SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2025

Dear SaaStr: When Should I Hire Our First Sales Person, and Who Should I Hire? "The "The one cheat code to making your first sales hires. Because as a founder, you need to understand the sales process, the objections, and what resonates with your customers. Hire smarter.

Sales Hiring 185

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Pricing 185

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

GitHub, founded in 2008, is a leading platform for software development and version control that has made waves since 2018 with its AI Copilot. At this year’s SaaStr AI Summit, GitHub CRO Elizabeth Pemmerl shared how to bring AI products to market at scale successfully. The next horizon is scaling.

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Scale AI Scaling Marketing 261

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

With Databricks now one of the largest pre-IPO technology companies, with $10 billion of expected non-dilutive financing and a valuation of $62 billion, Ron’s insights are gold for any revenue leader looking to scale. His view is your sales team teaches your customers how to get value out of your product.

Scale 176

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 176

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2025

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Best Ways to Transition From The Founder-Led Sales Stage? Transitioning from founder-led sales to a commissioned sales team is one of the most criticaland trickysteps in scaling a SaaS business. You Never Get to Leave Sales. This is non-negotiableeven if you hate sales. Be specific.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Compensation 199

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2025

A little ways back Databricks VP of Sales Heather Akuiyibo joined SaaStr to share unexpected things that work well at Databricks GTM organization as well as some things that havent worked as well. Deep Dive: Unexpected Learnings Time Management as Competitive Advantage Most sales organizations guess how reps should spend their time.

Scale 202

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development 202

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2025

Workato’s SVP of Embedded Sales and Director of Solutions Marketing joined us at SaaStr Annual to talk about how to nurture customers — a great topic in general, but especially for embedded sales and APIs that can take a while to scale. The Second Most Important SaaS Hire? Customer Success. But the results?

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Churn 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2024

If you are sales-driven, youll usually stall out at $1.5m-$2m in ARR or so if you dont start growing the team to the next level, The First 50. Theres just physics here to get to $10m in ARR in a sales-led model, even a partially sales-led model: After $1.5m Youll need another sales rep at least per every $500k in new ARR.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS AI 261

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

5 Key Learnings from Scaling from 3 to 75 Go-To-Market Team Members in Less Than 12 Months The latest SaaStr CRO Confidential is out and Sam Blond did a great deep dive with Graham Mareno, VP of Worldwide Sales at Codeium. The 5 Key Elements of Codeium’s GTM Scaling Playbook 1. What is Codeium and Windsurf?

Sales Recruiting 242

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 242

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.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2022

Yes, sometimes it’s OK to hire a VP of Sales that everyone loves. At least 9 times out of 10, if everyone on the team loves a VP of Sales, it’s the wrong hire. And this especially matters because I often see CEOs picking between 2 final VP of Sales candidates. VCs love VP of Sales that sell up well.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 350

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2024

It’s not the crazy hiring market of 2021. He just can’t find enough great folks to hire. It earned them special attention from others on the hiring panel + company leaders… — Brie Wolfson (@zebriez) November 26, 2024 Everyone great is hiring. But almost everyone growing even at “pretty good” rates is hiring.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Scale Marketing SaaS 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What are the signs that an enterprise SaaS startup is ready to scale by hiring more sales people? In the early days, it’s simply that you have a few more leads than you can currently handle. Plus — following up on the 50 qualified leads from the month before. To a point. appeared first on SaaStr.

Sales Hiring 301

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Sales 301

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2025

Dear SaaStr: Should I Let My VP of Sales Go? I’m Not Sure I’ve Made The Right Hire 60 Days In? All Your VPs Really Need to Do is Tilt the Curve A great VP of Sales should show meaningful progress within one sales cycle. Taking Work Off Your Plate : Have they taken ownership of sales?

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Onboarding 168

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

It’s an incredible look back on scaling and more: Colin Jones, first Chief Revenue Officer at Wiz. 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 185

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 185

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2025

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Successful SaaS Leaders Without Sales Teams? Many that are self-serve and SMB-focused can start off without a sales team … for a while. But almost none stay without a sales team … forever. Yes, Atlassian since well past its IPO had almost no direct sales team. Maybe on Day 0.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 274

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2025

A good playbook for customer success is all about driving retention, expansion, and customer happiness while making it scalable: Hire Truly Product-Savvy Customer Success Managers at First Focus on hiring people who customer-focused product nerds to start. Measure time-to-value and/or time-to-go-live. Be careful here.

Sales Hiring 214

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Retention 214

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2024

I felt part of your core job as CEO was to assemble a management team, not complain about how you couldn’t get it all done. Or didn’t want to do sales. I still believe a CEO should “do it all” in terms of building a decent management team first before hiring a COO. Hiring a strong COO between Management Team 1.0

Sales Hiring 260

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Startup 260

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2025

It’s live on SaaStr.com itself and you can also access it here and talk to AI Jason about any of 1000s and 1000s of B2B, sales, SaaS, VC, etc. Here are some of the top ones: “How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days. Here are some of the top ones: “How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days.

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Sales Hiring AI Scale Compensation 258

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

What are the top 10 mistakes founders are still making today when hiring their VP of Sales? SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, has done numerous surveys now that confirm that a startling 70% of first hires don’t make it. In this post, we’ll delve into the common pitfalls founders encounter when hiring a VP of Sales.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 304

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2025

Top Posts: #1: 2025 And The Rise of the Mech AE (Account Executive) #2: 2025 Should Be Better Than 2024 For Almost All Leading Public SaaS Companies #3: 38% of Bootstrapped Start-Ups Have Solo Founders. But Only 17% of VC-Backed Ones Do. And 10%-12% of Ones That IPO. #4: appeared first on SaaStr.

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Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Revenue 279

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. And your first VP of Marketing just increases qualified leads by 25%.

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

This chart holds the secret to successful hiring of go-to-market teams. A stack rank of attributes within HubSpot account executive candidates that correlate to quota attainment. The pushier the account executive, the worse the result. I think it’s still one of the best books on how to repeatably scale sales teams.

Sales Hiring 349

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 349

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Sales-driven SaaS startups end up with about half their headcount in sales and marketing. Sales doesn't. One thing that sneaks up on you in SaaS is just how many sales, marketing and revenue professionals you are going to need: First it sneaks up on you in the early days because the initial tiny team become so efficient.

Scale 352

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 352

SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2025

We’ll hear from the CRO of $3B Clio (legal SaaS), the CEO and CRO of Flock Safety (police and safety SaaS), and dozens of others on how to scale their vertical SaaS industries and platforms. It takes getting out in the field, and creating a ton of true value — before the sale. #2. See you there! How Kyle does it here: #3.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SMB 189

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

When Lindsey joined, she inherited an already built-out self-serve/PLG model for small businesses and a mid-market and enterprise sales, customer success, and post-sales team. But at the start of its expansion play, Checkr’s enterprise motion failed, and sales cycles were slow, taking up to a year for $100k & up deals.

Revenue 293

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 293

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2025

Hire an Ex Post-Facto Co-Founder: This is someone who isnt technically a co-founder but acts like one. It could be a VP of Product, Sales, or Engineeringsomeone who takes ownership of a big chunk of the business and cares almost as much as you do. Prioritize Great Early Hires. If youre technical, hire someone who can sell.

Sales Hiring 247

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Engineering 247

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2021

There’s an exercise I’ve been through with many founders that are just getting to Initial Traction, say $1m-$2m in ARR or so, sometimes less, where I map out their future hiring. They are often a bit shocked at how many people they are going to need to hire as they cross $10m ARR. Talkdesk inside sales team at $10m ARR.

Sales Hiring 349

Sales Hiring Headcount Scale Engineering 349

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2023

On a sales front, how do you evolve past founder-led sales, or together with it, so that you can scale your organization? Founder-led sales can be an immense strength and rapidly become a limiting factor. PST, Laura Connell, Partner at Atomico, shares how to scale beyond founder-led sales on your path to Series B.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 277

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. A few signs I see again and again of VPs that can’t scale beyond $5m-$10m ARR: Lack of organization. But it doesn’t scale. They get it.

Scale 354

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 354

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2024

At this week’s Workshop Wednesday, Lucas Price, former SVP of Sales at Zipwhip and founder and CEO at Yardstick, shares his insights on how to hire and build a high-performing sales team. During that time, he wasted a lot of money on failed sales hires and decided to learn everything about hiring sellers.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 245

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2024

There’s always someone a few years ahead of you on the scaling journey who can share their lessons learned. Robbie O’Connor, the GM EMEA at Notion and the first European hire at Asana and Dropbox takes the stage at SaaStr Europa to talk about the building blocks required to scale GTM teams and operations. You can get this wrong.

Scale 310

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Innovation 310

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2024

Cloudinary VP of Developer Experience Sanjay Sarathy shares his journey to more than $100M and the lessons he learned along the way for building a PLG motion and an Enterprise sales motion. They didn’t initially envision being a large Enterprise sales organization. Let’s first start with how Cloudinary came to be.

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Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Development 312

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. In the early days, Revenue Per Lead is critical.

Sales Hiring 352

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 352

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

At SaaStr APAC 2023, Scott Pugh, VP of Sales at Figma, shared how to scale these two sales teams while building culture. Pugh’s strategy is simple, albeit not always easy: Recruitment — how to hire the best talent to scale your sales organization. Define your hiring profile. Hire talent magnets.

Scale 273

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 273

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2025

But how did they scale so quickly? Here are the five channels that worked for Rupa: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Social Proof and Trust Building Educational Partnerships and Rupa University Conferences and Event Sponsorships Outbound Sales and Data Quality Lets dive into each. Its about creating high-quality content at scale.

Scale 229

Scale AI Search Sales Hiring Acquisition 229

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Lucid is the leading provider of visual collaboration software with over 70M users worldwide. Stephanie Couzin, the VP of GTM Strategy and Ops, and Roderick De Greef, the VP of Sales and GM EMEA, share Lucid’s transition from a PLG company to a PLG and Sales-Led company. This is where product-led sales comes in.

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Scale Scaling Sales Hiring compliance 307

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

From startup to $500M CARR, Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth at Braze, shares how Braze scaled a growth and customer success team. In this AI moment we’re in, there are still many moments in scaling a company where intuition still matters. Every incremental hire with a small team matters, so it’s worth being clear on what you want.

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 291