SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2024

More Detailed Bio Here: In 2007, Gassner founded Veeva Systems, identifying a crucial opportunity in the life sciences industry. Following PeopleSoft, he joined salesforce.com as Senior Vice President of Technology, where he gained valuable insights into cloud computing and the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

SaaS 264

SaaS Leadership Cloud Enterprise 264

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2020

in first angel round in 2007. First product doesn’t work, no revenue for 3 years. 2013: first investment. 200m from Silver Lake. 2016: IPO at $1.15B market cap. 2020: Worth $7B today. Zendesk : Founded 2006. Raised $500,000 (!) IPO in 2014 at $1B. Worth $2B by 2017. Crossed $1B in ARR in 2020. Today worth $16B.

SaaS 289

SaaS SMB Cloud Revenue 289

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2022

From 2007 to 2016, $1.5b I remember thinking a $1b M&A or IPO was so rare an investor might hope to achieve it once or twice in a career. Fewer than 15 SaaS companies traded on public exchanges then. With at least 20 firms and several partners per firm chasing unicorns, upstarts faced stiff odds. 2015 Return Multiple by Round.

Startup 295

Startup Software Investment SaaS 295

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2024

But when we got started in Cloud in 2007, most businesses that were starting with cloud picked one cloud. Sameer summarizes: “As the guy that’s lived through these waves before, I think many in the audience will agree with me that it’s very different than the last revolution that we saw.

Cloud 173

Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence Healthcare 173

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

Down from 89% in 2007, the.com designation adorns the addresses of 64% of startups founded in 2020. In fact, it has changed significantly as the chart above shows. Click to enlarge the image. Dotcoms dwarf other domain choices in demand but their dominance has diminished as the days pass.

Startup 323

Startup Business AI Trends 323

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2019

Mailchimp is perhaps the most interesting one to me because they took their time until 2007 to go all-in. Hootsuite was also a web-agency spin-off. Slack was an internal tool built when the company was a gaming company. It took off. But once they did, growth accelerated. Dramatically. View original question on quora.

Startup 237

Startup Consulting SaaS 237

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 26, 2024

In 2007, Cisco acquired WebEx for $3.2 At WebEx, he quickly proved his technical abilities and rose through the ranks. He was instrumental in developing the WebEx videoconferencing technology and eventually became Vice President of Engineering. billion, and Yuan continued with the company as their Corporate Vice President of Engineering.

VP of Engineering 264

VP of Engineering Software Engineering Company Culture Engineering 264

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2022

Zscaler was founded in 2007, and took a decade to cross $100m in revenues — as it does for most of us, even the best of us. And pulling away from the rest. #5. 10 Years to $100m in Revenues. Then Just 5 More To $1B in ARR. Ok this is an epic example of the compounding nature of SaaS. But then boom! That acceleration kicked in.

Scale 305

Scale Cloud Scaling Revenue 305

SaaStr

MARCH 2, 2023

Zendesk started the customer experience revolution in 2007 by enabling any business around the world to take their customer service online. We have a global footprint of 20+ data centers across Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America, all of which are backed by a superior global network with a total capacity of more than 10 Tbps.

Scale 264

Scale Technical Review Software Review Machine Learning 264

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2019

it wasn’t until later on in 2007 that we had enough revenue to create a large enough group of customers to go on a 10 Year Journey with. We launched on January 1, 2006 on TechCrunch , and while we closed some good names that first year (Dell, BT, Qualcomm, GE, Comcast, etc.),

Scale 353

Scale Churn Construction SMB 353

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2022

While hardly the only vendor doing automated product insights, UserTesting has been doing it for quite a while (founded way back in 2007) and doing it well, with over 2,100 customers including many tech leaders. Stuck with per-seat pricing from 2007-2020, but added flex pricing in Q4′ 2020 — and quickly went to 20% of revenue.

Scale 189

Scale SMB Enterprise Pricing 189

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 23, 2018

Founded in 2007, Dropbox epitomizes the freemium go-to-market. Dropbox has grown from 0 to 500 million users over that time period. 2% of those users convert to paid and pay an average of $9.33 90% of revenue originates through self serve channels - an astounding figure for company that generated more than $1B in revenue last year.

Scale 214

Scale Acquisition Cloud Revenue 214

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

2007: Salesforce integration. We won a lot of those deals. For almost 3 years we were alone with this 10x feature. It was surprisingly hard to do well, given all the exceptions and corner cases involved. We launched in the first AppExchange class in late 2006 with the first true, deep Salesforce integration.

Scale 246

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 246

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 24, 2023

credit: Wired There at the top of the post is a photo of the 2007 APM class, coincidentally my class (I’m there on the right), departing San Francisco for a trip that would take us to Tokyo, Beijing, Bangkok, Bangalore & Tel Aviv. Aakash Gupta published Product Requirements Documents (PRDs): A Modern Guide.

Travel 189

Travel Mobile Technology Pricing 189

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

times more on customer acquisition than annual revenues, and in 2007 it spent nearly 18 times more than annual revenues. With only $455,000 in revenues in 2007, Workday funded a direct sales force and a professional marketing effort costing more than $8 million. In 2008, it spent 2.5

Acquisition 140

Acquisition Enterprise Revenue SaaS 140

Sparktoro

DECEMBER 16, 2022

I joined Twitter in June, 2007. It turned out to be a very smart move; over the next decade, that network had a massive impact on my professional success. Some of that is because I did interesting or valuable things, but a lot of it was a combination of timing and serendipity. There are plenty of articles about why you…

Branding 145

Branding Marketing Social Media 145

IT World

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

The iPhone, then and now Image by IDG / Apple The iPhone has come a long way since its arrival in 2007. First iPhone Image by IDG / Apple To read this article in full, please click here

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140

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2024

Here are my favorites : Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen : A hand-by-hand narrative of Professional poker player Gus Hansen winning the 2007 Aussie Millions tournament. Hansen had a unique style at the time, aggressively defending his blinds.

Travel 176

Travel Development Sales Marketing 176

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2019

2007: Salesforce integration. We won a lot of those deals. For almost 3 years we were alone with this 10x feature. It was surprisingly hard to do well, given all the exceptions and corner cases involved. We launched in the first AppExchange class in late 2006 with the first true, deep Salesforce integration.

Scale 216

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 216

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2024

When Klaviyo started during the post-2007-2008 recession hangover, it was a great time to build. What matters is that you have a durable, sustainable business with positive free cash flow, and if you don’t, you need a path to achieve that. If you meet that criteria, you’re probably in good shape.

Revenue 312

Revenue Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 312

Tom Tunguz

JULY 26, 2016

To cite one critical counterexample, Concur’s rapid revenue growth in 2006 and 2007 occurred after nearly a decade of tepid expansion. Though there is some truth to the assertion, the Humpty Dumpty characterization is overly broad. Second winds aren’t uncommon.

Startup 159

Startup Compensation Leadership SaaS 159

Tom Tunguz

MAY 5, 2018

They said as much on page 6 of Berkshire’s 2007 shareholder letter. If you wanna gamble somebody else will come along and pay more money tomorrow, that’s one kind of game. That is not investing. Buffett and Munger aren’t technology investors. They look to invest in “enduring businesses.”

Blockchain 167

Blockchain Strategy Innovation Investment 167

The Angel VC

MAY 4, 2018

The mighty king of Freemium Like Zendesk, Yammer, and a few other SaaS companies that were all founded around 2007-2008, Dropbox was one of the early champions of the "consumerization of the enterprise" movement. I’ll be sharing a few specific observations from the S1 review, but let’s start with some more general thoughts about the company.

Underperforming Technical Team 143

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Systems Review Software Review 143

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2019

from 2007-2011 which eventually became Twitch. YC has funded over 1,900 startups since 2005 including Airbnb, coinbase, Dropbox, Stripe, Flexport, instacart and reddit. Michael Seibel was co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv He then moved on to co-found Socialcam in 2012, participated in Y Combinator and eventually sold to Autodesk for $60M.

Scale 170

Scale Leadership Consulting Software Development 170

IT World

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Affected editions of Office included Office 2007, which was already out of all support; Office 2010, which was to exit support on that same Oct. Last year, Microsoft dropped support for older versions of Office connecting to its online services, such as Exchange Online, as of Oct.

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116

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2019

Mikkel later founded Zendesk in 2007 while living in Copenhagen, Denmark. Caput A/S, a communications framework company was Mikkel Svane’s first tenure as a founder in 1996. He served as CEO for the company until 2002 before moving on to Materna. He moved the company to San Francisco in 2009.

Sales Recruiting 173

Sales Recruiting Software Review Technical Review PayPal 173

IT World

MAY 24, 2023

Launched in 2003, OneNote was added to the Microsoft Office suite (most versions of which are now called Microsoft 365) in 2007. There are two leading contenders for the crown: Microsoft’s OneNote and the independent Evernote. OneNote is now also bundled with Windows 10 and 11 and offered for free as a standalone product.

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The Angel VC

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Our timing was horrible – it was almost at the height of the global financial crisis which had started in 2007. If a couple of them pass for whatever reason, you’ve quickly exhausted your available options. We had failed to convince investors that we were going after a large market and that we could build a defensible position.

Investment 149

Investment Business Model Software Marketing 149

IT World

DECEMBER 8, 2021

That's 34% more empty offices than the nation saw during the Great Recession of 2007-2010, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a global commercial real estate broker. Since COVID-19 was officially classified a global pandemic in March 2020, the US has shed 138.4 million square feet (MSF) of office space.

Management 105

Management 105

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 5, 2023

May Habib started her career in banking at Lehman Brothers in 2007, a very interesting time to be in the frontlines of that world. She then worked at a sovereign wealth fund and started her entrepreneurial journey in software localization. May started Writer in 2020.

Sales Recruiting 124

Sales Recruiting Enterprise AI Banking 124

Hitenism

JANUARY 6, 2017

The first Twitter hashtag was used by Chris Messina in 2007. — Chris Messina (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007. Hashtags were less than a year old by the time we started using Twitter. Here’s what he wrote: how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]? Kind of bland, right? Hashtags blew up after that.

Startup 182

Startup Marketing Content Marketing Engagement 182

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 1, 2014

I’ve been reading a book called Legacy Of Ashes, which is an exhaustive history of the CIA since its founding more than 50 years ago through to 2007. Reading spy stories is always enthralling, but surprisingly, the book is a fascinating case study in management.

Management 113

Management Data 113

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 14, 2020

During 2007, The Writers Guild of America (WGA), which represents over 12,000 writers for film and TV shows, tried to renegotiate their contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), representing more than 300 production companies. A walkout of practically all TV and movie writers started in November of 2007.

Payment Methods 137

Payment Methods Telecommunications Payment Services Payments 137

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Product-market fit is “ the only thing that matters ” early on in the startup journey, wrote Marc Andreessen in June 2007. Conventionally, product-market fit comes down to early signals that the market has voted your product as the best …

Product Marketing 94

Product Marketing Marketing Startup Enterprise 94

SaaStock

JANUARY 30, 2019

It was launched in 2007 to operate the Criatec I Fund’s investments in São Paulo. Founded: 2007. Stage: Early Stage Venture. SaaS Investments: Rock Content, Contabilizei, and others. SP Ventures. SP Ventures is one of the pioneers in venture capital investment in Brazil. Size of fund: $66M. Stage: Early Stage Venture, Seed.

Venture Capital 155

Venture Capital SaaS Healthcare Finance 155

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 31, 2019

Steve Jobs’s claim that “ People want to own their music ” rather than rent it might have been right when he said it around the time of the iPhone launch in 2007, but the very fabric of our culture has shifted entirely since then. From movies and TV to music, we now live in a cloud-enabled, subscription-based streaming wonderland.

Payment Solutions 259

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Software SaaS Payments 259

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 13, 2014

2014 will reach about $25B, placing third behind the amounts set in 2000, $92B, and 2007, $33B. The chart above shows the aggregate value of venture-backed startup M&A activity from 2000 through 2014[1] in orange, using NVCA data. In 2000, M&A activity generated an astounding $92B in proceeds.

Acquisition 127

Acquisition Trends Startup Marketing 127