SaaStr

MAY 10, 2022

Don’t wait for valuations to recover or try to guess when they will, capitalize your business now at the best you can. 2016 was tough, too. But the markets also dropped 50% at the start of 2016, and VCs panicked. There are enough good investors out there. — Jyoti Bansal (@jyotibansalsf) May 6, 2022. #6. And then ….

SaaS 312

SaaS Enterprise Startup Investment 312

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 26, 2017

Since then, many other types of software businesses have been created in new categories like agriculture technology and robotics. In other words, if machine learning startups raised the same amount of money in 2016 is 2010, the chart would show a value of 1. There are fewer software startups raising capital in 2016 than 2015.

Startup 255

Startup Software Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 255

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 18, 2020

The chart above shows the median enterprise value to forward ARR value since 2016. Let’s bucket these businesses by growth to see trends. It hovers around 5x until 2018, then spikes to 8x, and despite some volatility, reaches its current zenith at a bit more than 10x. The valuation multiple has doubled in about two years.

Software Review 363

Software Review Finance Enterprise Acquisition 363

The Angel VC

MARCH 11, 2016

Some people thought it was provocative though, and some chimed in with good feedback: @hunterwalk building ANY business is hard — Jonathan Abrams (@abrams) March 5, 2016 Therefore I thought it would be worth following up on the topic to make sure that my message is clear. 2) Getting a SaaS company from 0 to $1-2M in ARR is hard.

Venture Capital 190

Venture Capital Business Scale Startup 190

The Angel VC

JANUARY 10, 2017

In less earth shattering news, the fact that it's 2017 also means that my "SaaS Funding in 2016" napkin needs an update. As a reminder, in the original post I tried to give a "back of a napkin" answer to this question: What does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in 2016? Enough words.

SaaS 262

SaaS Marketplace as a Service Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 262

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2024

What’s the Business Model Behind Automattic and WordPress? A year later, they created Automattic as a commercial services business around WordPress. Automattic was started in 2005 to democratize publishing, and WooCommerce was purchased in 2016 to democratize e-commerce. Matt co-founded WordPress when he was 19.

Underperforming Technical Team 331

Underperforming Technical Team Social Media Government Payment Features 331

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 28, 2021

UIPath, leaders in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, filed their S-1 last week , revealing an impressive business. In 2021, the business counted more than 8000 customers, with 1000 paying more than $100k and 89 paying more than $1m. The company also mentions the 2016 cohort of customers expanded 51x in the last 5 years.

Payment Services 359

Payment Services Metrics Payment Solutions Payments 359

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2020

Q: Are there too many VC dollars seeking too few viable business opportunities in 2020? On the one hand, to any of this that have been doing this for a while, there are a ton of new funds in market (1,000+ new funds since 2016!) The post Are there too many VC dollars seeking too few viable business opportunities in 2020?

Venture Capital 179

Venture Capital Business Cloud Investment 179

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2021

It means once you get to about $2m in ARR, your business is real and solid. It isn’t going to evaporate, unless churn in massive … which it most likely isn’t once you get to this inflection point. Next year, you will have a $14m, or an $18m, or maybe even a $20m+ business. Salesforce Growth: 2021 $20.8B

SaaS 329

SaaS Travel Churn Revenue 329

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 1, 2024

In 2016, valuations fell 57%. In the last 12 months, public software companies will grow on average 17%, which will add $100b in revenue across these businesses. MongoDB fell 24%; UIPath fell 36% ; Salesforce fell 15% ; Workday was down 11%. Weaker revenue projections tend to cause sell-offs. Is it different this time?

Software 316

Software Marketing Revenue Business 316

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

Seeing a real demand for business courses in their consumer marketplace, the team identified an opening in the market to disrupt corporate training and hypothesized that employers would be more than willing to pay. Today Udemy for Business boasts 80% of the Fortune 100 – the top 100 largest US companies by revenue – as customers.

Marketplace as a Service 243

Marketplace as a Service Scale Sales Recruiting Business 243

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2020

It’s almost impossible to get anyone to buy any new business web services. note: an updated version of a classic 2016 post). Never Quit If … You Have 10 Unaffiliated, Happy Paying Customers. And Aren’t Completely Out of Money. Even if today, it’s just not quite enough.

Scale 362

Scale Payment Features Engineering Product Marketing 362

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2023

2016: $3.5m Dines started UiPath in 2005 with the goal of building a solution that could help humans reduce the time and stress that come from menial, administrative business tasks. Dines is recognized as an authority on driving business growth through company culture, employee empowerment, and innovation. rev 2017: $30m rev.

Company Culture 284

Company Culture Innovation AI Enterprise 284

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Still, Toast has an incredible ARR multiple for a low-margin business, even a very fast growing one. The company exploded from 3,000 restaurant locations in 2016 to 40,000 in 2020. Toast will create many millionaries and more, but it’s been a capital-intensive business with those lower margins and hardware.

Payment Methods 325

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments Cloud 325

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Salesforce’s IPO is also seen as a test of a new business model that could shake up the software industry. In 2016, Digital Ocean opened a $130m credit facility with Keybanc. . This standardization of SaaS as a business model is why we’re seeing more debt deals in business headlines today. . Why Let Banks In?

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 292

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2021

A lot has changed since 2016, but SaaStr is still bringing you the best advice from industry leaders, and we don’t plan on stopping. With 500+ episodes and almost 5 years behind us, we thought this would be a fun time to share the Top 25 episodes of all time. Today, we’ll dive into 25-13.

Scale 310

Scale Benchmarks Enterprise Leadership 310

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2023

Chargebee is a recurring billing and subscription management tool that helps SaaS and SaaS-like businesses streamline Revenue Operations. Deel is a global payroll solution that helps businesses hire anyone, anywhere. Grab tickets here. . Join these incredible companies to experience all the value of SaaStr!

Payment Features 54

Payment Features Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 54

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

And if, in the beginning, businesses were quick to dismiss emojis as a silly addition to people’s personal conversations, today, as digital embodiments of our non-verbal language, they’re every bit as important in business communications. So today we’re looking at emoji’s use in business messaging.

Business 129

Business Communication Trends Banking 129

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2019

The median business was at $1.8M There are a handful of businesses who project greater than 300%, which is a bold assertion at such an early stage, but possible. How far along was the typical SaaS Series A in 2018? in ARR and growing at 250%. Breaking this down a bit more into quartiles, the ARR quartiles were: 25th.

Benchmarks 261

Benchmarks Startup SaaS Data Analysis 261

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 23, 2022

Cloud 100 multiples have fallen in 2022 –– ARR multiples rose nearly fourfold from 9x in 2016 to 34x in 2021 and down to 30x in 2022. Historically, cloud businesses were all about growth, but now the focus is on profitability and efficiency. . These cloud businesses have product-market fit, scalable GTM, and a growing customer base. .

Cloud 304

Cloud Benchmarks Trends Business Model 304

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2024

It rocketed to $100m in ARR just 5 years later in 2016. The overall metrics are a mix of Good and A Bit Tougher: $620m ARR Growing 20.7% (but a big part is from a big acquisition — core business only growing 6.8%) with a $3.5 And then hit $600m ARR in 2024. That’s the power of compounding revenue in SaaS! It took on $1.7

Scale 298

Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services Payments 298

SaaStock

MARCH 8, 2019

At Click Ventures, Carman uses her impressive skills to lead companies on the right path, with an unheard of failure rate of funded businesses – below 10%. After 11 years in finances, in 2016 she became the CFO of Brinc.io, boldly entering into the tech world. In 2016, she moved to Hong Kong to head Innovation at HSBC.

VP of Engineering 264

VP of Engineering CTO Coach Venture Capital SaaS 264

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2020

A massive amount of IT spend has not just moved to SaaS over the past decade, but almost as importantly, the % spent on business software by IT has also gone up. This will be the start of the end of the sweetheart run for SaaS from 2015–2016 through today. “No Good times + good time = amazing times. But this can’t last.

SaaS 258

SaaS Engineering Software Revenue 258

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 12, 2018

Playbook came out in 2016, after many years of us watching this evolution. In the past year, we’ve invested in mature analytics and built an intelligence team to aggregate data and trends towards business opportunities and things that we should be building. Dribbble team page for the Intercom Brand Design Studio.

Business 215

Business Branding Startup Leadership 215

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 24, 2017

The story behind Fleetmatics and Geotab illustrates the way two companies pursued the SMB logistics market in radically different ways, but built roughly similar sized businesses. Based in Massachussetts, the company generated $320M in revenue in 2016. and 14% in net income margin in 2015 and 2016.

Sales Hiring 186

Sales Hiring Strategy Venture Capital Marketing 186

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 19, 2018

A recent addition to the list of public software companies, Mulesoft is a tremendous business. Salesforce is acquiring the business for an astounding 21x enterprise value to trailing twelve months revenue multiple - nearly 2x the next closest. Yesterday, Salesforce announced it will acquire Mulesoft for $6.5B. SAP/SuccessFactors.

Acquisition 189

Acquisition Marketing Enterprise Revenue 189

Tom Tunguz

JULY 22, 2017

The chart above shows the compound annual growth rate of venture investment rounds A through D in ten fastest growing venture markets plus the US from 2010-2016. A $10M round in the US might buy 20-25% of a business. invested in 2016, with a growth rate of 19%. These inquiries made me wonder, how has the global market evolved?

Venture Capital 189

Venture Capital Development Marketing Investment 189

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

Afterward, Patrick founded several businesses in diverse sectors, including tech, healthcare, and finance. Its focus is on businesses in Big Data, mobile, and SaaS. He dropped out of Stanford Graduate School of Business and then co-founded LeaseExchange, an online marketplace for equipment leasing. Diego Cordovez, CMO, Meetime.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Scale Entrepreneurship Sales Hiring 207

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

If you have followed us over at Sherlock , you will likely have heard us say many times that product engagement is the lifeblood of any SaaS business. This is because the entire SaaS business model is dependent on people using (and getting value from) your product consistently over time. Correlate with other business metrics.

Engagement 178

Engagement Metrics Business SaaS 178

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

I first read about this idea in the 2016 Amazon Shareholders letter. But for most daily business decisions about strategy, product, marketing, engineering and other teams, disagree and commit is a powerful notion to capitalize upon a startup’s principal advantage in a market: execution speed. Disagree and commit.

Management 230

Management Leadership Engineering Startup 230

SaaStr

OCTOBER 21, 2022

From its earliest days, Braze embraced a duel set of convictions: New businesses would be mobile first. The mobile revolution would transform legacy businesses. Braze has built a business by selling to job titles that did not even exist when it first began. Understand and build for teams undergoing change.

Mobile 274

Mobile Technology Investment Innovation 274

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 4, 2024

For example, accounting graduates have fallen approximately 18% since 2016. When faced with the choice between a long hiring process or the potential to fulfill the role with a software robot at 15-20% the cost of human labor, a hiring manager calculated risk to try AI may result in tremendous savings to the business.

AI 203

AI Software Review Marketing Systems Review 203

Tom Tunguz

JULY 15, 2017

If we plot San Francisco startup fundraising activity through the first six months of the year, rounds A through D, beginning in 2010, we see the surge during the 2014-2015 heyday and then a reversion to an elevated mean in 2016 and 2017. More enterprise businesses in the valley. Note, the levels still exceed 2010-2013.

Investment 203

Investment Startup Venture Capital Trends 203

Natalia Luneva

JANUARY 7, 2023

Looking for: Microsoft office and home business 2016 free. Microsoft Office 2016. Plus, discover and organize the information that’s most relevant to you right now across all your Office microsoft office and home business 2016 free. Click here to Download. Manage your Office profile with Delve.

Payment Services 52

Payment Services Payment Features Payment Solutions Payment Methods 52

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2022

WebEx may have been the original PLG outfit, having effectively mixed both its service model with its sales model, and expanded its success with small and medium businesses into the enterprise and individual market. 2016’s Lesson from Quip.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise Mobile 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Their focus on Marketing with Duet AI with Workspace has been a way to open up business in new accounts. At the time, they were less than a billion or two in revenue, and now, they just crossed over a $30B revenue run rate.

Cloud 309

Cloud Scale AWS AI 309

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2021

It added its Dispatch and Rails modules just in 2015 and 2017, and added transactional pricing to its Ordering module in 2016. Billion valuation today. We’ve seen this with Box and others as well. 71% of Olo’s customers now use all 3 of its modules, up from 44% in 2019. This has been key to the accelerated growth. #5.

Merchant Services 247

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payments Payment Services 247