SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

In about 2012 or so, Private Equity entered SaaS in force. But starting around 2012 Private Equity came into SaaS much more aggressively and created a third party to liquidity: selling your SaaS company, either entirely or mostly, to a Private Equity firm. If there had been a third option back then, I would not have sold.

Venture Capital 339

Venture Capital SaaS Startup Pricing 339

Tom Tunguz

JULY 30, 2021

See that blip in 2012? Startups are basking in the IPO market. They’ve raised 3x as much year-to-date in IPOs as all of 2020, which was a healthy market. Where will the tally end the year? That was the Facebook IPO. The M&A market is not far behind; it’s on track to double 2020’s decade high of M&A value transacted.

Finance 336

Finance Startup Investment Marketing 336

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2022

#1 source of traffic to [link] : 2022: SEO 2021: SEO 2020: SEO 2019: SEO 2018: SEO 2017: SEO 2016: SEO 2015: SEO 2014: SEO 2013: SEO 2012: SEO. So, so much has changed since our first post on August 13, 2012. Every single year I look at SaaStr.com data, Organic Search is #1 : Interestingly, even in 2012. jasonlk) March 15, 2022.

Engagement 242

Engagement Data Sales Marketing 242

Tom Tunguz

MAY 23, 2021

2012: Facebook. If we plot the annual growth rates for the 75th percentile Series A, we observe the expansion in valuations occurs in fits and starts. 3 of the 11 years recorded 40%+ growth. 3 of the years saw declining prices. Perhaps these prices are tied to blockbuster IPO markets. 2014: Alibaba.

Software Review 363

Software Review Venture Capital Cloud Pricing 363

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 5, 2021

Over time, rates decline and then in the 2012-2014 era, they begin to surge upward culminating 6-8 years later at the top-left of the chart and $200b+ invested. The y-axis tracks enture capital investment by year and the year of the data point resides in the reddish circle. Do you remember this shape from high school math?

Venture Capital 359

Venture Capital Marketing Government Investment 359

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2023

What it looks like: Founded 2012, service management software for HVAC and more $250,000,000 in ARR in 2021, growing almost 50%, per Reuters $460,000,000 in ARR at 12/31/23, per The Information Today? Assuming they grew 40% this year, that would put them at $600,000,000+ ARR.

SaaS 308

SaaS Software Marketing Management 308

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 28, 2024

Year Share Good Year 2012 18.4% - 2013 25.9% - 2014 65.5% In 2014, 2016, 2020, 2021, these big mergers drove the figures into the tens of billions. It’s no surprise that in those years, the biggest acquisitions accounted for more than 53% of dollars on average. X 2015 20.1% - 2016 43.0% X 2019 23.4% - 2020 61.1% X 2021 43.8%

Acquisition 266

Acquisition Startup Venture Capital Software 266

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2024

Who is Eran Zinman | Co-CEO of SaaS Leader Monday.com Eran Zinman co-founded monday.com (formerly dapulse) in 2012 with Roy Mann. When Eran Zinman co-founded the company (then dapulse) in 2012, the team management space was already crowded. The monday.com story isn’t your typical SaaS narrative.

Scale 185

Scale SaaS Company Culture Leadership 185

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2022

One of the very earliest SaaStr posts, from way back in 2012, was on how to guess a competitor’s revenues from how many employees they have on LinkedIn. But one thing hasn’t changed since 2012 — how many sales reps you need to hit the plan. That's how much in bookings they plan to add this year.

SMB 259

SMB Scale Startup Enterprise 259

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2021

2002-2012 were slow. Just a few examples: UiPath took 10 years to get to its first $1m in ARR in 2015. Then, it accelerated like a rocket. Procore is a $16B+ leader in construction software, but took a full decade to take off. It took Squarespace 3 years just to get to $1M in ARR and 7+ years to get to the first $10M ARR.

Construction 278

Construction Cloud Scaling Product Marketing 278

The Daily Egg

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

The company initially launched back in 2012 but didn’t officially acquire its first customers until two years later, in 2014. Monday.com has become one of the most popular project management solutions available. Today, 115,000+ organizations worldwide rely on Monday.com.

Management 244

Management 244

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2024

with first customers launched in 2012, the metrics today are very strong: $480,000,000 in ARR Growing 34% (strong) 98% GRR (!) It’s SaaS for CFOs and financial operations, a large but somewhat under-discussed category. SAP and Oracle are very strong here. Founded back in 2010 (SaaS takes time!)

Enterprise 295

Enterprise Scaling Revenue SaaS 295

SaaStr

AUGUST 23, 2022

It was a fun post looking at the actual GAAP and ARR of many leaders way back in 2012, from HubSpot to Marketo and more. So there’s a tiny bit of a disagreement on when SaaStr started, but we’ve sort of aligned on this SaaStr post: Everybody Lies, SaaS Revenue in the Inc. Boy, they’ve grown up in 10 years!

Cloud 60

Cloud Scaling Engineering SaaS 60

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 11, 2020

The Series A market started growing in Q4 and then grew steadily through 2012. This might be for a few reasons: valuations fell, no need to reprice/recap companies, and typically recessions are great markets to start startups. The Series B market had a nice resurgence as well, followed by a retrenchment in late 2010 and then another surge.

Marketing 318

Marketing Startup Investment Trends 318

SaaStr

JUNE 20, 2021

Founded in 2012, Klaviyo initially operated as a database with an API that allowed businesses to run queries against their customers. In this podcast, SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki to discuss the nitty-gritty details of the journey from the company’s origins to its incredible $9.5 billion valuation.

Scale 315

Scale Marketing Consulting Pricing 315

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

Billion market cap after launching back in 2012. Duolingo has dominated online language learning, rocketing to $360m in ARR and a $3.25 And in today’s market, that’s strong performance. While the average Cloud stock has fallen almost 50% in 2022, Duolingo’s has stayed up, and is down just 10% in the past 6 months.

Scale 314

Scale B2C SMB B2B 314

SaaStock

JANUARY 25, 2019

Founded : 2012. Founded : 2012. Founded : 2012. Founded : 2012. Founded : 2012. Founded : 2012. Its annual Nibo Conference gathers the entrepreneurial accountants who are revolutionizing Brazil. Their common goal? Preventing the bankruptcy of more than 2 thousand companies a day. CEO : Gabriel Gaspar.

SaaS Payments 257

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payments 257

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

So when we started SaaStr waaay back in 2012, I never would have thought of profiling Microsoft and its old fashioned desktop software. But fast forward to today, and Microsoft truly is a Cloud and SaaS company, with Azure and LinkedIn its fastest growing business units! Perhaps most importantly.

Azure 302

Azure Cloud B2B Scaling 302

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2021

Procore didn’t really begin to take off until 2012: Squarespace was founded way back in 2003 in the CEO’s dorm room, and for years revenue was nominal. But took a full decade for mobile to get mature enough to make construction software really work, because it had to work in the field.

Construction 270

Construction SMB Mobile Cloud 270

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 19, 2018

Oracle/Eloqua. SAP/Callidus. Microsoft/LinkedIn. Oracle/Responsys. Oracle/Taleo. IBM/Kenexa.

Acquisition 183

Acquisition Marketing Enterprise Revenue 183

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2023

So we’ve been writing about the power of a strong, funded, dedicated customer success organization since the beginning of SaaStr way back in 2012. While now mainstream, our early thinking on the power of Second Order Revenue in many ways informed a generation of SaaS entrepreneurs and the whole CS space.

Customer Success 264

Customer Success Pricing Revenue Sales 264

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2020

When I started blogging on SaaStr.com back in 2012 (!), I’ve been investing just long enough now to see start-ups fall out of product-market fit. I didn’t really think this happened. I thought folks got out-sold, lost to the competition, and even failed to evolve.

Product Marketing 363

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Marketing Startup 363

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 8, 2019

Social Media - Facebook went public in 2012. Big Data - largely powered by Hadoop adoption, Big Data’s heyday is yesterday. The world has moved on from MapReduce jobs and is reverting to other data sources that speak SQL natively or are cloud-native. Two years later, founders no longer started companies in social media.

Artificial Intelligence 280

Artificial Intelligence Startup Blockchain Social Media 280

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2022

So 2022 marked SaaStr’s 10th anniversary, from our first blog posts in August and September 2012. It also marked our first year with 1,000,000+ years of our blog, up 16% from last year: Now, SaaStr has changed a lot over the years. Our IRL and digital events attracted over 50,000 attendees in 2022.

Engagement 228

Engagement SaaS 228

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

years ago in the first few months of SaaStr.com, in November 2012. A look back at sort of the same thing, same top fund, 10 years earlier, from 2012: I had a draft post I’d written weeks ago entitled something like “Color: Just an Enormously Large Seed Round Gone Horribly Wrong”, or something like that.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital AWS Enterprise Investment 225

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2020

A Good Day: Dec 31, 2009; Dec 31, 2010; Dec 31, 2011; Dec 31, 2012. A Bad Day: When I Had No Salary And Didn’t Get My Requested $10k Bonus Even Though I Brought In an Extra $300k All-Cash Upfront Deal. And again, Dec 31, 2018 and Dec 31, 2019. When we killed it every year on the last day of the year. New Years was spent in the office.

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring SaaS Revenue Churn 356

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2022

Figma: “We’d Been Talking to Adobe Since 2012” Half of Public SaaS Companies Trade At Under 6x ARR Today. Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. SaaS Multiples Are Down 75% From a Year Ag.

Sales Recruiting 245

Sales Recruiting Compensation Cloud Retention 245

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 3, 2022

Bay Area startups claimed of 55% total dollars up from 45% in 2012. In dollar terms, San Francisco’s stake of the early US venture market eked 5% lower than 10 years ago. But, 2022 saw a swing upwards, reversing a three-year decline. The challenge with looking at relative share is we see only one leg of the elephant.

Startup 248

Startup Finance Investment Marketing 248

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2023

Wildly Profitable — And Profitable Since 2013. The Trade Desk was founded in 2009 and began to take off in 2012. Top-tier growth + top tier profits beats Insane Growth in today’s world. As perhaps it always should have. #2. By 2013, it was profitable and never looked back. Today, it’s insanely profitable.

Scale 278

Scale Advertising Scaling Revenue 278

SaaStock

MARCH 8, 2019

In 2012, she moved to Hong Kong and later on served as its Vice President there. In 2012, she became Assistant VP at JJL Overseas Education in Beijing, soon enough becoming its VP of Global Development. Kathleen Ting. Kathleen launched and built up the Family Office and Fund-of-Funds business at BlackRock AxJ. Lisa Zhang.

VP of Engineering 264

VP of Engineering CTO Coach Venture Capital SaaS 264

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2019

Second, the Salesforce/Tableau acquisition is the third largest software acquisition since 2012, second to Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn and IBM purchasing RedHat. This wave of consolidation in the BI world suggests this is a key area of competition amongst the biggest software companies in the world over the next decade.

Acquisition 231

Acquisition Pricing Startup Software 231

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 7, 2020

Because they’ve grown 5x in size since 2012. And these largest accounts have grown from a stunning $5m in 2012 to $25m+ today, trending to $30m. And these largest accounts have grown from a stunning $5m in 2012 to $25m+ today, trending to $30m. That’s 5x-6x growth since 2012. But not until 2020, really.

Government 181

Government Enterprise Retention Software 181

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2023

Then, well, right after we sold EchoSign to Adobe way back in 2011, things picked up, with a slow with material and steady increase in public multiples from 2012 to 2015. Public multiples often were around 4x-5x in 2008, and then the global meltdown came, and public multiples fell to as less than 2x revenue for a while.

SaaS 248

SaaS Trends Enterprise Revenue 248

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2020

The IPO market hasn’t been this hot since at least 2012, but likely since the dot-com era. Scoring last year’s predictions: The direct listing becomes the standard path to IPO. Most high-profile IPOs have followed the standard procedure, rather than direct listings. The M&A market continues to surge.

Sales Recruiting 279

Sales Recruiting Blockchain Banking Machine Learning 279

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2022

The first investors invested in 2012. There are a lot of myths around venture capital. One of the top ones is that VCs will push you to sell early, or something similar. VCs are paid to wait. They waited for Figma. The payoff? A $20B acquisition … 10 years later.

Venture Capital 259

Venture Capital Investment Acquisition Sales 259

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

Docebo was started and funded in 2005 and became a SaaS player in 2012. When considering product market fit and seeing value back when Docebo got traction in 2012, they gave away a ton of value with ridiculously low ARR. In 2012, they started with a freemium model where people could go online with a credit card and pay $100 a month.

Sales Hiring 215

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Outsourced Development 215

SaaStr

DECEMBER 24, 2021

And finally … SaaStr turns 10 this year, since our very first post in August 2012. And we’re hiring! Let us know if SaaStr might be your journey in content, success, sales or more! So much change. So look for some big Year 10 celebrations this year. – Jason, Amelia, Bryan + SaaStr Team.

Technical Review 248

Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring Cloud 248