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

Unconventional Hiring: The Key to Scaling Your Million-Dollar Business

15 Aug 2023 · 1 min

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Jason M. Lemkin advises founders to hire senior leaders (VPs) early to scale from startup to a million-dollar business. He gives an anecdote of hiring a VP of Marketing when the company had “20k a month in revenue, so 240k in MRR,” noting she produced enough leads to justify her salary and professionalized the company. He recommends hiring any great VP who can relieve overloaded teams (sales, engineering, product, customer success).

Chapters

And by all means, you should do that. And I hired my VP of sales. My first one, around a million, and my second one around a million also. It was a rough time. And I look back what I did, which was somewhat on accident. I hired my VP of marketing at 20k a month in revenue, so 240k in MRR. And she crushed it. She crushed it because even though we weren't at a million, she brought in more leads than I needed to cover her salary. Okay. She helped work with my sales team, she helped professionalize my company, she built our webinars, she built our collateral. And so what you'll find is, when you get to that million, everyone wants to hire a VP of sales. But the real answer is, do that. Try. Which we can chat about, but hire any great VP you can find. If you find the VP of marketing, first, hire her. If you're overwhelming your engineering team, you find a VP of Engineering early, hire him. If you find the magical VP of Product that can help you build more software, more workflows, do that. Higher VP of Customer Success.