In the below session from Annual 2018, CEOs Jennifer Tejada (PagerDuty), Michel Feaster (Usermind), and Amy Chang (Accompany) discuss the challenges of scaling culture, their biggest career mistakes, and more with humor and candor. It’s definitely worth a watch....
Of course. As you scale, you’ll have more formal processes here and in particular, around who and how to terminate an employee. Get a great HR professional on board as early as you can, maybe even by employee #50. But one suggestion when you are small — have...
MailChimp CMO Tom Klein knows a thing or two about how to thoughtfully market a product, earn a customer’s trust, and build relationships that last. So what’s his secret? Luckily, he spent time with us at SaaStr Annual 2018 to discuss some tips, tricks, and key...
New! Prefer to read the transcript? We’ve got you covered! You’ll find this week’s transcript below. Welcome to Episode 170! Rob Reid is the Executive Vice President & Managing Director @ Sage Intacct, the undisputed global leader serving finance...
Welcome to Episode 165! Harry Glaser is the Founder & CEO of Periscope Data, the startup that allows you to transform your business with the fastest, most powerful analytics platform. To date, Periscope have raised over $34m in funding from some of the very best...
Dear SaaStr: What is your method for evaluating a potential co-founder? I’d start with 3 (loaded) questions first: Can she and I together get this start-up to initial traction and beyond in 2–3 years? For real? Do the two of us have the right combination of skills and...
As a founder-CEO … I think he’s amazing. As a polished, rent-a-CEO, 4th or 40th CEO of F500 company type … he’s weak. Elon Musk is an awkward, sometimes even uncomfortable-seeming, public speaker. But his attention to detail and passion for what he is doing is so...
It makes sense when it’s true. Otherwise, it’s a terrible idea. Co-CEOs are very confusing: Investors and media will be very confused. VCs get a bit spooked by co-CEOs. Who am I betting on? Employees will be confused. Who’s the boss? Both of them? What does that mean?...
We were very happy to have the Salesforce “Mafia,” consisting of four executives–three who have since moved onto their next ventures–on the Strategy Stage so they could discuss some important lessons learned from being a part of the 19-year-old SaaS...
Mark Roberge, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and former CRO at Hubspot, takes the Deep Dive Stage to answer burning questions that we all have about sales and running a successful sales organization. What’s the ideal churn rate for your sales team? How do...
VP of Marketing. Whatever you do, at $4m in ARR, don’t hire mid or low-level marketers yourself. It’s way, way too late. There’s too much to do. You need the head of marketing in place — now. Hire a true VP of Marketing and give her (x) a revenue commit and (y)...
My one life lesson here: As CEO, you may not care that much about salaries. Because you are focused on making your equity worth 100x your salary. So you can forget — people are extremely sensitive to even small variances in salaries. At a start-up, your cash...
Time management I think is #1. The best sales reps are very, very thoughtful with their time. My best rep could close more sales in 1 day than my average rep could in 5. For real. Literally in one day. Think about that for a second. This is one of the next frontiers...
As we’re all aware, when your company grows, things start to change dramatically. The way you run a 20-person company is vastly different than how you run a 200-person company. Caroline Fairchild, New Economy Editor @ LinkedIn, sits down with Matt Straz, CEO at...
In this session, Sean Wester, VP Product Marketing at Salesloft, moderates an in-depth discussion with Rob Forman, Co-founder at Salesloft, and David Cancel, CEO at Drift, about how you can get the absolute most out of your engineering team. As the leader of your...
