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. They often hire a VP of Demand Gen Marketing even before they have their first paying customers. But it’s very, very easy to make the hire late. Second Timers know. But she can help.

Sales Hiring 352

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 352

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m He asked which to hire first. If you have a few nickels in the bank, and you somehow find a great VP a half stage or even full stage early, just hire her. Hiring is so hard as it is. Make the hire now. ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m More here: [link].

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

Dear SaaStr: I’m Starting as a New VP of Sales. A new VP of Sales can add value immediately by focusing on a few critical areas that drive results and demonstrate leadership from day one: Assess and Support Top Performers : A great VP of Sales will immediately identify the top-performing reps and double down on them.

Sales Recruiting 165

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Leadership 165

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2023

As the past few years have demonstrated, it’s wise to expect the unexpected, especially when it comes to hiring. In particular, hiring for your sales team is critical in an uncertain economic outlook. Additionally, sales professionals looking for a new role should choose their next company wisely.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Compensation 244

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

And how often is he recruiting? In fact, every single day he and his team go into their Recruiting War Room, and analyze every single possible recruit coming up the next four years. But in this phase — you need to be Head Recruiter yourself. At first everyone is sort of great at recruiting — by definition.

Sales Recruiting 266

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 266

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

Many mediocre hires were made to fill slots, reference checks not made, etc. If there really is a slowdown (and I’m not sure will be in SaaS), folks will have to work harder. So I’m not yet convinced times are really tougher for SaaS companies. Everyone talks about making 10x hires, and each hire being better than the last.

Sales Hiring 324

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 324

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to make that critical hire: the VP Sales. But when you make a mis-hire, it’s about the worst mis-hire you can make. You’ll end up with a crummy sales team under a mis-hire. We’ve posted a script to use when interviewing a VP Sales.

Sales Recruiting 360

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. Reason #1 is jumping to Stretch VP of Sales one stage too early. Not hiring people better than you. Do not do this.

Sales Hiring 359

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 359

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

There are two types of SaaS companies in the world: those that are category creators and the challengers of incumbent technology. At SaaStr APAC 2023, Scott Pugh, VP of Sales at Figma, shared how to scale these two sales teams while building culture. Let’s look at five tips to consider for successful recruiting.

Scale 279

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 279

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. 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. We’re just not far enough along in SaaS 3.0

Sales Hiring 291

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 291

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

One of the biggest challenges in scaling a SaaS company has always been VP and SVP level talent. The companies that create the SVPs you’ll need, especially in Sales and Marketing, are still mostly based in the SF Bay Area. But for now, if you are beginning to scale, aggressively recruit that Bay Area VP you always wanted to hire.

Sales Hiring 349

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 349

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2020

One of the biggest changes since we started SaaStr is the massive number of SaaS veterans out there. The decade-long run of next-generation SaaS start-ups, and the explosion since 2015 of SaaS unicorns and decacorns has led to a lot of experienced execs on the market. Because SaaS is hard. This is great.

Sales Hiring 304

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting SaaS 304

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2022

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales, and how you have to close the first 10 or so customers yourself, and how when you do go to hire your first sales rep — make sure you hire two. But how do you get those first few reps right, when you haven’t made the hire before?

Sales Recruiting 291

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Pricing 291

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2022

In SaaS, I think one of the biggest traps you can get yourself into as a founder is doing Low ROI things for one minute longer than you have to. But quickly, in SaaS, it becomes worse. Why didn’t we just hire another 3 guys in TechOps much, much. I was lucky to have a great hire who handled our first few large customers.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 300

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.

Sales Recruiting 297

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 297

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Director+ of Sales at Slack / Zoom / DropBox / Pick Your Brand Name SaaS Company. Because it’s not ARR growth or even an IPO alone that determines if a VP of Sales him or herself is great. And there were probably 100+ RVPs of Sales at that point. Because often, the managers were given a team, or a lot of it.

Sales Recruiting 318

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing 318

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?

Sales Recruiting 332

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 332

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.

Sales Hiring 316

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 316

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 195

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 195

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Recently, a good friend of mine running a Hot SaaS Start-up asked me if he should hire a particular VP of Product candidate I knew well. The team he’d be managing was a big thumbs up on him. Just don’t hire her. This was for a VP Sales position for a fast-growing SaaS company at about $4m in ARR.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting SaaS Sales 263

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

We’ve talked a ton on SaaStr over the years on how to make sure your VP of Sales and top hires really work out. We can pretty much summarize a lot of it into the following: Your VP of Sales should have lots of experience selling at your average ACV. for that type of sale. That they are the right ones.

Sales Recruiting 334

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 334

Tom Tunguz

JULY 25, 2020

But I see this company structure more frequently across SaaS startups. In interviewing great CMOs , the product marketing leader is the first marketer most startups should recruit, and often the first key mishire. By hiring two focused people, the startup is free to find the best person in each role. This makes sense.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 246

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.

Sales Recruiting 280

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 280

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. I’ve had to recruit Ph.Ds.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 259

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 (!). Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team.

Scale 190

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 190

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 240

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.

Sales Recruiting 260

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 260

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2021

We’ve talked a lot about hiring a VP of Sales at SaaStr , and if you hire a stretch VP of Sales (as most of you will) … how much you can stretch. A related question is — just how quickly can you gain the requisite experience to be a true first time VP of Sales? Had about 8 mos.

Sales Hiring 307

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting SMB Sales 307

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2021

We’ve talked a lot about hiring a VP, Sales. It’s just such a critical accelerate-or-decelerate decision for a post-Initial Traction SaaS company. We’ve talked about the 48 Different Types of VP Sales , What a VP Sales Really Does , and a Script to Use When Interviewing a VP Sales.

Sales Hiring 232

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Point of Sale Sales 232

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

JANUARY 31, 2022

Having learned from thousands of customers and prospects, Sarah Lash, Envoy’s head of enterprise sales, will talk about what it takes to guide and scale enterprise sales programs during an uncertain future. In my first six months at Envoy , I grew the sales team from six to 17. Combine Strategies To Drive Sales.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Unparalleled Networking Opportunities SaaStr Annual brings together thousands of SaaS, Cloud and AI executives, founders, VCs, and industry leaders under one roof across our 40+ acre campus, May 13-15 in SF Bay! Finding and recruiting top talent is consistently ranked as one of the biggest challenges for growing SaaS companies.

Sales Recruiting 193

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 193

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.

Sales Hiring 307

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 307

TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.

Generative AI 443

Generative AI CTO Hire AI Sales Recruiting 443

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2021

It’s a bit of a bummer than oftentimes, once you finally hire a few great VPs at $1m, $2m, $3m ARR … and they do a great job … that they then don’t scale. Either by yourself, or with a Sales Ops / Marketing Ops / Some Sort of Ops leader under you. Inability to hire great Directors / managers under them.

Scale 354

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 354

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. Hire someone that can get it done.

Part-Time VPE 348

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 348

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. Leverage Your Network First When you’re ready to hire your first AE, don’t create a job posting and see who comes in. Instead, leverage your network.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media Sales 246