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The growing dissonance between two business models (SaaS and VC)

The Angel VC

Had I seen a SaaS startup with this growth curve in my first 2-3 years of SaaS investing (in 2008-2010) I probably would have asked “where do I have to sign?”. For VCs, the question is how many of these companies can become large enough to make the (admittedly somewhat weird) business model of venture capitalists work.

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Building a Global SaaS Empire: 5 Bets That Paid Off with Freshworks Founder & CEO Girish Mathrubootham

SaaStr

Big Bet #1: Cast Your Net Wide — Bet On Inbound While Going Global Freshworks was founded in October 2010 in Chennai, India. Big Bet #2: Find Tomorrow’s Great Anglers — Hire Talent With A Learning Mindset In 2010 and 2011, San Francisco was the place for SaaS talent. It helped them get funding in the first round.

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If You Had $10k to Invest, Which Stock Would You Buy?

Tom Tunguz

Venture investing clocked more than $329b invested last year , up 10x since 2010. – Notes: this post compares multiples across four companies which have different markets, business models, and margin structures. The next few quarters may reveal what happens when these funds surge elsewhere.

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Chained Probabilities in Startup Business Models

Tom Tunguz

When thinking about a potential market opportunity, articulating the list of business model chained probabilities can be useful. Other business models assume multiple hypotheses. For instance, B2B freemium businesses, like Slack andExpensify, market a two step value proposition.

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We?re About To See a Lot More SaaS Debt

SaaStr

Salesforce’s IPO is also seen as a test of a new business model that could shake up the software industry. The company is the poster child for subscription-based software, a model that’s gaining popularity among corporate buyers. This CNET article captures the uncertainty well: . Don’t VC’s Want This Dealflow?

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From PLG to PLG+SLG – How Lucid Scaled to 70M+ Users

SaaStr

Lucid launched in 2010 (before PLG was a term), and their team had an intense focus on product early on, so much so that the COO at the time read through hundreds of thousands of customer support tickets to hear directly from customers. As we know today, a strong product-led motion starts with a strong product.

Scale 312
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The Future of AI, Open Source, and Enterprise SaaS: Where It’s All Going with Databricks’ CEO, Ali Ghodsi (Podcast #505 and Video)

SaaStr

In 2010, COSS was valued at $10B, and 90% of that value was attributed to a single company: Red Hat. Multiple successful exits and valuations of Open Source companies like Confluent, HashiCorp, and Databricks show strong business models can and do exist, and SaaS-based models help more COSS companies succeed in the Cloud.