WordPress blog in 2012 has now become the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. And SaaStr Europa brings 2,500+ SaaS execs, founders, and VCs together to Europe every summer. We were the first major SaaS event back in the SF Bay Area. SaaStr is turning 10!

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SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2020

There’s a common thinking that sales teams should be relatively high churn. That the bottom 15-20% of the sales team almost has to churn each year, because it’s survival of the fittest. And it clearly is true, in part, at SaaS companies beyond $200m in ARR. They’re often managed out, not fired, but same thing.

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SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

The list of problems is endless (this is one of the hardest parts of the job), but let me try to order a few of the biggest challenges roughly based on stage: Pre-Revenue: Finding a Truly Great Co-Founder That is Just as Committed as You. Then their collective revenues often only add up to Cappuccino money. This challenge never ends.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 284

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2022

Scaling your sales team can be one of the hardest things to do in SaaS. How can SaaS companies retain BDR/ SDR talent? What’s the best way to help your sales team navigate today’s changing markets and changing priorities? And what’s the right time to fill crucial sales leadership roles?

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 274

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

We’ve recently been posting polls on SaaStr’s LinkedIn account to get a feel for what SaaS companies are doing in the current environment. In the video below, he discusses the results and where he thinks SaaS companies are on track or need improvement. #1. This is particularly important for a VP of Sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 281

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

Recently, I met with a great SaaS founder doing about $1.5m No lead commit, or revenue commit. A head of sales that doesn’t recruit at least one strong rep in the first 90 days. A head of customer success that doesn’t own churn, or net revenue retention in the first 90 days. I can go on.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SMB Engineering 349