From 0 to $10m ARR, At What Point Do We Start Hiring and Whom?

Dear SaaStr: From 0 to $10m ARR, At What Point Do We Start Hiring and Whom?

From $0to\; \$$10M ARR, the hiring roadmap is critical because every hire has a disproportionate impact on your trajectory.

Here’s how I’d break it down:

$0to\; \$$1M ARR: Founder-Led Everything

• Sales: Founders should lead sales. You need to be in the trenches, hearing objections, refining the pitch, and closing deals. No VP of Sales yet—don’t even think about it. Maybe hire 1-2 scrappy AEs or SDRs to help with lead generation and early sales once you’ve proven it yourself, but you’re the closer at least fo the first 10-20 customers, minimum.
• Marketing: Likely no VP of Marketing yet either — unless. You might bring on a growth hacker to help with demand gen, but you’re still figuring out product-market fit.  Having said that, if you have a steady stream of leads and customers, you really can’t hire a great VP of Demand Gen / Growth too early.  A great one will bring you more qualified leads, even at $10k-$20k MRR, so long as there’s a base of demand to build on.  More on that here.
• Customer Success and Support: You can hire 1-2 individual contributors to handle onboarding and support, but it’s still very hands-on.  No managers here that don’t do 100% of the work themselves.  But one small rule: once you even have 2 big customers, hire someone full-time to make them successful.  You’ll run out of time to do that yourself, and the big customers you worked so hard to close will get neglected.  You’ll regret that.

$\$1M\; to\; \$$3M ARR: Build the Foundation

• Sales: Once you have 2 reps consistently hitting quota, it’s time to hire your first VP of Sales. This is usually around $1M-$1.5M ARR. They’ll help you scale the team from 2 reps to 10+ and build a repeatable sales process.
• Marketing: Around $1M ARR or if you find someone strong, earlier, you’re ready for a VP of Demand Gen or Marketing. If they can increase qualified leads by even 20%, they’ll pay for themselves. This hire is often more impactful earlier than you think.
• Customer Success: If you’re seeing churn or struggling with renewals, or have larger customers that are high touch, consider hiring a VP of Customer Success around $2M-$3M ARR. They’ll focus on driving net revenue retention and building a scalable CS function.

$\$3M\; to\; \$$10M ARR: Scale the Team

• Sales: By now, your VP of Sales should be hiring aggressively. You’ll likely need 10-20 AEs to hit $10M ARR, depending on your deal size and quotas. You’ll also need to start layering in Sales Ops and Sales Enablement as the team grows.
• Marketing: Your VP of Marketing should be building out a team, including content marketing, paid acquisition, and events. If you’re targeting SMBs, you might also need a growth hacker to optimize funnels.
• Customer Success: As you approach $10M ARR, you’ll need a full CS team to handle onboarding, renewals, retention and upsells. This is also when you might need a dedicated Head of Support if you’re seeing a high volume of tickets.  AI can’t do it all.
• Engineering:  As you approach $10M ARR, it’s often time to hire a VP of Engineering in addition to your co-fouding CTO.  Why?  Usually in B2B, the workflows just start to get pretty myriad and complex.  And the technical debt grows.  And the need to do more and more integrations, etc.  A lot of stuff someone besides your creative CTO can manage.  Even the best CTOs need to get stuff off their plates that someone else can do.  The stuff that has been done before.
• Product: You really need a hands-on VP of Product by this point in most B2B products.  Again, the complexity is just too great for the founders to wing it as head of product themselves.

Key Milestones to Watch

1. $1M ARR: Hire your first VP of Sales and VP of Marketing.
2. $2M-$3M ARR: Bring on a VP of Customer Success especially if you have larger customers and/or churn is an issue.
3. $5M ARR: Start layering in Sales Ops, Enablement, and more specialized marketing roles.
4. $10M ARR: You’ll likely have 40-50 employees by now, with a fully built-out sales, marketing, and CS team.  A head of Product.  And often, a VP of Eng.

The key is to hire just ahead of the curve. If you wait until you’re drowning in leads or churn or bugs, you’ve waited too long.

More here:

And a deep dive here: