The Latest from SaaStr: What Happens When You Hire the Wrong VP

A lot of classic SaaStr advice has been how to spot the best potential VPs.  When to hire them.  How to interview them and qualify them.  What they really do.  Etc. etc.

Because to scale, you are going to need to add a true management team, and then a second one, and then layers of management.  Otherwise, your growth will hit a wall.

And you’re are going to hire some VPs that … just don’t work out. And it likely will be more your fault than theirs.  After all, you know the most about your company.  So it’s your job to make 100% sure it’s a good match — not the prospective VP’s job to figure this out.  At least, not 100%.

When you do make a mis-hire, you just can’t fix it at the VP level.  The VP is the owner of their department.  You have to move on.  And the faster you do it, the better.  The fewer weak hires they continue to make.  The less of your scarce capital they spend.  The less they slow down feature development.  The fewer customers that end up just … unhappy.

TripActions is a late-stage growth company currently valued at 7.25 billion dollars. They have close to 8,000 customers globally, spanning large enterprise companies like Adobe, Heineken, and Netflix to smaller early-stage companies like Carta, Loom, and Notion.

Nina Herold, EVP & General Manager of TripActions Travel, shares insights into her team’s tactics to tune into customers’ needs throughout the product experience. She also discusses how these tools can provide value from the initial launch to a hyper-scaling mode.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by SAP

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition delivers the latest industry best practices and continuous innovation to navigate change in the high-tech industry.

Promote someone great that everyone respects into a leadership role.  Right now.

This is really the only answer I’ve seen to this situation. We’ve all been in it at least to some extent, at some level. Sometimes, a termination. More often, someone highly respected or at least with a lot of team loyalty quits. And there’s a quick exodus.

Some of it, you can’t do anything about. Some of their team will indeed leave. And that can be tough.

But what you can at least do is immediately meet with their top 2–3 reports. Who was the best Director under them? Do they want to stay? Promote them to VP. Or a manager to Director, or a top IC to Team Leader.

This Wednesday, our live Workshop Wednesday continue!

Jessica Bartos, Investor at Salesforce Ventures will be sharing: 5 Metrics Every SaaS Company Should Care About - for Success in Any Market Conditions.

Jessica was one of our top Meet a VC sessions from SaaStr Annual, and she'll be presenting this topic completely live on Wednesday.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by MERGE

Merge’s Unified API allows you to access 150+ integrations across HR, payroll, ATS, accounting, CRM, and ticketing systems.

Work for (x) the very best possible person you can at (y) the very best possible start-up/successful tech co.  And stay.  You almost always have to stay 4-5 years. At least.

It’ll be tight in 5 years, but it’s your best odds:

If you work for someone truly great, they will mentor you, at least, inadvertently.  This is a career turbocharger.  You can then at least take this in 2-3 into a higher paying, more equity gig at at Even Better Start-Up.  Or you’ll get promoted and some serious equity at the one you join.

What’s worse for a Seed VC: 

Losing 100% of a $2m investment on a seed start-up that never closes a Series A?

or

Losing 50% of a $2m investment on a seed start-up that ended up being a unicorn but then later stumbled?

The latter. By far.  Even though you’re losing $1m more!

As CEO I’ve had as much free / down time as any exec on my team, possibly more:

• I always took my vacations
• Once I had great VPs, I didn’t even worry much about work on vacations
• I intentionally didn’t come into the office (when we all had offices) on any weekends
• I would often wait for the last one in the office to leave, but always leave with them
• I’d make sure there was no guilt finishing the normal day at 6 or whenever, and no hustle drama
• Even more, I’d save the first 90 minutes each day for quiet time to get things done by myself.

So nominally, I had plenty of free time and time to think.

© SaaStr 2022

255 Kansas, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94103

If you'd like to stop receiving the SaaStr Daily, click here