Ask how many customers the founder closed personally and what the last five deals looked like. If the answer is under ten, you are the experiment, not the hire, and you should price that risk into your base. Ask who else is being hired alongside you, because being the only rep means every miss reads as your failure. Get the quota in writing along with how it was calculated, what the ramp period pays, and where the pipeline is expected to come from. And ask what happened to the last person in the seat.
4 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it Ten specific, named mistakes rather than principles, including hiring a VP of Sales too early and letting a bad rep linger past one sales cycle. It is the fastest way to avoid the errors almost every first-time founder makes.
On SaaStr by Jason Lemkin 30 min listen
Open saastr.com →Why we picked it The clearest arithmetic anywhere on rep economics: the rule of 10 for quota against base, four months to productivity, draws during ramp, and why teams attain about 70 percent of quota capacity so you must plan over capacity.
From Craft Ventures by David Sacks 12 min read
Open sacks.substack.com →Why we picked it The most detailed free writeup of an actual sales hiring process: the profile, artifact-based screening before you spend live time, the mock pitch stage, and what to pay. Free to read online, no signup.
From Founding Sales by Peter Kazanjy 50 min read
Open foundingsales.com →Why we picked it Written for Indian SaaS founders by the Everstage CEO, ex Freshworks. It gives the working numbers: quota period must be at least the sales cycle, quota to OTE around 5 to 6x, and two thirds of reps landing between 80 and 100 percent attainment.
From SaaSBoomi by Siva Rajamani 10 min read
Open saasboomi.org →How hiring and ramping gtm people reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Co-founders, team & legal, our Starting Up track.
