{"id":10786,"date":"2020-07-28T02:16:49","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T02:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.matsio.com\/matsio\/saasboomi\/?post_type=podcast&p=10786"},"modified":"2023-09-19T13:44:19","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T13:44:19","slug":"when-to-hire-your-first-vp-of-sales","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/dev.matsio.com\/matsio\/saasboomi\/podcast\/when-to-hire-your-first-vp-of-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"When to hire your first VP of sales?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s amazing how just this one question can make or break a company. What makes it even more frustrating is that there\u2019s already too much noise and clutter of answers on this question. From founders, investors, to startup mentors, media and so on, almost everyone has their perfect answer to this question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And still, many founders hire VP sales too early, or too late. A rare few, Google for instance, get it right. Many others including GitHub, which got acquired by Microsoft eventually, didn\u2019t get it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how to separate noise from signals that matter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter Elad Gil<\/a>, a serial entrepreneur and the author of \u201cHigh Growth Handbook<\/a>\u201d, a book that combines practical insights from practitioners with some of the most visionary playbooks around the world. Over the years, Elad has been an entrepreneur, investor and advisor to companies such as Airbnb, Coinbase, Checkr, Gusto, Instacart, Pinterest, Square, Stripe,  and many others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this podcast, the first in a series of deep conversations with him on organisational building blocks, Elad offers practical insights into some of the most common mistakes founders make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When to hire your first vice president of sales, is among just one such existential questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome companies hire a vice president of sales too early because they see that the market exists already. In other circumstances when there is uncertainty, you start doing founder-driven sales,\u201d Elad says. \u201cMany founders today, particularly product and technical founders, end up adding sales and a VP sales much too late in the life of a company.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019re increasingly seeing is that people are getting \u201cpre product market fit\u201d advice to \u201cpost product market fit\u201d their companies. If you go back 5 or 10 years, it was the opposite\u2013people were given very bad advice. There was post product market fit advice to a company that just didn\u2019t have any traction yet,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you will discover after listening to this conversation with Elad, there\u2019s so much to learn from the playbooks of Google, Stripe, Github and others. Elad also warns against learning from the playbooks without understanding the contextual setting for each of them. One size doesn\u2019t fit all, indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why do companies fail?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe number one reason companies fail is because of the \u201cco-founder complex.\u201dThere\u2019s always this advice that you need an equal co-founder. I think people need to divorce equality in terms of equity, from equality in terms of decision making,\u201d Elad tells me in this podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor late stage companies, the common mistakes are very different. Not building an executive team early enough, is the first such mistake. That\u2019s why when you see second time founders start a company, among the first 15 people 3-4 of them are VPs and CXOs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s amazing how just this one question can make or break a company. What makes it even more frustrating is that there\u2019s already too much noise and clutter of answers on this question. From founders, investors, to startup mentors, media and so on, almost everyone has their perfect answer to this question. And still, many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10846,"template":"","tags":[],"series":[54],"series-seasons":[11],"class_list":["post-10786","podcast","type-podcast","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","series-scale-and-startup-stories","series-seasons-season-1"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhen to hire your first VP of sales? - BoomiAI<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When to hire your first VP of sales? - BoomiAI\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s amazing how just this one question can make or break a company. What makes it even more frustrating is that there\u2019s already too much noise and clutter of answers on this question. 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