Lemkin: EchoSign's first VP of sales hired 9 reps who closed zero deals
Jason Lemkin · The 2025 SaaS Vibe Check: What Founders Need to Know Right Now with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin · Feb 19, 2025 · at 31:27
Jason Lemkin recounts his experience hiring sales reps at his previous startup, EchoSign (acquired by Adobe), against competitor DocuSign.
0:00 / 0:28exact quote · 28.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And then I hired my first VP of sales from Salesforce. He hired 10 people, all of them, except Sam Blonde, who had done a lot with them, became Brex. All of them, all the other nine closed nothing. And with 10 people, that VP of sales closed less than me and Joe did. They all came from the right places and they all checked the boxes and many of them are reasonably attractive and fun to go out for drinks with, but they never knew the product. And so we lost all of them, except Sam lost a hundred percent of the deals to DocuSign back then a hundred percent because they didn't know the product.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jason Lemkin
Lemkin: Do not hire people who complain about burnout
“Lazy people always say they're burnt out... But the people that complain about burnout, I think deserve a scarlet L burned into their forehead and don't hire them.”
SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI IPOs will exceed all past tech IPOs combined
“We're going to see three trillion dollar plus IPOs over the coming months. It's never happened before. The value of SpaceX plus Anthropic plus OpenAI will be more than all the other tech IPOs combined ever.”
Lemkin: Four Upcoming Tech Mega-IPOs Will Eclipse All IPOs Since 2000
“SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, we'll add in Databricks, we'll have Arsan, one of the co-founders here in about half an hour after this. That's going to create more market value, more value, and more wealth than every other IPO since 2000.”
Lemkin: A $100B Startup Acquisition Will Occur in the Next 12 Months
“I bet there'll be a hundred billion dollar startup acquired in the next 12 months.”