The Latest from SaaStr: Fractional CROs and CMOs

So the market is flooded with folks that are now “Fractional CROs” and “Fractional CMOs”.  We’ve had Fractional CFOs for a very long time and perhaps they inspired the trend.

But in my experience, this model breaks down with a “Fractional CRO” or “Fractional CMO”.

For sure, if you have a strong existing sales team that needs some mentorship, I can see a Fractional CRO working.

No, what I tend to see is founders struggling to hire a true VP of Sales or Marketing get tired or desperate and think a Fractional CRO or CMO is better than nothing.

I will tell you it rarely is.  

Because usually, they just want to be strategists.  Tell you where to focus, and what to do better.

But the thing is, what you almost always just need is a great full-time leader to implement all the ideas.

If there’s one thing in business (and life) that’s guaranteed, it’s that things will break.  When you’re preparing for hyper-growth, the question isn’t “what will break?” but rather “what doesn’t break?”.

After scaling from $0 to $100,000,000 in two years, Colin Jones, CRO of Wiz, has a fair share of experience with things breaking.

We sat down with Jones to learn about his experience and his perspective shift from proactively worrying about things breaking to being prepared and reactively finding a way to make things work again. 

So we’ve been doing SaaStr Annual’s since 2015, and we’re excited for the biggest and best SaaStr Annual 2023 ever, Sep 6-8 in SF Bay Area, as well as 5,000+ at SaaStr Europa 2023 in London in June.

Now we sell a lot of sponsorships to these events — over 200 top-tier sponsors.  So we’re biased. 

But we’ve also learned to turn away a lot of sponsors.

In fact, we turn away the majority of the folks that reach out.  Because we want to make sure they have real ROI.  Most importantly, we turn away a lot of smaller startups with limited marketing budgets.  We tell them instead to come back and sponsor a SaaStr event next year, when they (and their budgets) are bigger.

And yet … you really want to be at the top events in your industry.  Maybe not the ones no one goes to.  But you do really want to be at the top 1-2 events each year at a minimum.  They just attract the best buyers, the best partners, the best colleagues, and more.

At SaaStr, our partners are an integral part of our events. In February 2023, we’re heading to Singapore for our first APAC event and we wanted to give a special shout-out to some of the companies that will be there with us.

We’ll see 1,000+ of the best SaaS founders, execs, and VCs February 22-23 at SaaStr APAC 2023!  Grab tickets here.

Join these incredible companies to experience all the value of SaaStr!

Because it’s an issue most of us are grappling with right now.

Most startups and bigger tech companies are struggling with the ramifications of what happened in hiring from mid-2020 to early 2022:

• Almost everyone dramatically increased hiring
• The hiring bar was often lowered (hard to say aloud, but often true)
• Compensation also went way up

This had the net effect that almost everyone in tech ended up with 50% more headcount than they needed going into 2023, often paid 20%-30% more than before … and importantly, in sales, it often got “worse” / harder, with lower attainment as selling got harder.

The current economic climate presents new challenges for businesses. In the past, companies could pursue growth at all costs. As inflation rises, resources must be used more strategically since it’s become difficult to estimate to cost of capital. Management teams must determine how to thrive in a downturn to position their businesses for profitable growth.

J.B. Reed and Courtney Dong, Partners at BCG Consulting, sat down to discuss their perspectives on the recent macro shifts in VC investor priorities. They also shared what strategic and holistic actions companies should take to optimize their organization and manage costs.

Workshop Wednesdays continue this week!

This past week we were treated to a PLG masterclass with Harness CRO Jason Eubanks - watch it here if you missed it. 

This upcoming week, Wednesday Jan 18th at 10am pacific, Mark Shulgan, Managing Director and Head of Growth Equity @ OMERS Growth Equity will be sharing: Focus on the Fundamentals: How to Scale for Profitability.

Sign here here for free to join the live audience.

Your sales and customer success teams are losing deals and customers due to backlogged integration requests.

But can you really justify spending months of development on each integration, when an embedded iPaaS can help offload 70% of the work?

There are a lot of factors to consider in this build vs. buy decision, and it's all outlined in this guide.

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