85. What are a SaaS startup’s first 100 hires? HIRING Let’s assume you don’t have massive amounts of venture funding. Ok, then we can assume say $150k-$200k in revenues per employee, or a $15m-$20m &OPERATIONS ARR business. That’s a pretty big SaaS business. Now let’s assume it’s sales-driven (not freemium) and growing at say 70% annually (not hyper-growth, but solid growth), and so wants to hit say $34m ARR next year. So on the Sales side we’ll need about 40 headcount: • 1 VP of Sales, and probably a VP or Director of Sales Ops, and an analyst under her (3) • Say 25 sales reps to fully hit the $34m ARR plan because we’re adding $14m in ARR next year. (That’s a yielded quota). If cash is tight we can do it on less but that’s a lot of growth to hit. • Maybe 8 SDRs to support the sales reps in outbound, screening, etc. Situations vary wildly, but a 1:3 ratio is good for modeling purposes. • Probably 3-4 Sales Directors to manage the 25 reps (8 reps per director), and the SDRs (8-10 per director). In Customer Success, we’ll probably need about 20 headcount: • Assume $1.5m ARR per CSM. So we’ll need about 20 CSMs to hit our plan for the year, although we can hire some later in the year, so we can call it 15 for now, • A VP to manage them, 2 directors to manage half of the CSMs each, and probably an analyst to support her in data analysis, etc. (4). In Marketing, it can vary based on outside vendors, but I’m guessing 4-8: • VP Marketing • Director Demand Gen • Director, Field Marketing (events, etc.) • Content Marketing • Product Marketing • Probably, own lead qualification reps to manage the MQLs (2-3). SAASTR.COM 83