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How SaaStr Fund-Backed RevenueCat Went from a $1.5M Round at $7M Valuation in 2018 to $500M+ Today

SaaStr

Lemkin (@jasonlk) May 22, 2025 The Early Days: Solving a Real Problem (2017-2018) Jacob Eiting and Miguel Carranza weren’t trying to build a unicorn when they started RevenueCat in 2017. Market Timing: Sometimes the best companies are built during inflection points (mobile subscriptions, AI boom, app store policy changes).

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The Great AI Reset: It’s Time to Refound Your Start-Up. Now.

SaaStr

Has growth slowed while new AI entrants in your space are growting at epic rates? But … but … it’s too late to refound your start-up in the Age of AI. VCs especially are obsessed with AI-native startups. New pitch decks without an AI strategy aren’t even making it past associates. We are early.

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SaaS Funding Napkin, the 2017 edition

The Angel VC

Today is 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. Today I'd like to take a stab at the (early) 2017 answer to that question. So, what does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in early 2017? It still feels surreal to me.

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Approaching Half a Million Customers: How to Win in SMB with BILL CEO and Founder René Lacerte

SaaStr

At SaaStr’s AI Summit during the SaaStr Annual , René chatted with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin about how BILL has reached half a million customers and $1.3B Then, in 2017, with around $50M in revenue, BILL added payment capabilities. It won’t just be an AI chatbot because that’s not what makes BILL successful.

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The Future of AI in Sales with Gong’s CEO and Co-Founder Amit Bendov

SaaStr

Earlier this month, Gong’s CEO and Co-Founder Amit Bendov sat down with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin at SaaStr Europa 2024 to talk about all things AI and the lessons learned while scaling to billions. Back in 2015, Google AI beat the world chess champion easily. AI was starting to diagnose diseases better than doctors.

Scale 311
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The Where, When, and How of AI with Theory Ventures, Open AI, MotherDuck and Lamini

SaaStr

Hear the latest insights on AI from leading investor and SaaStr fan-fave, Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures. LLMs are transforming the way people use software, and these AI and data-driven companies share first-hand how they’re seeing this change take place. AI expertise might take a couple hundred top AI researchers to train them.

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What we're looking for in SaaS in 2017

The Angel VC

As the year is coming to an end I’d like to share a few thoughts on what we’ll be looking for in the SaaS world in 2017. It will be extremely interesting to see which companies can accomplish a similar quantum leap in 2017 and how it will look like. I am, of course, talking about artificial intelligence (AI).

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