The 8 key hires a SaaS startup needs as it scales

As a business scales, so do its challenges, especially when it comes to hiring. Subramanian Viswanathan, the CEO and co-founder of software-as-a-service firm Disprz, knows this only too well.

Viswanathan says the inflection point for hiring for his company came between 2019 and 2020. At that time, the eight-year-old startup, which runs an AI-powered learning management and upskilling platform, went from having around US$1.5 million to US$2.5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

Image credit: Timmy Loen

When the startup crossed US$2 million in ARR, Viswanathan began to feel the need for new functional heads.

A lot of playbooks are written on the early stages of a startup – from fundraising to finding product-market fit – but the path gets hazier after that. With his experience, Viswanathan explains how he coped with change by making eight key hires.

1. The head of enterprise implementation avoids chaos

As Disprz grew, it began to acquire larger enterprise customers. Some, like Amazon, had more than 100,000 employees, and each of them would be a user on the learning platform.

The sheer size of these accounts made it important to focus on how the platform was deployed, which is different from working with small businesses where a one-size-fits-all approach often suffices. With a large enterprise customer, taking your eye off implementation can cause chaos.

“You can build a very repeatable sales engine, but if your implementations fail, it counts for nothing. So I would urge companies to hire a head of enterprise implementation around the US$3 million to US$4 million mark, and separate implementation from customer success,” says Viswanathan.

2. The head of customer success is a managerial function

Dealing with demanding customers is par for the course in enterprise SaaS. These users want attention, customization, new solutions, and more.

Customer success, therefore, becomes critical. From day one, enterprise SaaS requires a strong customer success function with clearly defined roles as to how much revenue and how many accounts a customer success manager (CSM) can support.

As the company scales, managing the CSMs requires a suitable leader.

“You can train people to become CSMs, but it’s harder to find someone who can manage a team of CSMs. That’s a different skillset,” says Viswanathan. “Early on, we hired a VP of customer success, but down the road, we realized it was so important that my co-founder actually doubled up to play the role.”

3. The director of the founder’s office for strategic initiatives

Scaling a product with a foothold in the market can become all-consuming. So, in the US$2 million to US$3 million ARR range, Viswanathan opened a “founder’s office” to ensure new strategic initiatives got as much attention as daily functions.

“Everybody was neck-deep in implementation. The sales team was busy selling. The product team was busy building. So we needed a founder’s office to execute strategic projects – be it codifying data across the company, designing and implementing playbooks, or going to new markets,” he says.

4. You need multiple products and a director

5. A head in the cloud

6. HR head for crossing the Dunbar number

7. Head of compliance to do the jobs everyone hates

8. Keep investors happy with a VP for corp dev