Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

To Scale, You've Got to Becom a Tenacious Recruiter

25 Jul 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:54

Jason M. Lemkin argues that to scale a startup founders must become tenacious, continuous recruiters rather than reactive, one-off hirers. He observes many founders stall at revenue bands (around $4–6M, then ~$10–20M ARR) when they stop recruiting proactively. Successful CEOs recruit sequentially over time—cofounder, sales reps, marketers, VPs (sales, product)—and continuously pipeline candidates rather than only hiring when desperate.

Chapters

Point number two and I still struggle with this today. But you'll see so many VCs say this and it took me a while to get it, but you've got to become a tenacious recruiter. I see so many founders stall out somewhere between 4, 5, 6 million ARR. And then again maybe at 10 to 15 to 20 and again after that if they are not tenacious recruiters. And what I mean is, look, you can't get anywhere as founders if you're, if you're not a decent like sequential recruiter. Like you gotta find a good co founder and then you gotta find a good sales rep and then a good marketer and a good VP of sales and a good VP of product and VP of inch. But a lot of us are really sequential recruiters. When we have a desperate need, we kind of drop some things and we go out and we hire one person. Frankly, I still have those weaknesses today. But the best CEOs and founders are constantly recruiting at all times.