Madrona Venture Group puts a venture-backed company’s chief revenue officer beyond $50 million of revenue. Below that its rule runs from a head of sales between $2 million and $10 million to a VP of sales up to $50 million. SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin puts the CRO earlier, at $15 million to $20 million of ARR. Round labels are used as a shorthand for the same thing.
Revenue is a proxy, and these two rules put the CRO at least $30 million apart. In our view the title should follow the span of the job: how many revenue functions already exist and need one owner to join them up. Two companies at the same revenue can need different hires, and the brief should say which one this is.
A CRO appointment signals one owner across several functions
In June 2026 the London debt-markets data platform 9fin hired its first chief revenue officer “to lead a unified global revenue strategy across sales, account management, client success and revenue operations”. It had closed a $170 million Series C in March. Neural Concept, the Lausanne engineering-AI company, appointed a chief revenue officer in July 2026, after a $100 million Series C, to lead “global revenue strategy and go-to-market execution across industries, strategic accounts and regions”.
ANYbotics, the Zurich maker of autonomous inspection robots, named its chief revenue officer in March 2026. Its funding was Series B: a $60 million extension in December 2024 and a further raise of around $20 million in 2025. Its new CRO oversees sales, marketing, business development, customer success and go-to-market planning as the company moves, in its chief executive’s words, “from innovation to global deployment”.
CRO announcements tend to list several functions, so these three illustrate rather than prove. What they show is the signal the title sends: one owner for revenue work across several functions or markets. ANYbotics made the appointment before any Series C, because the span had arrived first. Lemkin describes the CRO’s job in the same terms, aligning “sales, marketing, customer success” under one leader.
Before the span exists, the job is to build
A company whose founder still closes most deals does not yet have functions to join up. Its first revenue executive has to find out how customers buy, write that down and hire sellers who can repeat it. Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway’s “sales learning curve” (Harvard Business Review, 2006) made the case that a young company must learn how customers buy and use its product before it staffs up to sell.
A leader whose recent seat was running a scaled machine may still be the right hire, if they have built one before. The risk is a brief that does not distinguish the two. A scaled leader briefed into a company without a sales process can start adding operations, enablement and management layers before revenue is repeatable.
The title is partly a negotiation
Part of the pull towards the CRO title comes from the candidate market: some strong builders have held it before and will not move for less. Part comes from the company, which wants its next investors and its largest customers to see a revenue owner in the C-suite. Both are better handled openly at the brief than by writing a CRO remit for a builder’s job. A board that wants the stronger candidate can offer the title with a remit that says plainly what has to be built first.
The same applies in reverse. A builder hired as VP Sales should know at the outset what the role becomes as the span grows. That covers whether the CRO title is the path, what triggers the review, and what happens to their reporting line, scope and future equity grants if a broader hire is made above them.
The span test does not dictate one structure. Many European companies give the same remit the chief commercial officer title, and some boards keep marketing and customer success reporting separately to the chief executive. Whatever the title, the brief should say which functions the hire owns on day one, and which they are expected to take on later.
The span test bends in two places
The first exception is a technical founder who cannot, or should not, lead sales. The hire is still a builder, but there is no founder-led motion to learn from, so they need the authority, and often the seniority, to own selling outright from day one. An executive title before the span exists can be justified here.
The second is a European company opening the United States. A leader hired to open that market is building, not running, whatever the title. The brief should say who in Europe owns the product feedback the new leader will depend on. Without that link, the US plan rests on a product built for European buyers.
Where the founder sits in the deal decides the title
A board can settle the title before the search starts. If deals still depend on the founder, brief a builder, usually titled Head of Sales or VP Sales, who still carries a number. If deals close without the founder and several sellers have hit target over consecutive quarters, but sales, customer success and marketing are not yet separate functions, the hire is a VP Sales. If those functions exist and their numbers need one owner, the CRO or CCO seat is due. If the functions exist but the founder still closes the largest deals, the brief must say so, and the candidate must be willing to sell alongside the founder.
In interview, the difference between a builder and a manager shows quickly. Ask the candidate how the first ten customers of a process they built were won, who wrote the playbook, and what they handed over when they moved on. A builder answers with specifics. A candidate who has only inherited a machine tends to describe the machine.
HMN Capital. Executive search and interim management for PE, venture and growth-backed businesses.
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