SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2020

2016: IPO at $1.15B market cap. These are the Best of TImes in Cloud and SaaS. The post The Power of Going Long in SaaS appeared first on SaaStr. And yes, no one could have predicted the run we’ve seen in Cloud in the past few years. But take a look at these examples: Marketo (and Hubspot): Founded 2006. Solo founder.

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SaaS SMB Cloud Revenue 290

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? Slack , unbelievably, reached $100M in ARR just 2.5

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SaaS Marketplace as a Service Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 262

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2023

Not easy, but easier and easier: There was a bump in 2016, a Flash Crash in SaaS, when budgets were slashed, but it didn’t last long enough to really impact renewal cycles. SaaS markets had fully recovered later that year. Even the 2008-2009 downturn, while truly brutal, didn’t hit SaaS as hard as the rest of the economy.

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SaaS Churn Sales Software 319

Hitenism

DECEMBER 26, 2016

2016 has been a year where knowledge has become freely available for anyone interested in knowing about all things SaaS. That’s because the people who are working in the SaaS industry or investing in these businesses are sharing much more of the details about all aspects of growing and scaling a SaaS business.

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Scale SaaS Marketplace as a Service SMB 152

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

The SaaS Funding Napkin. What began as a blog post in 2016 has evolved into a yearly exploration and survey to founders and investors to discover what it really takes to raise capital for SaaS companies. The Evolution of SaaS Funding From 2016 to 2021. Pre-Seed Round: Round Size – 2016: $200K – $500K.

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Finance Product Marketing Investment SaaS 329

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2021

If you haven’t done a SaaS start-up before, it’s different. The reasons are many, but I think they can almost all be summed up in one key factor: SaaS compounds. What does this mean, that SaaS compounds? Success builds on success in SaaS. The post Want to Understand SaaS? Salesforce Growth: 2021 $20.8B

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SaaS Travel Churn Revenue 332

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

So there are a lot of rough and arm chair metrics for fundraising in SaaS in terms of valuations. For years, the standard was “about 10x” Top tier SaaS companies would tend to raise at around 10x ARR, with ones with slightly lower growth often raising at 5x. And then things just went crazy. For the best ones.

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Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 67

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

So Microsoft announced that LinkedIn, which it bought in 2016, has now crossed a stunning $10 Billion in ARR — and growing 27% year-over-year. Because SaaS and Cloud are. Revenue tripled since Microsoft acquisition in 2016. Members “only” up 70%, while revenue up 300% since 2016. B2B market is on fire.

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B2C B2B Acquisition Cloud 334

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2022

So two big PE $10B deals happened in SaaS this week, one agreed, the other closed. And the difference are so stark, they highlight all the changes in SaaS in just a few months: Zendesk agreed to be acquired a PE syndicate for $10.2 SaaS multiples have fallen sharply. Billion , going private. Billion closed.

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Acquisition SaaS Pricing Revenue 339

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2021

UiPath is one of the most amazing not-really-an-overnight success stories in Cloud, SaaS and software. from 2015 to 2016 … and then exploded: UIPath History. 2016: $3.5m One of the fastest-growing SaaS companies ever. Is it really SaaS? Even if a lot of the revenue isn’t truly recurring SaaS revenue.

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Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Payment Features Cloud 362

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2015

As an example, I showed a (fictional) SaaS startup that wants to grow from $1,000 in MRR to ~ $85,000 in MRR within one year. To follow-up on the topic, I've put together a very simple (Google Sheets based) calculator which startup founders might find useful when they work on their plan for 2016.

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Startup SaaS Revenue Business 173

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Debt for SaaS companies done right is a gift. Few folks have more data than Nathan Latka and he offers up some insights on how to properly leverage up in SaaS. Geoffrey Moore calls this group the Late Majority and the Laggards in his book Crossing the Chasm , a secret bible for many SaaS CEO’s. . — ed.

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Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 299

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

We just haven’t seen the type of acceleration at scale we’re seeing in SaaS leaders before. 100k+ customers have gone from 50% of revenue in 2016 to almost 80% today: #2. A reminder there is no ceiling to top tier NRR in SaaS and Cloud. From 2 $1m ARR customers in 2016 to 145 today. To 75% growth.

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Scale Cloud Enterprise Scaling 362

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

What started as a simple WordPress blog in 2012 has now become the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. And SaaStr Europa brings 2,500+ SaaS execs, founders, and VCs together to Europe every summer. We were the first major SaaS event back in the SF Bay Area. SaaStr is turning 10!

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Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 313

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2022

Braze is yet another SaaS leader growing even faster past $200m ARR. 2016 customer cohort spends 3.2x Blaze’s 2016 customers spend 3.2x more today than they did in 2016. A good yardstick for more enterprise-focused SaaS. What you’d expect, and it’s helpful to see this segmented. more today.

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New CTO CTO Software Review B2B 69

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2019

How far along was the typical SaaS Series A in 2018? The chart below shows a representative sample of SaaS Series As’ ARR and projected ARR growth rate for 2018. In 4 years, we’ve seen a 4x increase in the median MRR of a Series A SaaS company. The median business was at $1.8M in ARR and growing at 250%.

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Benchmarks Startup SaaS Data Analysis 261

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2020

Q: What will SaaS companies look like in the future? I’m no brilliant futurist, but here’s what I see in the best SaaS companies today, so I assume will be table-stakes going forward: The Bay Area will remain a draw, but mainly as a small-ish HQ. Overall corporate budgets for SaaS will start to come under stress. It’s too much.

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SaaS Engineering Software Revenue 271

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2017

When I analyzed the SaaS fundraising market in 2016 , three trends emerged. The number of SaaS companies raising rounds had stalled, while the total number of dollars plateaued. A year later, those trends have continued to converge, and SaaS valuations have resurged, reaching their highs of the 2014-2015 boom.

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Venture Capital SaaS Trends Startup 203

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Last week, SaaS stocks fell by about 18% on average. The worst of them was in February 2016 when multiples fell by approximately 60%. The chart above shows the most recent enterprise value to forward multiple for a basket of next-generation software companies. As of Friday, the median forward multiple is 9.3x

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SaaS Pricing Enterprise Startup 254

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2022

If nothing else, expect a fraction of the new SaaS unicorns we saw in 2021. With so many amazing public SaaS companies now worth just $2B. So many top mid and later stage SaaS companies raised tons of capital in 2021, so much … that few really need to go back to market and raise again this year. 2016 was tough, too.

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SaaS Enterprise Startup Investment 317

SaaStock

MARCH 8, 2019

These 18 women are powerful, relentless and are all making SaaS and tech in general a better place. They have impressive professional achievements, all the way from founding companies through to running international operations across continents all the way to funding the SaaS companies of the future. They are stars in tech in Asia.

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VP of Engineering CTO Coach Venture Capital SaaS 264

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2021

A lot of our SaaS older times don’t quite know what to make with a lot of B2B startups these days, let alone some public SaaS companies. But like “Cloud” and “SaaS”, its definitely has evolved. But like “Cloud” and “SaaS”, its definitely has evolved. Only half does.

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Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 360

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 10, 2022

In 2016, each company recorded less than $50m in revenue. The fastest growing public SaaS company last year charted 1.1x Both have grown very fast. In fact, their revenue trajectories through 2020 are nearly identical. Both companies employ a usage-based pricing model: pay for what you use. They would both exceed $400m in 2020.

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Startup Pricing Revenue Development 338

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2022

Some areas of spending are slowing in the economy, but SaaS overall is still growing faster than ever. It’s not slowing down Salesforce, Snowflake, or almost any other SaaS or Cloud leader. But it’s not here yet, at least not across the board on average in SaaS. Salesforce Growth: 2023 $31.8B (guidance) 2022 $26.5B 2014 $4.1B.

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Sales Hiring Acquisition Cloud Enterprise 347

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 29, 2022

In 2017, SaaS companies reported their cost of customer acquisition had increased by 65% in the previous five year period. Since 2016, the average public software witnessed its sales efficiency winnowed from 52% to 47%, a decline of about 10%. What happened to these figures during Covid? What happened? Here’s my hypothesis.

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Sales Hiring Sales Startup Acquisition 317

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

The second SaaStr post ever, way back in late 2012, was “ Everybody Lies: SaaS Revenues in the Inc. 5000 “ It was a fun one, analyzing the only public source of data on just how much ARR a lot of SaaS companies had. Box in 2015 was the first IPO from the SaaS 2.0 Really more Adtech than SaaS. #8 generation.

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SaaS Technical Review Software Review Scaling 291

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 26, 2017

In 2010, classic SaaS was booming, the benefits of a subscription model were finally becoming clear to the public markets and the mass-market. 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. However, the story is different if we look at round counts.

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Startup Software Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 255

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 2, 2016

Which of the 16 major start of categories in information technology will reap disproportionate share of investment dollars in 2016? This may be a breakout category in 2016 for Series A investments. During the period, we two salient education companys have gone public: 2U, a SaaS online college company worth $1.3B

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Startup Marketplace as a Service Social Media Advertising 113

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

When we announced a few weeks ago that we would be bringing our leading SaaS conference to Asia, and running it in Hong Kong, many locals thanked us for choosing the city. Horangi provides cyber security solutions based on SaaS. Founded : 2016. Fadada is a SaaS-based provider of electronic signature services.

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SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Merchant Services Payment Methods 225

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2020

More here: If You Have 10 {Unaffiliated} Customers in SaaS — You Have Something. Because SaaS and recurring revenue compounds. More on this stage here: How To Know You’ve Hit First Traction In SaaS. But again, SaaS compounds. You can’t always make something out of nothing in SaaS. Just never quit.

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Scale Payment Features Engineering Product Marketing 362

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2022

I miss #SaaStrAnnual and all my fellow SaaS peeps. 2016: Dharmesh joined us for the first time, with one of the most engaging and highly-rated SaaStr Annual session on ever: their journey to IP O. Hope to see you this year, @jasonlk. — dharmesh (@dharmesh) January 21, 2022.

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CTO Retention Startup Scaling 317

SaaStock

MARCH 26, 2019

As we have showcased in previous pieces, there are many reasons to be excited about the Latin American SaaS ecosystem. Not only is the region producing superstar SaaS contenders, but the interest from local and international VCs is increasing. However, our interest goes beyond the current state of SaaS in Latin America.

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Startup Artificial Intelligence SaaS Construction 210

Tom Tunguz

JULY 28, 2016

Through the end of July in 2016, $70B worth of SaaS companies sold. The more than $600B in cash on the balance sheets of large public tech companies combined with a recent pricing correction in SaaS companies presaged a flurry of acquisition activity. In 2016, these PE firms aren’t following that playbook.

Payment Solutions 100

Payment Solutions Payments SaaS Acquisition 100

SaaStr

MAY 7, 2023

It was a really great deep-dive on where venture is right now: Multiples have fallen back to 2015 and 2016 Why VCs can’t justify investing at $100m+ valuations in many cases today How optimism is bleeding out of VC, and realism has seeped in Why the “next round” often isn’t coming anymore, and how everything got inverted in (..)

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Interviewing Investment SaaS Sales 298

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 6, 2016

About $1B has been invested in early stage SaaS startups as of November 1. If we compare these trends to the total aggregate market capitalization of public SaaS companies by buyer, we observe a few interesting patterns. This operations category hints at the rising importance in the fundraising market of vertical SaaS companies.

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Artificial Intelligence Trends Marketing SaaS 100

SaaStock

JANUARY 25, 2019

The Latin American SaaS landscape is hustling and bustling, having seen more IPOs in the last 6 months than the previous 20 years combined. We will gather 300 leading SaaS founders, executives and investors for three days packed with opportunities and rich exchange of knowledge to push the whole ecosystem forward. Founded : 2013.

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SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payments 257

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2023

So there’s a quiet SaaS success story you probably don’t know much about, but can learn a lot from. But importantly, it’s raised its ACV 4x since 2016. Example: quiet SaaS learning software Docebo: pic.twitter.com/jtGwErBPu6. It’s Docebo. And yet … It’s worth $1.1 Yes, you can.

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Scale Pricing Scaling Enterprise 351