5 Traits to Look For When Hiring An Early Marketing Team For Your Startup
As the CRO at SaaStr, I am doing a lot of hiring these days! A lot. And that means spending countless hours skimming through resumes, taking phone screens, and meeting candidates in person. Quick shameless plug–seriously, I am hiring for a lot of people, so if interested in working at SaaStr–check out our open jobs […]
Cornerstone OnDemand’s Kirsten Helvey: Scaling from 30-1,500 in SaaS: Lessons From the Frontlines (Video + Transcript)
In anticipation of the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2017, we’ll be releasing the full series of transcripts and videos from all the awesome 2016 sessions. In this session, Jason Lemkin receives some valuable insight from Kirsten Helvey, COO of Cornerstone OnDemand, a cloud-based learning and talent management solutions provider. Drawing from her 11 years of experience […]
Marketo: Winning, IPOing, and Going Upmarket (Video + Transcript)
In anticipation of the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2017, we’ll be releasing the full series of transcripts and videos from all the awesome 2016 sessions. We were super excited to have Phil Fernandez, CEO and co-founder of Marketo, sit down and talk to us about the triumphs (and struggles) leading Marketo from inception to IPO. Phil […]
When the Player-Coach is Just That. And No More.
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about not screwing up that VP of Sales hire. Done right, it will accelerate your company to the next level. Done wrong — you can lose the better part of a year, and half of your last round of capital. And we’ve talked a lot about the trade-offs in […]
Successful vs. Very Successful SaaS Companies
Should you join that Successful SaaS start-up? The one that just raised a nice seed round, that has $20k in MRR, and a cool product? Maybe. The key is understanding if it’s merely a pre-success you are meeting with … or one that potentially can be very successful. And it turns out, at least in my […]
Why ‘Perfect’ Is the Enemy of Diversity
How to achieve diversity in the SaaS workplace, and why it’s important, is a super important topic I haven’t hit head on, for a variety of reasons. Mostly because it’s an important to get really right. Bro-cultures in sales teams. All-male VC firms. Young managers hiring people just like them. There are a lot of […]
“Get In Early” (GIE) #003: Betterworks
Apologies, we have a solid backlog for Get In Early. Our goal is to get it to be a weekly feature. [If you want to apply, pls send us an email with your metrics and data.] Up for #003 is Betterworks. We had CEO Kris Duggan on our “Second Timers” session at the ’15 Annual. […]
How To (Successfully) Hire Your First 2 Sales Reps
We’ve talking 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 […]
The Beauty and ROI in The Zero-Voluntary Attrition Sales Team
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. Reps have to fight for the best leads, prove the highest close rates, exceed the mean of the bell curve, to not just […]
How to Prepare Yourself to Be a Great CEO
Being a founder is easy. You just start something. Grab a smart friend, hop on over to WeWork, hit 99 Designs for the logo, and you’re off to the races. Being a CEO is tough. You have to convince people to join you. To drag the troops up the hill. To invest in you when […]
What Your First 100 Hires Will Look Like
There’s an exercise I’ve been through with many founders that are just getting to Initial Traction, say $1m 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. Because SaaS requires so many functions beyond […]
See How Far Your VPs Can Take You. You May Be Surprised.
The other day, I met with a great founder who talked with me about how he was about to top his VP of Sales. This VP had gotten him from $0 to $1.5m in ARR in pretty short order, recruiting a great small team of reps under her, and had really nailed the formula. But […]
Job #1 Once You Hit Initial Traction — Stop Owning Anything
We all screw a lot of things up. But I think the biggest, #1, mistake successful first-time entrepreneurs in SaaS make time and time again these days is they micromanage too long. I see this again and again, and in SaaS, it’s a real lost opportunity. I think it’s a byproduct, in part, of the […]
Hiring Your VPs: When Can You Compromise?
I know these days we’re all talking about Unicorns and Decacorns, but not too long ago, it was all about Rockstars. That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. The very best of the best. As if that was some sort of profound insight It’s true. A Rockstar engineer really […]
How to Ensure Your First 2 Sales Reps Actually Work Out
A long-time reader, first time caller recently wrote in to ask a question that pretty much everyone asks some variant of: If you had to force rank these items in terms of what we should primarily be looking for in these first sales reps, how would you rank them? – has sold SaaS before (as […]
