Many new SaaS CEOs hope for a magical SaaS executive hire who will fix their major problems in sales, development, or marketing next quarter.

Unfortunately, expensive exec hires don’t always work out so well.

Experienced software CEOs have tempered their expectations about how fast they can hire senior leaders, how long their problems will take to fix, and how expensive they usually are.

But magical thinking about spending big to hire senior executives quickly is one of the main reasons founders raise large VC funding (and spend it on executive recruiters).

The “Hire Fast to Grow Big” approach often creates VC-funded SaaS companies that stall out and get stuck. They can’t grow and they can’t raise more funding to make more big hires.

What happens to the thousands of “zombie” SaaS companies with some revenues but no hope of winning with their investors?

Krista Morgan of Stage is one of the few micro private equity firms that works with early-stage SaaS companies to restructure, recapitalize, and get realistic about their growth and spending plans.

Stage helps reset the capital structure and set a practical new strategy, but the founders stick with it to build a profitable business without magical thinking.

Krista helps these founders and their teams reset their DNA from “spending big solves all problems” to “throwing money at it won’t solve it.”

Stage turns VC-funded startups into practical, profitable, and growing SaaS companies.

As Krista describes it on the podcast this week:

”When I was a funded tech founder, I thought I was going to hire this magical VP of sales and they’re going to solve my revenue growth problem. But paying a big salary for someone who’s gonna take three months to ramp up before they can start to work on the problem is not your answer.

“I hired four VPs of Sales and none of them ever worked out. Now, as an investor, I tell founders: You already have a great team. You already know the market. You already have everything you need. You just need to trust it and just make a choice and go.

“A magical person is usually not the answer. If that’s where you think the answer is, it’s because you don’t understand the problem, you’re just not thinking creatively enough, or you just don’t trust yourself.”

Krista Morgan, Stage Fund

It’s tough to turn around a stuck SaaS company, but the founders get a second chance at startup success—and a big founder prize.

Krista and the Stage team have acquired 14 SaaS businesses since 2020, and it’s working.

She’s a practical founder with operating experience and deep insights into how the practical B2B SaaS game is played across dozens of businesses.

Learn more about her practical SaaS playbook in this Practical Founders Podcast interview with Krista Morgan.

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