If you are a first-time founder in particular or have never run a team to scale, your instincts are often to hire very smart individual contributors. You often don\u2019t really understand the leverage of having a great executive in place. That\u2019s why sometimes when you see second-time founders start a company, within their first 15 people, they have three or four VPs and a CXO. Often, as a first-time founder, you ask why does this person needs all these executives? It\u2019s only a 50-person company! But then, after you have been through a big company and team scaling experience yourself, you realize the enormous leverage you get by building an executive team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SUDHEER KONERU<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One thing is definitely there in our case, and that should apply in other cases as well. Dheeraj\u2014Dheeraj used to head sales\u2014and I, we both made it our single mission to focus on the US. That means we abandoned everything else. We left it all to somebody else to deal with it, and I will not worry about it. So the founders need to become obsessed and personally go drive sales. Often, founders come and ask me what kind of VP of sales should I hire in the US who will help<\/p>\n\n\n\n me. You should approach it, like, I am just going and starting my company all over again. If you approach it like a market you are trying to hire a sales leader for, it won\u2019t work. But you have to say whatever company I built was the wrong company, so let me go start it again kind of stuff. You got to go and sit down in the US and understand your customer all over again, do the market fitment, sell. You may need some help, you may want to hire a local person, one or two people, but the founding team has to truly approach it like a \u2018let\u2019s start a new company\u2019 kind of mindset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PRUKALPA SANKAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The first three leaders that we hired in the company\u2014 and I was really proud of these hires, like they were marquee hires for us\u2014they came in, and in three months we realized that they were not performing, and that was really hard for us because when you hire leaders, you bring them in, you bring them in a certain way to the team. The team starts wanting to look up to them, and then they don\u2019t perform, and then you start questioning yourself and saying, is it me? Is it me, or is it them? Are we doing something wrong? We had to let them go, and then we had to rebuild the culture almost from scratch. That was a very hard period for us, in general. But the biggest learning I took away from that was that every context is different, every company is different. Just because someone has been able to do something successfully somewhere else, it doesn\u2019t mean that they can do it<\/p>\n\n\n\n BUT THE BIGGEST LEARNING I TOOK AWAY FROM THAT WAS THAT EVERY CONTEXT IS DIFFERENT, EVERY COMPANY IS DIFFERENT. JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS BEEN ABLE TO DO SOMETHING SUCCESSFULLY SOMEWHERE ELSE, IT DOESN\u2019T MEAN THAT THEY CAN DO IT IN YOUR CONTEXT TOO. SO, JUDGE PEOPLE BY THEIR ACTIONS, JUDGE PEOPLE BY THEIR SKILLS, JUDGE PEOPLE BY THE CONVERSATIONS THEY CAN HAVE WITH YOU, THE ACTUAL WORK YOU SEE. DON\u2019T JUDGE ANYONE BY, YOU KNOW, TITLES, OR EXPERIENCE, OR ANY OF THAT. THAT IS THE BIGGEST LEARNING THAT I HAVE TAKEN AWAY FROM HIRING FOR THE FUTURE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -PRUKALPA SANKAR<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n in your context too. So, judge people by their actions, judge people by their skills, judge people by the conversations they can have with you, the actual work you see. Don\u2019t judge anyone by, you know, titles, or experience, or any of that. That is the biggest learning that I have taken away from hiring for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ANEESH REDDY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There is one good guideline, \u201cIf something is not broken, don\u2019t fix it.\u201d Thinking that five years later it would be like this or that or maybe two years later it should be like this. If you do not see things break, don\u2019t fix them, especially on the engineering side because India inherently has very good engineering talent. I do think we have very solid engineering talent and none of our guys is someone we have got from other companies. These are all like, you know, straight out of IIT or a good place, so inherently, the talent is very strong, and whenever we have tried to corrupt it by saying \u201cno, no five-year view, people who have run 200-member teams\u201d, it has always flopped. It\u2019s probably a culture thing; engineering is a very culture-heavy part of the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ELAD GIL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a few different signs, but part of it is also the degree to which you have done customer development before you have shipped the product. Some companies hire a VP of sales really early, simply because they feel they have proven that the market exists. They may hire a VP of sales a few weeks before a launch so that as you actually launch an enterprise or SaaS product, you have somebody who\u2019s really driving the go-tomarket (GTM) motion. Often that happens in cases, for example, where you have built an adjacent product before, and you know there is a real need, or where you build the same thing internally over and over for internal customers, and then you are now selling something externally. PagerDuty was a good example of a company where every engineering team eventually built a PagerDuty-like tool, and then they just built it for everybody. So, there are some moments where it is kind of clear that what you have is going to be needed, and you want to hire somebody even before launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ASHWINI ASOKAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We hired our first VP of sales at $2 million in revenues to help build a sales org and to make the shift from founder-driven sales to GTM org-driven sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PARAS CHOPRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One mistake we made was to underestimate the importance of go-to-market. When I say go-tomarket, I mean hiring salespeople, building customer success and account management, and even simple things like actually investing in paid advertising. Both Sparsh and I being engineers, there are pros and cons to everything. The problem was that we were engineers, so we were just very knee-deep into building great products, and we thought that a great product would do everything by itself. The company will grow behind its back and we don\u2019t know why we need sales, why we need marketing, and so on. But, over time, we realized that we are in the business of delivering value to humans, and the product is one way of delivering that value, but humans like to get on a phone call sometimes and talk to people and interfaces and screens can only go that far into doing that. Very reluctantly, we hired our first salesperson, and that is when we realized, wow! There is a ton of value we can create if we focus there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n SUDHEER KONERU<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I feel it\u2019s better to hire a consulting firm. There are some decent quality sales consulting firms that can help you understand how you are pitching, what you are doing and help you refine that for the market. They are more useful than hiring a VP of sales, I feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ONCE YOU HAVE GOT YOUR, I WOULD SAY, FIRST FIVE TO TEN CUSTOMERS ON THE ENTERPRISE SIDE, AND YOU HAVE A REPEATABLE PLAYBOOK, THAT\u2019S THE RIGHT TIME TO GO AND HIRE BECAUSE WHAT A VP OF SALES CAN\u2019T DO FOR YOU IS CREATE THAT INITIAL PLAYBOOK WHICH A CUSTOMER WANTS TO BUY FROM YOU. BUT WHAT I HAVE SEEN GOOD SALES LEADERS DO IS THAT ONCE YOU HAVE A PLAYBOOK, THEY SELL THAT TO MORE PEOPLE, THAT THEY DO WELL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -ANEESH REDDY<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u2013 PARAS CHOPRA<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In fact, the first two people I hired in sales never worked out. I thought they were from the industry, and it would work out, but it was totally useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ANEESH REDDY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you have got your, I would say, first five to ten customers on the enterprise side, and you have a repeatable playbook, that\u2019s the right time to go and hire because what a VP of sales can\u2019t do for you is create that initial playbook which a customer wants to buy from you. But what I have seen good sales leaders do is that once you have a playbook, they sell that to more people, that they do well. I would not put it as time; I would put it as once you have got ten meaningful customers who are sticky and happy and you know exactly how to sell to the 11th or 12th guy, that\u2019s the time to go and get a good sales leader. We were very late on that. By the time we got sales leaders or salespeople into the company, we had some 40\u201350 customers. And that time, it was very painful to grow and also hire a team and also ramp them up. So we were definitely quite late on the sales hiring side. Similarly, on engineering and stuff, I wish I had not hired a VP of engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dev.matsio.com\/matsio\/saasboomi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/f2-1024x552-1.png\")
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Hiring the proverbial \u201cfirst VP of sales\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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OVER TIME, WE REALIZED THAT WE ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF DELIVERING VALUE TO HUMANS, AND THE PRODUCT IS ONE WAY OF DELIVERING THAT VALUE, BUT HUMANS LIKE TO GET ON A PHONE CALL SOMETIMES AND TALK TO PEOPLE AND INTERFACES AND SCREENS CAN ONLY GO THAT FAR INTO DOING THAT. VERY RELUCTANTLY, WE HIRED OUR FIRST SALESPERSON, AND THAT IS WHEN WE REALIZED, WOW! THERE IS A TON OF VALUE WE CAN CREATE IF WE FOCUS THERE!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
KEY TAKEAWAYS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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