The Early Hires That Almost Never Work; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

Hey SaaStr Community,

Want to get outbound going, for the first time?

What almost never works, somewhat surprisingly, is hiring a Director of Outbound as your first outbound hire.

I see many startups want to add outbound, but not really have a lot of experience. They don’t know outbound, they haven’t done it, they don’t get it. And especially, a new VP of Sales comes in without real outbound experience.  

And finds they don’t have enough leads to hit the number on inbound alone. So they naturally look for a leader to start, a Director of Outbound that has built and managed an outbound team before.

Why does this seemingly logical hire fail?

So there are so many interesting things everyone selling to SMBs can learn from HubSpot.  We were able to dive into this a bit when co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah joined us at 2022 SaaStr Annual. 

Let’s dig in on 5+ Interesting Things about HubSpot as $1.7 Billion in ARR … growing a stunning 41% year-over-year.

If you have a product that (x) uniquely, or in an importantly superior, fashion (y) solves a real, large painful problem for a Big Co … they will buy from a start-up.  If their top vendors they use already don’t provide that unique/superior solution.

So how do you create that scenario? How do you get large customers when you don’t have any yet?

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Payhawk

After our biggest, best SaaStr Europa ever this past June in Barcelona, we’re going even bigger with room for 4,000 SaaS and Cloud founders, execs, and VCs at SaaStr Europa 2022 in London!  6-7 June at Tobacco Dock.

We’ll be back, bigger and better, with the highest concentration of SaaS CEOs and execs at any event in Europe!  (Yes, we’re including UK in Europe — we’re Yanks).

You can grab Early Bird Tickets now for as low as $299, which is insanely cheap so just buy them now here.  See.  You.  There!

#1 Lie. That it will get easier.

It never gets easy, but it can get less difficult:

You get better. You constantly learn, and in not that long of a time, become one of the experts in your space.

At some point, you stop being at risk of going bankrupt. This does let you breathe.

At some point, you have a brand, and that makes your growth more predictable. Not easier. But more predictable.

In a volatile economic climate and market, founders must employ smart growth strategies while focusing on efficiency. For early-stage companies, the onus is to show investors a sustainable and solid path to profitability focused on topline and efficiency.

Confluent’s President of Field Operations, Erica Schultz, explores different tactics businesses can employ to scale revenue and increase efficiency in the current macro environment.

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by BlueSnap

• DuploCloud is looking for a Field Marketing Manager to lead their field marketing initiatives and play a key role in designing, implementing and executing marketing programs and events in North America.

• Justworks is seeking a Director, Business Development to own the strategy, development and execution of their Business Development platforms.

• SaaStr 595: 5 Critical and Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups with Y Combinator MD of YC Continuity Anu Hariharan

• SaaStr 596: Scaling Revenue in 2022: What’s the Same and What's Different? with Confluent President of Field Operations Erica Schultz
• SaaStr 597: VC State of the Markets with Cowboy Ventures Founder & MP Aileen Lee

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

So we’re going to move from Salesforce CRM to HubSpot CRM

I’m generally a strong advocate of using Salesforce — at least to understand it. Its integrations. Its $30B+ of ARR. Its dao. Its API.

But SaaStr is a small business.

It’s just not worth it.

The prospects that pick you usually close the fastest

The prospects that you pick often have the highest deal size

Grab a lower 409a in 2022,

Do your new hires a solid for 2024-2026

To build a true Decacorn, your startup just has to be bigger and better and grow faster than:

Okta

UiPath

Elastic

Procore

Confluent

Monday

Asana

Etc

© SaaStr 2022

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