SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Turns out a founding team of six MBAs creating a full suite of products sold solely to SMBs can become a multi-million dollar public company in nine years – and continue growing rapidly ($77.6 Dharmesh : …said, “This is a very bad idea. million in 2013 to $115.9 million in 2014.). This is what we did.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

This is season two of Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on moving from startup to scale-up. Tara and her team used it to take a deep dive into the customer’s journey through the product and make a focused effort to truly understand each step along the way. But, ultimately both teams have a shared end goal: increasing revenue.

Retention 34

Retention Scale Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 34

Baremetrics

AUGUST 29, 2021

Let’s say your ICP is a web developer running a startup on the East Coast. This will result in poor open and response rates. To prospect for startups, Crunchbase Pro 's database is the place to go. Apollo’s full plan comes with an SMB level price tag; as a startup, you probably want the basic plan.

Scale 97

Scale Startup Sales Hiring Sales 97

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. That means your focus should be on building the right customer profile and developing precise messaging to reach them.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Lots of us fantasize about moving upmarket, but are unsure of how to get started, is it just a matter of hiring a team of SDRs and getting them to hit the phones? So as Lauren sort of alluded to, we started by focusing on SMB’s. So everything you do at a startup you’re treating it like an experiment, right?

Underperforming Technical Team 218

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SMB Enterprise 218

How To Buy Saas

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Effective sales teams are also 81% more likely to be consistent CRM users , underscoring how vital these systems are for success. By the end of this guide, youll have a clear understanding of each platforms strengths, weaknesses, and ideal use cases. Rapid SMB adoption with 200K+ customers. Lets dive in!

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Software Review 52

Chart Mogul

MAY 30, 2019

Ingmar, our VP of Customer Success, and our support team cracked the code on first response time and measuring NPS. As we grow, we’re able to spend more time developing the proactive tiers of the pyramid without de-prioritizing a strong foundation of fast, helpful ticket replies and features that delight.

Underperforming Technical Team 78

Underperforming Technical Team Development Strategy Management 78

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

You might say it’s one of the strongest advantages a startup has. But as the business becomes more successful – and there are resources to build a support team – additional layers begin to separate executives from their customers. Here are five quick takeaways: Most sales and support teams talk about their jobs as a funnel.

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

She manages a huge global team. It has a portion of its revenue that’s very sensitive to the economy and a lot of startups in the customer base, good and bad, right? Sam will have a lot of interesting perspectives on how he manages his team through these times. Four, people in the sale? Jason Lemkin: None.

Merchant Services 259

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 259

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

We’re still learning what world we’re in — some people interview over Zoom, some are focused on how to build teams in the current age, and many are dealing with a weird overhang from the SaaS explosion of 2021, quiet quitting, layoffs, and team turnover. The last thing a VP of Sales wants to do is start without a team.

Sales Hiring 157

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 157

Casey Accidental

MARCH 29, 2022

Non-sexy things include general user experience improvements, performance, developer velocity, infrastructure, technical debt, and, fortunately less than it used to be, growth. But I urge everyone I can in product to develop the intuition to support these initiatives without making teams jump through hoops to justify these investments.

Investment 139

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Scale User Experience 139

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

In my experience, getting caught up in shiny objects (like great numbers) during the hiring process is a straight line to Disasterville, and when the cost of a bad hire is painfully significant , it pays to take a measured approach. Also: What are the top performers in my current team doing? This is a team effort.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 125

Sales Hacker

APRIL 25, 2019

Early in my career, I saw firsthand how a $20M funded company went from startup to NASDAQ IPO to being delisted in the span of three years due to frivolous spending (but that’s a story for another day). The SMB Decision: In-House vs. Outsourced Sales Development. As a high-growth SMB, your number-one focus is consistent sales.

Outsourcing Services 99

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development 99

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

When it comes to launching sales teams in hyper-growth startups, few people have walked the walk as much as Maggie Hott. We recently sat down with Maggie to chat about all things sales – from laying down a solid foundation to hiring the right people and, finally, scaling the team into hyper-growth. Look for the team players.

Scale 118

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 118

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

At some point in your journey, you’ll need to think about your exit strategy from your SaaS startup. It’s natural to lose interest or just not have the resources to keep a startup going or scaling. Develop a Full Marketing Strategy 2. You might feel uncomfortable with the idea of selling your startup. Transferability 2.

SaaS Payments 105

SaaS Payments Technical Review Development Team Review Software Review 105

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 29, 2019

It’s no surprise that one of the key levers for growth as you go from startup to scale-up is your sales team. How quickly you’re able to accelerate growth depends on your ability to build a nimble sales org and develop a strong sales strategy. These lay the foundation that enables your team to run as efficiently as possible.

Scale 172

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Payment Services 172

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

There was another company I invested in called Automile, that for a while was quite successful in SMB fleet tracking, tracking where your fleets of vehicles are. And we’re about to add basically a team collaboration tier on top of the product. And you have to allow that, in fact, you have to support that in your sales team.

Scale 273

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 273

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 6, 2019

For instance, many teams build apps on Intercom so users can leverage their workflows and services within our live chat Messenger and messages. So I wanted to hear why that strategy makes sense for MadKudu and his advice for other teams thinking about building apps for their product. Short on time? Here are a few quick takeaways.

Scale 190

Scale Branding Underperforming Technical Team Enterprise 190

Point Nine Land

JUNE 18, 2023

And yet, most startups that we’re talking to haven’t looked into cohort analyses yet.” You can also see right away that, for instance, month 5 was an unusually bad month for the April 2020 cohort. a churn or retention rate you’d be happy with), red for “bad” values, yellow for “OK”, and gradients for values in between.

SaaS Payments 128

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payments SaaS 128

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

One of the biggest decisions you can make when setting up your sales team is whether to focus primarily on inside or outside sales. We’ll look at the strengths of each type of sales, why you need both of them in your team, and how to determine the best balance for your organization. What is inside sales? What is outside sales.

Sales Hiring 99

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 99

FastSpring

DECEMBER 7, 2023

As the Director of Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships at WP Engine , Carl has worked on many acquisitions and partnerships, including brands like Flywheel, Perfect Dashboard, Block Lab, and recently, Delicious Brains. “This is everyday for me, so I love talking about it,” says Carl Hargreaves about mergers and acquisitions.

Software Review 148

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Branding 148

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Before I joined the venture capital industry many years ago, I was a software developer, and I worked for a startup around the 2000 time period. Contrast that with companies that might also sell into the SMB segment of the market where the ASPs, the average deal sizes are lower. I think it’s a really staggering stat.

Cloud 113

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 113

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 30, 2019

Justin is the former SVP of sales at PatientPop and a current advisor to it, as well as a tremendous number of SMB SaaS companies. Lessons Justin learned from a career in startups. Lessons Learned from Startups [9:45]. Justin helped build the sales team in ZocDoc. Lessons Learned from Startups [9:45].

Sales Hiring 53

Sales Hiring Revenue Scale Underperforming Technical Team 53

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 15, 2021

During one of our BIG RYG Hyper-Workshops on budgeting for Customer Success headcount, Kristen Hayer of The Success League, framed this shift by explaining that as a CS leader, you’re not running a happiness team, you’re running a revenue team. Your team will start to get pushed on the money side of things.

Customer Success 97

Customer Success Benchmarks Scale Underperforming Technical Team 97

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

In this conversation recorded at ELC 2023, Segment’s former CRO Joe Morrissey and former chief product development officer Tido Carriero discuss how they turned sales-product tension into a successful $3.2B The problem is the sales team. The sales team don’t know how to sell the product. It’s a familiar story.

Sales Hiring 96

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Underperforming Technical Team 96

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Source 16 Startup Metrics by Jeff Jordan, Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen, and Preethi Kasireddy, a16z We have the privilege of meeting with thousands of entrepreneurs every year, and in the course of those discussions are presented with all kinds of numbers, measures, and metrics that illustrate the promise and health of a particular company.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 16, 2023

Bansal shares this and other key milestones and frameworks for company building in conversation with a16z general partner Peter Levine; enterprise deal team partner Satish Talluri (who was a director of product and growth operations there); and Sonal Chokshi. the night before it was to IPO). Like, if you don’t know <Yeah.>

Product Marketing 78

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 78

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 21, 2019

To illustrate how complex is “enterprise complex,” and what the mindset of a real enterprise deal is, we need to look at the differences between SMB, Mid-Market, and Enterprise deals. SMB vs. Enterprise vs. Mid-Market. The SMB Deal. The SMB deal boils down to “you build it, they buy it.”. The Enterprise Deal.

Sales Hiring 40

Sales Hiring Enterprise Scale SMB 40

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

Product-led growth may be a bit of a buzzword, but achieving no-code growth is particularly important for SaaS companies with low ACV, freemium models, and generally those in the SMB sector. Here are its pros: For small startups or independent businesses, the price is an attractive element to consider. Pros of UserGuiding?

Software Review 52

Software Review Technical Review Onboarding Outsourced Development 52

The Marketing & Growth Hacking Publication

APRIL 8, 2019

Internal Team: Hire your own Sales Development Rep (SDR) team that is 100% dedicated to outbound prospecting. Pros: No one will know your “stuff” better than internal people, it’s the best long-term solution for most companies, and begins your sales Farm Team. You build a team of four Outbound SDRs.

Outsourcing Services 40

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 40

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Its implementation can be time-consuming and challenging for non-technical team members. Product-led growth may be a bit of a buzzword, but achieving no-code growth is particularly important for SaaS companies with low ACV, freemium models, and generally those in the SMB sector. A great alternative to Pendo and WalkMe is Userpilot.

Software Review 52

Software Review Technical Review Onboarding Underperforming Technical Team 52

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Product-led growth may be a bit of a buzzword, but achieving no-code growth is particularly important for SaaS companies with low ACV, freemium models, and generally those in the SMB sector. Appcues for no-code growth Appcues is another no-code user onboarding platform that helps non-technical teams track and analyze product usage.

Software Review 52

Software Review Onboarding Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 19, 2022

And also on the side, doing a strategy of pure, just changing our ICP and fully picking it and making it super narrow and super focused, and having 25% of the team doing that. And 75% of the team continuing business as usual. No one has an engineering team with the time to build anything. Jason Lemkin: Yep. So, thanks.

Scale 272

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling VP of Engineering 272

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2022

Jason Lemkin: So you have like a great profile irrespective of what your startup’s doing. And so combine all that, the stress, markdowns… Blackbird today announced they’re marking down Canva, which is one of the most iconic startups out there. Colin here, CEO of a startup, B2B SaaS, and raising a seed round right now.

Scale 245

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling SaaS 245

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

There is more capital available to startups than ever before. The influx of capital has made it easier for startups to raise money, but it has also led to higher valuations and more competition. Jason Lemkin discusses why pricing is worse than ever for startups. Startups are staying private longer.

CTO Hire 292

CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 292

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

If you look at any SaaS startup, in the first couple reps, they always find one guy or gal that’s just amazing, just killing it. You have to create a repeatable process if you’re going to scale up the sales team. The Number One Job of a VP Sales is Recruiting a Great Team. Whatever you do, hire two. Who did you hire?

Sales Hiring 284

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

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Never believe that doubting yourself is a bad thing. That company only lasted another year before they were out of business, so it was a poor use of my energy, time, and being away from my family – a lesson I work to pass on to others new in roles today. Invest in your development internally and externally. Joyce Johnson.

Scale 137

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 137