In today’s hiring market, sourcing talent is hard enough. But once you’ve got some high-quality candidates through your interview process, your next challenge is closing on an offer. We’ve all experienced it–rejection. Considering how competitive the state of the SaaS talent market is, getting your top candidate to accept your offer is easier said than done.  At OpenView, we’ve been researching this year’s top hiring trends to help determine what strategies are most successful in connecting businesses with the talent they need to grow their business. And to understand why candidates accep ..read more

I get a lot of questions about building a community—specifically, how I did it at OpenView. For context, I joined OV seven years ago to build out what we refer to internally as our ecosystem, but is externally known as our executive & advisor network—our very own community. Starting from nothing, we were able to grow an impressive network of more than 300 engaged SaaS professionals who are eager to make new connections, offer insights, and meet with prospects. Watching the OpenView community grow and take off has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career, but I can promise you it d ..read more

Hiring sales leadership marks a major developmental milestone for your business—it means your product has gained momentum and you’re ready to add that layer of strategic planning above the person managing your sales reps.  But deciding when to make that sales leader hire and determining what professional profile is best suited to the needs of your org poses a real challenge to CEOs and founders.  And the current state of the talent market isn’t making it any easier.  Last month we hosted a Talent ‘Ask Me Anything’, where we answered CEO, founder, and hiring manager’s most pressi ..read more

I look forward to Women’s History Month each year as an opportunity to celebrate female achievements and women’s contributions to society. But as the month comes to a close, we’re challenged to find ways to carry this energy into April, May, and beyond.  And nobody understands the power of a woman’s potential quite like other women.  To cap off this year’s Women’s History Month, I’ve compiled a collection of career advice from some of the most successful and inspiring women in SaaS. Whether you have tenure in tech or you’re just starting your professional journey, I hope that these w ..read more

Since Algolia’s founding in 2012, we’ve had eight evolutions of our pricing model.  In the early days, we took a “Good, Better, Best” type of approach, where the difference was the amount of usage you had access to. At first, there was zero feature gating. This early usage-based pricing (UBP) model was product-led growth (PLG)-friendly even though we didn’t know it at the time.  We started Algolia as an API platform to allow builders to develop their search and discovery experience. Established in 2012 in France, we have since expanded to more than 630 employees in 10 countries with ..read more

Talent and recruiting is a top-of-mind subject for everyone in today’s job market. It’s also a leading contributor to many headaches. With the hiring landscape on fire all of 2021, the state of the SaaS talent market has been a key focus for both OpenView and our portfolio companies going into 2022. As the talent partner at OV, I’ve been focused on helping our portfolio and prospect companies crack the code of recruiting by figuring out how they can best position themselves for a successful search process in this market.  On February 10th, OpenView talent manager, Maggie Crean and I hoste ..read more

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on LinkedIn here. This was published on the OV blog October 2018 and updated March 2022.  As we celebrate International Women’s Day, I am uplifted by the growing number of efforts contributing to the gender equality and diversity movement around the world. When it comes to corporate boards, however, the momentum behind these efforts has been of little match to the formidable inertia that encompasses the board recruiting process.  The past two years have demonstrated an eager and enthusiastic commitment by many companies to embrace diver ..read more

Last week, we released a report on the state of the talent market with a concentration on New York City’s hiring landscape. We surveyed almost 100 participants across the country one-third of those in NYC —consisting of executive hiring managers and recent executive hires across the B2B SaaS industry. They told us all things hiring trends and how they plan to grow their companies in 2022.  Download: 2022 State of SaaS Talent Market: New York City The survey results demonstrated that the hiring momentum initiated by the Great Resignation and labor shortage in 2021 will only continue throug ..read more

I joined Datadog as VP Finance back in 2015 when the company was still very small. Back then, the company had about 100 employees, was making around $20 million ARR, and only had one product—Datadog’s flagship infrastructure monitoring service.  By the time I departed from the company in September 2020— just one year post-IPO—Datadog, an OpenView portfolio company, had around 3,000 employees and was approaching $1 billion in ARR, with a growing line of nearly 25 products.  Usage-based pricing (UBP) has been a part of Datadog’s business since the beginning. Even today, the infrastruct ..read more

We are incredibly excited to welcome Nelson, Amit, and the entire iLife team to the OpenView portfolio family. At OpenView, we are committed to investing in technologies that improve people’s working lives, whether those be manufacturers, developers, knowledge workers, and in the case of iLife, life insurance agents, and their consumers. As we have been building out our emerging FinTech practice, we have also been seeking to invest in technologies that empower the existing financial systems in the US and globally. We believe today’s financial services industry needs a digital makeover. We’re e ..read more