People Power: Hiring and Developing Your Success

By Alexander Theuma

The SaaS Revolution Show is a weekly podcast that brings insights and tactics from leading SaaS entrepreneurs and operators across the world. Hosted by Alex Theuma, the show is brought to you by SaaStock. You can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast.

On this week’s episode, we take you back to one of the panels we hosted at SaaStock17. The topic is an important, albeit not fully understood one in SaaS — getting and keeping the best people in the organisation.

On this panel, we hear from three Saas founders, who started in different places around Europe and scaled to varying global offices around the world.

Benedicte de Raphelis Soissan, founder of Clustree shares how she has grown the company to 25 people in the past three years, carefully crafting a hiring plan and an idea which candidates are the right fit. Alignment is key. Which sometimes may mean finding people willing to work as much as a founder should. Which, let’s face it, is usually upwards of 80 hours.

Phil Chambers, CEO and Co-founder of Peakon alludes even more to the importance of alignment, which Peakon has aimed to get from the first moment and has scaled to 70 people spread between three offices. Five months after founding, they ran the first company retreat to talk about the values and the ways of work that are fitting for everyone. The founders had their ideas, but it was important that each of the dozen founding members of the company had a say in it too.

Beyond hiring, probably the next most important aspect of developing for success is the onboarding process. Jonathan Anguelov, co-founder and COO of Aircall, shares how the company has developed an outcome-based onboarding process, where every employee has a bespoke and detailed plan, which comes with clearly defined outcomes. With over 70 people spread between three offices, the Aircall employees stay up to date with how the company is doing by receiving a weekly email on Sunday night to get them going for the week.

The panel is hosted by John Coldicutt, CMO at Planday. Listen on to hear:

• What are the recruiting processes of three of the most exciting European SaaS companies;
• How to onboard people so they feel part of the organisation and can quickly deliver;
• How to transcend company culture through geographical boundaries;
• How to create the company values and get a buy-in from people;
• When is the right time to establish remote teams.

P.S.

Bringing such diverse viewpoints on key SaaS topics is one of many ways SaaStock helps to grow your company. We already have signed up over 50 exciting speakers for SaaStock18 such as Michael Litt, Founder of Vidyard, David Cancel, Founder of Drift and David Skok, Managing Partner, Matrix Partners.

Join our Insider Sale by March 31st to get a 2 for1 discount code on April 1st. This is not an April fools joke. 2 tickets for the price of 1. By entering the Insider Sale, you also get the chance to win great prizes like platinum tickets, team tickets, and cool SaaStock swag.