Why Now's the Time to Hire Top Talent; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

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Hey SaaS Fans,

One of the biggest challenges in scaling a SaaS company has always been hiring VP and SVP level talent. Especially past $10m ARR and beyond.

It’s still a real issue today. The companies that create the SVPs you’ll need, especially in Sales and Marketing, are still mostly based in the SF Bay Area. But now, for really the first time — they are joining top SaaS companies all across the country, all across Europe, and all across the globe.

1.	3 things of note have changed. First — just in the past few weeks, 3 top, brand-name CMOs joined $10m+ ARR start-ups HQ’d in Berlin, Atlanta, and in Colorado. That never, ever would have happened before Covid.

2.	Now that we’re all running distributed teams, that’s finally changed, for the first time ever in SaaS. Top execs are looking for new spots in 2021. And they care a lot, lot less if the company is HQ’d in the Bay Area.

3.	So now’s the time, my friends. This may or may not last. So, if you are beginning to scale, aggressively recruit that Bay Area VP you always wanted to hire. You probably still have to be “hot” to get the hot VP. But you don’t really need to be here anymore. At least, not for now. - Jason

New This Week

How Long Does It Take To Get to A Billion+ Acquisition in SaaS? About 10 Years

There are 100s of SaaS and Cloud unicorns today and dozens of IPOs. But being acquired for $1B+ is a little different.

See how long it took GitHub, Sendgrid, & Segment to Get Acquired ->

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

Zoom Had a Burn Rate Budget. So Should You.

There was a very curious thing in Zoom’s financials leading up to its IPO that I am surprised no one commented on, at least that I saw. But as a founder, it jumped out at me.

Zoom's cash burn was exactly equal to its Gross Profit ->

Check-the-Box Features? You Have to Build Them. Even if Usage is Zero.

So I know your dev team may not want to build features that just never really get used. But show them why they matter and why you’ll win the next big deal if you deliver these features.

Why did Zoom roll out end-to-end encryption? ->

PandaDoc_sales closing guide_560x145px.png

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

The Best Sales Reps Get Customers to Buy. Even When They Don’t Need to Right Now.

In many ways, getting folks to buy a product they don’t truly need is the art of sales.

Find out the 3 main principles you need to sell any product ->

How to Bootstrap to $5M ARR in Less Than a Year

If you’re starting out in an already crowded market, this case study with Flodesk should give all founders some confidence.

Discover Flodesk's 6 secrets to success->

Hot Jobs

•	AWS is seeking a new member of the Strategic Customer Engagements (Deal Team) to partner with the broader internal team and work with the customer to help set objectives.

•	Join the Detectify team as their new Head of Sales US to scale market share in the US and Canada.

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