Stage 2 Capital Roundup: December 2024

Setting Your Sales Team Up for Success in 2025 ???

December's coming to an end and while we're all ready for a holiday break, it's also crunch time for sales leaders mapping out 2025. Your sales comp plan is one of the biggest levers for growth, so this month, we're sharing advice on everything from building your first sales comp plan to the nitty-gritty of unit economics - because tweaking your funnel beats throwing more headcount at the problem.

Building Your First Sales Comp Plan: Learn the step-by-step process of creating an effective comp plan. Featuring advice from Liz Christo isto and Graham D. Collins ollins, Head of Partnerships at QuotaPath .

Top Founder Questions About Sales Comp Plans - Answered: Real founders, real comp plan questions - from OTE calculations to accelerators, we're sharing practical answers to the questions we hear most often in the field.

Sales Productivity Calculator: Stage 2 LP Brent Holloway shares a practical tool to help you master unit economics and build smarter sales comp plans.

Raising in 2025? Here's advice on how to prepare ??

• What it Takes to Raise a Series B Today: Practical advice and insider tips from Jaclyn Freeman Hester of Foundry, Rachel Geller of Insight, Sai Senthilkumar of Redpoint, and Lisa Xu of Threshold.
• How to Perfect Your Pitch: Advice on how to tell a compelling story when pitching your company. Gregg Scoresby , Founder of CampusLogic shares tips.??

Pssst. Have you subscribed to Dear Stage 2? Liz Christo, Partner at Stage 2 Capital, meets weekly with industry experts to get answers to the most common questions that founders face.?

New On the Blog ??

How to Structure Customer Success: To Specialize or Not? A fresh take on whether to specialize your sales teams by Mark Roberge.?

Inside Catalyst ??

Your behind-the-scenes look at how top founders are scaling revenue through Stage 2 Capital's GTM accelerator program.

Module 5: Building Your First Sales Comp Plan (New!): Learn how to design sales compensation plans that drive team alignment, reward top performance, and support long-term growth.

Catch-up on previous sessions:?

• Module 1: The Science of Scaling Framework & Defining and Instrumenting Product-Market Fit
• Module 2: Defining and Instrumenting Go-To-Market Fit
• Module 3: Developing the First Go-To-Market Playbook
• Module 4: Hiring Your First Go-To-Market Team?

??? Stage 2 Capital Takes the Mic

Must-Listen Don’t miss the Stage 2 Capital team sharing their go-to-market expertise across top industry podcasts.

Need a refresher course on Equity, Stock and Options? Liz Christo , Partner at Stage 2 Capital, recently joined AJ Bruno and Kelly O’Halloran of QuotaPath and Peter Walker of Carta for an Equity 101 webinar, breaking down everything from understanding value to negotiation tips.? >Watch the replay

You can also catch Liz on the OpenVC Podcast discussing scaling BD teams, venture investing, and what today's founders need to know about growth.

Heading to the Pavilion CEO Summit? Don't miss Mark Roberge who will be speaking alongside an impressive lineup of speakers. (January 22 - 23, New Orleans)?

Now Hiring???

Our portfolio companies are hiring! You can check out all of the 80+ open roles here, but we want to highlight a few where we’d love your help with referrals.?

• Rally UXR is hiring a Head of Marketing
• Intelligems is hiring a Head of Marketing?
• Sendoso is hiring multiple roles across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success
• Vouch is hiring multiple roles across Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, and Software Development?
• AeroCloud is hiring Commercial Sales Managers (Enterprise AEs)?

ICYMI — Portfolio News ???

• Gradient Works breaks down the winning outbound sales formula of high-growth Vertical SaaS companies: ditch the spam tactics for precise targeting, obsessive account research, and systematic coverage that scales. > Read the Article
• Steelhead Technologies announced a $12.5M Series B to modernize job shop manufacturing. Led by Innovius Capital with participation from existing investors.

Limited Partners on the Move ??

We’re raising a glass to these Stage 2 Limited Partners who have just leveled up into exciting new leadership roles - congrats!

• Al Seden is the new Chief Growth Officer at Astreya
• Glenn Johnson is the new Area Vice President of Sales at Writer
• Guan Wang is the new VP of Data at Airtable
• Michael Hubbard is the new Chief Customer Officer at Ping Identity ?
• Michelle Benfer is the new Operating Partner at Francisco Partners
• Mike Boyden is the new Chief Revenue Officer at Nue.io ?
• Sanjay Kini is the new Chief Customer Officer at 6sense
• Scott Gibson is the new Vice President of Americas at Klaviyo
• Shane Murphy-Reuter is the new President GTM at Calendly ?
• Tony Alika Owens is the new CEO and Board Member at Amperity

Y'all are moving so fast we needed a spreadsheet to keep track! ??

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