HR BENCHMARKS

Scaling Teams
Across Series A to C
2022 Edition
 Knight Capital
Content table
1. Introduction
2. PART I: Team Characteristics across funding stages
a. What’s the typical team size for each funding stage?
b. By how much have companies grown their headcount before successfully raising their Series A, B, or C?
c. What’s the typical team composition for a SaaS startup across Series A-C?
d. How do B2B SaaS start- and scale-ups structure their management team across the different stages?
e. How internationalized are European SaaS startups?
3. PART II: Team Characteristics across team-size categories
a. Team characteristics for companies of different FTE sizes
b. Management characteristics of companies of different FTE sizes
4. Appendix

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Introduction

Throughout a company’s fundraising process, founders and investors alike put great In this report, we want to provide founders and operators with a reference framework
effort into assessing and discussing the current strengths and weaknesses within a regarding the evolution of HR profiles of peer companies as they scale across Series A,
company’s team and how the team needs to evolve after the fundraising. B, and C. We substantiate our findings by explaining the possible rationale behind the
results from the perspective of an investor’s evaluation-process for companies at a
During one of our recent lunch discussions, an unidentified sandwich-chewing team different stage.
member suddenly asked, ‘Discussions about how to grow after raising a round are nice
and all, but what are the team characteristics of companies that have successfully The frameworks presented in this document are non-exhaustive, and we will keep
raised a round?’. updating this over time.
 
We found that very little benchmark data was readily available to help us, despite the We hope this research helps founders and operators with their strategic hiring
important implications it can have for founders looking to make their team scale-proof. planning. We challenge founders and operators to compare their current HR growth
Thus, in the paper, we aim to provide an answer: ‘What does a typical Series A, B, or plans to the HR profiles of companies that have already reached the scale they aim to
C-stage team look like at the exact moment of successfully securing their funding?’  achieve. 

Keep growing,

Knight Capital

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“Compare your metrics to successful companies in a
similar stage”
-Ray Rike,
Leaders of Growth
 PART 1

Team Characteristics across Funding Stages

What’s the typical team size for each
funding stage?
When researching the company size per funding stage, we found that the average series-A company employs 54 FTEs, growing to 150 FTE for Series B companies and to 205 at the series-C stage.
The increase in team size is steepest from Series A to B (both in absolute and relative terms) with an average headcount increase of 100 FTE, or approximately a 200% increase relative to the team
size at the Series A stage. The graph also shows the average amount of total funding raised by companies in each respective funding stage. The companies in our sample that just raised their Series
A round have raised 16 million Euros in total on average, increasing to an average of 55 million raised for Series B stage companies and 117 million for companies that raised their Series C.

Graph 1 - Average Team Sizes in FTE, and average amount of total funding in Millions from Series A to C. 6
Relationship between team-size and
round size
This research shows the organizational setup of companies in their series A, B, and C stages. We are aware that a funding stage-based classification is arbitrary, and there is no uniform
definition. We found that the size of a funding round is closely related to the headcount (Correlation of 0.61). This supports our view that the funding stage is just a proxy of a company's maturity.
Therefore, to be more comprehensive, we've not only approached this research from the series A, B, and C perspective but also classified companies in different maturity stages. (see page 15).

Graph 2 - Linear OLS regression of Round-Size in Millions of Euros on team-size in FTE

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How fast do companies grow before
successfully raising their Series A, B or C?
Graph 3 shows the relative growth in team size 24, 12, and 6 months before the funding round. For instance, we can see that the companies in our sample grew their workforce by 260% two
years before closing the round, by 92% one year before the round, and by 50% in the six months leading up to raising their Series As. Our results indicate that a company's workforce at the
moment of raising a Series A is 3.6x as large as it was two years prior to the capital raise.

Graph 3 - FTE growth-rates for companies 24, 12 and 6 months prior to raising their respective A, B or C round.
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What’s the typical team composition for
a SaaS startup across Series A-C?
Though people still generally classify Series A companies as 'just ramping up Specifically, our data show that the percentage of a company's workforce allocated
for serious sales,' we found that the relative size of commercial teams in towards Commercial roles is around 30% for companies in the Series A stage, which
Series A companies is larger than the relative size of commercial teams in decreases to 26% as companies get to the Series C stage. The reverse happens for Tech-
Series C companies. In contrast, the technical teams of those C-stage teams, whose relative size increases from 29% in the Series A stage to 34% of the total
companies were larger than those of the companies at their Series A stage. workforce for Series C companies.

Table 1 - Relative Team Compositions of companies across Series A to C.

Commercial Marketing Support Tech Product Operations HR Research Corporate Support

Series A 30% 9% 6% 29% 4% 9% 4% 2% 8%

Series B 27% 7% 6% 33% 6% 7% 4% 2% 8%

Series C 26% 10% 9% 34% 3% 6% 2% 1% 8%

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“When going from entrepreneur to Series A, I try to nd
people who have been in that phase, who have taken a
company from Seed to Series A, or maybe even B.”

 - Richard Brooks,
Leaders of Growth.
How do B2B SaaS start- and scale-ups structure
their management team across the different stages?
We listed the average number of C-suite executives per stage in Graph 4 below. It shows that series A companies, on average, have an executive team of 2.7 people, which grows to 3.6
for a series B company and to 4.5 in a series C venture. This statistic is in line with the growth of headcount between these stages and the need for structure as a consequence of
that. Graph 5 shows the total average number of Directors (with Directors categorized as either Head of a department, VPs, or SVPs).

Graph 4 - Average C-Suite size across series Graph 5 - Total number of Directors across Series

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How do B2B SaaS start- and scale-ups structure
their management team across the different stages?

The chart shows the number of Directors that lead different departments Graph 6 - No. of department directors
within a venture.

The results show that the average Series A company has Commercial
(1.12), Marketing (1.08), and HR heads (1.08) and that they start hiring
directors for other departments as they receive their Series B and C
rounds.

In Series B, companies often hire a second or even a third commercial

leader (2.75) and the first heads of "support" departments (1.5). Many
companies also employ a Product leader such as a Head of Product (2.5).
Besides, we observe a significant growth in the hire of Heads/Directors of
Operations (1.56).

At Series C, we see a second or third hire for Marketing leaders (2.5).

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How do B2B SaaS start- and scale-ups structure
their management team across the different stages?

The following graph shows the average number of C-suite

executives when companies raise their respective funding rounds.

• The most common C-Suite roles for Series A are CEO (92%), CTO
(64%), and COO (36%).
• 40% of the companies have a CFO when raising their Series B.
This is an increase of 28 percentage points compared to startups
in Series A.
• Two C-suite executives that we see more often at a later stage are
CCOs and CMOs. 36% of the companies have a CCO, and 18%
have a CMO when they raise their Series C.

The Chief Commercial Officer is usually introduced to align the entire

commercial organization (Sales, Marketing, Customer Success) or
manage a much larger sales team (more management experience is
required). Therefore, there's is an increase in the percentage of
companies with CCOs across stages. 36% of companies have one
when raising a Series C.

Graph 7 - C-Suite Coverage Across Series

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How internationalized are European SaaS startups? 

The need for internationalization is usually higher for European start- and scale-ups What we simultaneously see, however, is that the relative size of the workforce in those
relative to their American counterparts due to the market size of their home country. This ~3 countries they operate in increases significantly, from 19% of the total workforce for
leads to the question: how internationally oriented are European B2B-SaaS start- and Series A companies to 36% for companies in their Series Cs.
scale-ups?
The result shows that the countries you choose to expand into at an early stage are
Our data shows that the number of countries in which European SaaS start-ups have generally the ones you'll still be operating in when you've scaled further. It also seems
workforces deployed is already very similar for companies that just raised their Series A, to imply the preference for 'going deep' over 'going wide' as an expansion strategy.
relative to companies in the B and C-stage. On average, ventures that just raised a
Series A have an active workforce in ~2.8 countries, with the avg. across Series C
companies only slightly higher at 3.0.
Graph 9 - No. of countries in which companies have personnel

Graph 8 - Workforce split across countries

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 PART 2

Team Characteristics across team-size categories

Characteristics of companies of different sizes

Funding stages are an imperfect proxy of the business maturity of a

startup. Therefore, we have rearranged the companies we've studied
into five categories. This categorization will help founders and
operators determine how your organization changes as it grows.

Specifically, we classified companies into five different size categories:

Category 1: 20 - 50 employees
Category 2: 65 - 90 employees
Category 3: 100 - 135 employees
Category 4: 160 - 195 employees
Category 5: 240> employees

Graph 10 - Average amount of funding across the different size

categories (in Millions of Euros)

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How do management teams in companies of different
sizes look?

This chart shows the number of directors, VPs, SVPs, and Heads of different
departments according to the FTE of the company.

Management in companies with 20-50 employees usually consists of a

Commercial Director, a Marketing Director, and an HR Director. As they grow to
65-90 FTE, they tend to incorporate Technical directors.

Once they reach 100 employees, we often see companies hire a second head in
the Commercial department, Proposition Development Directors, such as Heads
of Product and Heads of Operations.

Companies that reach 160 FTE often incorporate the third commercial leader
and a second marketing leader.

Graph 11 - Average number of department directors per department in different FTE categories

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Appendix
Appendix
Table A.1 - Team size, Headcount Growth, No. of operating Countries and No. of C-suite execs across all samples and sub-samples

Round Round Size Round Size No. No. C-suite No. of Avg. Total
Employees 6M Growth 1Y Growth 2Y Growth
Type Category Nominal Countries Execs Directors Funding

Series A Medium 5 - 10 MM 36 61% 113% 273% 3.4 2.9 4.8 9.0 M

Series A Large 10 - 15 MM 58 37% 48% 163% 2.7 2.9 4.4 16.3 M

Series A XL > 15 MM 73 49% 113% 354% 2.0 2.1 3.9 27.3 M

Series B Medium 10 - 15 MM 92 3% -1% 41% 3.0 4.0 11.5 51.7 M

Series B Large 15 - 25 MM 217 11% 27% 91% 3.3 3.0 10.3 30.5 M

Series B XL 25 - 40 MM 119 32% 67% 188% 2.3 2.4 7.6 43.5 M

Series B XXL > 40 MM 163 45% 115% 289% 3.2 4.7 19.3 77.2 M

Series C Medium < 30 MM 125 28% 36% 51% 2.0 4.0 7.7 54.2 M

Series C Large 30 - 75 MM 215 13% 24% 24% 3.7 4.3 18.0 83.7 M

Series C XL > 75 MM 246 21% 42% 122% 3.2 4.8 15.8 174.9 M

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Appendix
Table A.2 - Team Composition across the different size categories

Commercial Marketing Support Tech Product Operations HR Research Corporate

Support

Category 1 32% 7% 3% 30% 5% 9% 4% 1% 8%

Category 2 27% 11% 7% 28% 2% 8% 6% 1% 9%

Category 3 25% 8% 7% 34% 6% 8% 3% 2% 7%

Category 4 30% 8% 8% 33% 4% 6% 3% 1% 7%

Category 5 25% 7% 8% 32% 4% 7% 3% 1% 10%

Table A.3 - Management structure and degrees of internationalization for companies of different sizes.

Categories: 1 2 3 4 5

Number of C-Level people 2.9 3 3.6 3.3 6.3

Number of Heads of/Directors 4.1 8 9.6 12.1 25

Number of countries present 2.8 2.5 2.8 3 3.2

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Appendix

Table A.4 - Department Classifications

Department Category Departments allocated to the Department Category

Commercial Business Development & Sales

Marketing Marketing, Media & Communications

Support Support

Tech Engineering, Information Technology & arts and design

Product Product management, Project Management & Quality Assurance

Operations Operations

HR Human Resources

Research Research

Corporate Support Consulting, Administration, Accounting, Finance & Legal

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