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I think the three machines approach works best for companies 0-100 people (depending on the company, for SaaS it makes sense). Basically have someone own: 1.
by ryanSrich 5y ago
I think the three machines approach works best for companies 0-100 people (depending on the company, for SaaS it makes sense).
Basically have someone own:
1. The product - CTO
2. The customer - (Could be a director or VP of marketing/sales/rev)
3. The company - CEO
Anything beyond those three execs at or around an A round is nuts to me.
I think a lot of people underestimate just how much you can outsource at that size. There almost no reason to have a COO when you’re less than 100 people. Same with a CFO. Either of those hires don’t become strategic until you’re doing $10+m in rev. Until then, use other SaaS services for payroll, book keeping, tax savings (MainStreet), etc. These take little effort use and can be setup by one of the founders in less than a day.
- paulddraper 5y agoYou're proposing a 100 person SaaS company without any sales or marketing exec? This is HN I suppose, so not entirely surprising.
- ryanSrich 5y agoIt’s literally the second bullet point in my comment. Did you miss it?
- paulddraper 5y agoOh I misread that as Customer Success, but you meant Sales and Marketing. I still think you're going to be light with 100 people and no dedicated VP of Product or VP of Customer Success. But not absurdly so
- ryanSrich 5y agoAh, yeah when I say someone should own the customer, I mean you should have an exec dedicated to finding, closing, and keeping customers. One slight contention here is who owns the keeping part. I’ve seen that under both sales and product, and don’t have strong convictions either way. I think it mostly depends on the type of product you’re selling.