As I describe in the Series A Founder’s Guide to Revenue Operations - the journey from Series A to B is about finding a repeatable, predictable and consistent go to market engine.

That predictability gives confidence to Series B investors that they can fuel the fire you have created as you scale into a larger addressable market through new products or international expansion.

Revenue Operations or RevOps for short gives you the data driven, metrics-based foundation to build that go to market engine and to evidence the repeatability in what you have created.

What is a good Series B RevOps Org Structure?

Let’s start with the destination and look at what a strong Series B Revenue Operations org structure might look like.

You’ll notice the teams are built around their role, and not the individual marketing, sales and customer success functions.

In RevOps teams that have been created out of the individual functions you’ll still see MOps (Marketing Operations), SOps (Sales Operations) and so on - this doesn’t follow the strategy of removing siloes between these teams.

In this structure the VP Revenue Operations might report into the Chief Revenue Officer if there is one yet, the Chief Customer Officer, or into the CEO - it is a truly strategic role.

Strategic RevOps is a critical team

A key team to note here is the one on the left - the RevOps strategy team.

This team focuses outside of your business - meeting with customers, and partners and the competition - determining the ICPs as you expand into new territories and product segments, developing value propositions for the GTM team to use, developing channel programmes and incentives and planning advances into new markets.

I call it out because the world will tell you that RevOps is an internal systems and data related role and that misses the biggest benefit of aligning your marketing, sales and customer success teams.

What does a Series A RevOps team look like?

Let’s go back to Series A, and if you have a RevOps function at all, it might look something like this:

You could have three player/manager type leaders for each of your marketing, sales and customer success functions at this stage of growth (the entire company might only be around 30 people),

and whilst this card says Systems Team, at best you likely have one ops person - they might still be called Sales Ops or Marketing Ops depending on who hired them.

They are likely internally focused, working on your HubSpot, building out your forecasts and maybe an early commission model for your sellers.

Where do you go next?

This is the tricky bit - who do you hire next and do you promote your existing systems role to a leadership position?

My recommendation is that the first additional role or team that you need is that RevOps Strategy individual/team.

Every other RevOps team will feed off the work of this team.

What to sell
Who to sell it to
Where to sell it
Which channels to sell it through
How to sell it

Now the challenge is that this team needs to be strategic, and plugged in at the most senior level, capable of having discussions with the CEO about the strategic direction of the company in terms of customer segments, geographic territories, pricing models and routes to market.

You really want that strategy team plugged into someone that has deep experience at this leadership level, so you might consider bringing that VP of RevOps in now over the top.

But this has challenges.

You don’t have a senior revenue leader yet for that VP of RevOps to report into.
You don’t have a big enough RevOps team yet so they will be very top heavy (this RevOps team is still just two people)
A VP of RevOps is likely to be more process driven and you need a do-er right now.
The VP of RevOps that you really want is probably not going to want to join your startup yet.

So my recommendation (and given my role as a RevOps consultant you can take it as you wish) is that bringing in that Strategy team with a strategic RevOps consultant as a peer to the CEO is the right medium term approach.

In terms of reporting lines, this will depend on how you are building out the rest of your Go To Market team - but you want to ensure this team doesn’t get siloed under one of your marketing, sales or customer success leaders where they lose their cross-functional mandate.

One of your earlier RevOps team members could make a good promotion to a RevOps Director as a reporting line while you build out the team ready for that first VP of Revenue Operations.

Add in RevOps teams around functional needs

As you continue to grow your marketing, sales and customer success teams, develop your Revenue Operations teams in parallel.

You should consider at least one RevOps head per 10 GTM heads as a metric - 50 GTM = 5 RevOps.

In that GTM I’m including marketing, sales, account mangers, CSMs.

Founders often lag in this hiring and it is hard to catch up later.

As you hire them in, build the teams around the role, rather than being lured in by marketing needing a systems person for their Marketing Automation Platform - down that path are siloes that are hard to return from.

And once ready, you can attract the right VP Revenue Operations candidates who can scale this team into multiple divisions, multiple geographies and provide their process and analytical skills to help you secure that Series B funding.

This is how I see Series A founders building out their RevOps teams successfully, but would love to hear what has worked for you.

Get started

Whenever you are ready, there are three ways that I can help you accelerate your revenue.

Buyer Experience Audit - I’ll impersonate a buyer researching your segment and company and let you know what I find. Ideal for planning your Revenue Operations strategy.
Business Model Design Workshops - I’ll work with you and your team to design or refine a business model for a new or existing product.
RevOps Impact Playbooks - I’ll help you implement one or more tactical processes across your revenue teams - content, referrals, testimonials, adoption and more.

How to structure your Series A RevOps team