Tom Tunguz

JUNE 23, 2024

Before 2018, only one company IPOed with more than $200m in revenue. If we divide the data set into two eras : before 2018 & 2018 onwards, we see a clear shift in the average revenue at IPO & the difference is statistically significant with a p value of 0.0063. In fact, the median revenue at IPO at $90m.

Revenue 302

Revenue Finance Trends Startup 302

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

In 2018, most Datadog customers used 1 product. 28% of Datadog’s customers use 4+ products, but they make up the vast majority of revenue: And 75% use 2 or more products, up from just 15% in 2018: #4. More product, more products, more products. 10 new products this year. Customers don’t buy all the products at first.

Scale 362

Scale Cloud Enterprise Scaling 362

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

The Bear Case: Multiples are still elevated compared to the pre-2018 period. So they can fall another 20%-30% just to revert back to that mean: SaaS was already on a tear starting in 2018. The argument here is that SaaS even in 2018 was overvalued. You can see a lot of VCs and others talking about this on Twitter.

SaaS 347

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 347

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2022

And so, Cloud multiples have rationally fallen back to where they were in 2018 and 2019. The argument here is multiples have fallen too far, since the best SaaS and Cloud companies are growing so, so much faster than in 2018 and 2019. Multiples exploded when we all lived in the Cloud, quarantined in whole or in part in the Cloud.

Scale 323

Scale SaaS Cloud Pricing 323

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2020

Smartsheet went public in 2018. Let me know which you prefer. SmartSheet. TTM Revenue, $M. Revenue Growth. Gross Margin. Net Income Margin. -48%. Cash Flow Margin. -44%. Since its IPO, Smartsheet has increased its market cap 2.6x today, which is a favorable omen for Asana.

Payment Solutions 363

Payment Solutions Payments Outsourced Development Payment Services 363

SaaStr

APRIL 29, 2021

Shopify’s first quarter revenue: Q1 2021: $989 million Q1 2020: $470 million Q1 2019: $321 million Q1 2018: $214 million Q1 2017: $127 million Q1 2016: $73 million Q1 2015: $37 million Q1 2014: $19 million Q1 2013: $9 million. NRR of 110%+ since 2018 — sort of. — Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) April 28, 2021.

Merchant Services 315

Merchant Services Payment Methods SaaS Payments Payments 315

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2022

jasonlk) January 18, 2018. #3: jasonlk) September 21, 2018. #4: jasonlk) February 25, 2018. #5: jasonlk) February 25, 2018. #6: jasonlk) September 6, 2018. #7: jasonlk) January 14, 2018. #9: jasonlk) October 3, 2018. . — Jason BeKind Lemkin #???????????? Remind me the other rules again.

Startup 268

Startup Scaling 268

The Daily Egg

JULY 23, 2022

Since Paychex acquired Oasis Outsourcing in 2018, Oasis PEO is now a part of the Paychex brand. Currently, the Oasis professional employer. The post Oasis PEO Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Branding 310

Branding 310

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2021

While Sprout Social has “only” added 13% new customers each year since 2018, those customers even with 110% NRR compound, leading to 32% ARR Growth. In 2018, even at $75m in ARR, Sprout Social only had 868 $10k+ customers. A reminder of the incredible power of NRR of 110% over say 100%.

Social Media 321

Social Media SMB Cloud Scale 321

Tom Tunguz

JULY 18, 2022

In 2018 at Saastr, Jason Lemkin & I talked about private equity becoming an increasingly aggressive buyer of venture-backed software companies. Last year, private equity firms inhaled $29 billion dollars’ worth of startups - a twenty-year record and 50% more than the previous peak.

Startup 355

Startup Retention Pricing Software 355

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 12, 2021

This chart shows the median and the 75th percentile of enterprise value/forward revenue multiple for the basket of public stocks which were public at that moment in time. Correction Year. These corrections reduced valuations by between 30% and 60%. These undulations are short-lived.

SaaS 361

SaaS Cloud Enterprise Software 361

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2022

Early businesses tend to create more instruments to hire, grow, and incentivize. tokens resemble equity in most ways, but possess one additional function: they can be used to pay for service. Trailing 2 Year Inflation Rate. Founded Year.

Startup 310

Startup Sales Hiring Government Outsourced Development 310

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

From $1B Valuation in 2018 to $20B+ Today. But remember it hit a $1B valuation just in 2018. 300 Employees Working on AI Not a surprise, but interesting to see the scale of investment here. #5. Even With Today’s Multiples. In a world where unicorns are struggling, Canva isn’t one of them.

AWS 300

AWS B2C Scaling AI 300

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2020

And again, Dec 31, 2018 and Dec 31, 2019. And again in 2018. 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. A Good Day: Dec 31, 2009; Dec 31, 2010; Dec 31, 2011; Dec 31, 2012. When we killed it every year on the last day of the year.

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring SaaS Revenue Churn 356

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2021

Cloud has been on an incredible tear since 2012 or so, and then even more since about 2016, and then as you can see above, went into hyperdive in about 2018 … and then into true warp speed after Covid. But does it even matter? SaaS and Cloud are up +1000% since 2013. That’s better than almost any venture fund.

Cloud 317

Cloud SaaS Trends Metrics 317

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

Raising a Series A is as hard as it’s been since 2018 is the answer. Not at all: Per there data, there is some modest pick-up at Series B and C , but that’s less relevant to most founders. What’s most important is after a seed round … how hard is it to raise another round? This just makes sense.

AI 347

AI Pricing Investment Data 347

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2025

Shopifys partner revenue grew from 8% in 2018 to 20% by 2020, but it took years of investment to get there . Its not a quick win. For example, Salesforces partner ecosystem didnt become a major revenue driver until a decade after the company was founded. Expect your sales cycle to double when working with partner s.

Scale 147

Scale Sales Hiring SMB Enterprise 147

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2023

In 2024, I expect most of these figures to revert to the mean - not the peaks of 2020-2021, but more akin to 2018. In almost every category, the time between rounds is also at decade highs. The public valuation environment & pace of venture capital investments mirror those years better than others.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital Startup Investment Software 309

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 9, 2020

We see pre-seeds have fallen from mid-2018 highs of $10m to about $5m. Second, round sizes are down about 20-30% from highs in the pre-seed and seed market. Series As’s ascent continues unperturbed. Last, the Angellist team provided data on pre-money valuations, which is rare data! Seeds persist at $10m pre-money.

Data 339

Data Marketing Startup Investment 339

SaaStr

MARCH 21, 2023

It’s just they sort of have reverted to in many cases as hard as they were around, say, 2018. Folks are still struggling to get used to it. It’s not so much that things are a lot harder now. A lot of folks just don’t want to work hard anymore.

Venture Capital 346

Venture Capital SaaS Startup Marketing 346

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2024

So Carta put out some recent data I found very useful on how many startups raise another round, and how many sort of quietly wind down, in the first 5 years or so after being founded (from 2018 to early 2024): Almost none IPO’d in the first 5 years, but that just makes sense.

Pricing 330

Pricing Acquisition Startup Education 330

The Daily Egg

APRIL 24, 2019

As of 2018, the average eCommerce website — both globally and in the US — converted less than four percent of its visitors. eCommerce vendors who aren’t actively improving their landing pages to convert more visitors are almost certainly leaving money on the table.

55

55

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2022

You can see that fast and steep drop-off from the Q4’21 peak here: It looks particularly dramatic when you zoom into just late 2021 and 2022: But second, really, in many ways it seems like we’re just back to 2018-early 2020 in venture. Let’s look at 2018-202 0. Back to before the Covid Crazies in venture.

Startup 269

Startup Cloud Growth Marketing Enterprise 269

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

We’re proud to have > 60% women and multicultural speakers at the 2019 and 2018 SaaStr Annuals, and we are on track to meet or exceed that again in 2020. Our 2019 and 2018 attendee Diversity and Inclusion programs were fully subscribed and worked well, so we want to go even bigger this year on a number of levels.

Leadership 51

Leadership 51

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2022

It’s not slowing down Salesforce, Snowflake, or almost any other SaaS or Cloud leader. Salesforce Growth: 2023 $31.8B (guidance) 2022 $26.5B 2021 $21.25B 2020 $17.1B 2014 $4.1B. Thank you Ohana! pic.twitter.com/CMhrBXgHSF. — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) May 31, 2022. We may be headed for a big downturn, we’ll see.

Sales Hiring 345

Sales Hiring Acquisition Cloud Enterprise 345

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

Now this isn’t new in venture, but 2017-2018 actually were pretty good times to invest. That gets you to 3x after fees to the VC’s own investors. That’s what it takes to beat Nasdaq materially. So the media fund isn’t close to hitting its goal. And there is still time.

Venture Capital 300

Venture Capital Investment Data 300

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

We are proud that the 2022 SaaStr Annual featured a combined 60% women and multicultural speakers and have had over 60% women and multicultural speakers at each SaaStr Annual since 2018, and we hope to do even better in 2023! Our core goals and values at SaaStr include: Putting on the most inclusive events in the industry and.

Travel 336

Travel Innovation B2B Revenue 336

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2022

HubSpot is now on its way to $2B in ARR, but Dharmesh looks back on how they went from startup to scale-up: 2018: Dharmesh came back for the 5th Annual with Chief People office Katie to do a deep dive on how to drive up employee retention, and create values that endure.

CTO 306

CTO Retention Startup Scaling 306

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 1, 2024

Top quartile companies in 2024 grow at the same rates as bottom quartile companies in 2018. Each of these percentiles is now meaningfully lower than the average over the past decade. Future revenue ramps have been the dominant driver of software valuations for the vast majority of the last decade. When they fall, valuations compress.

Software 307

Software Marketing Revenue Business 307

The Daily Egg

JANUARY 31, 2019

February 2, 2018: I shared this post on LinkedIn: I’d started a new job, lucked into the opportunity to advise two founders and companies I think highly of, and committed to pushing forward on a passion project of mine that had stalled for 10 years (kids books about social and environmental issues).

269

269

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2022

2018: 68 attendees at SaaStr Miami Meet-Up. #2. In 2018, it seems like everyone at our meet-up was either sub-$1m ARR … or had driven or flown in. 2019: 184 attendees at SaaStr Miami Meet-Up. More importantly, the attendee quality has gone way, way up over the years. There just weren’t that many in Miami even in 2019.

Technical Review 286

Technical Review B2B SaaS Engagement 286

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2023

Those multiples went up in 2018 and 2019, and things were Better. But I think a lot of us are betting on a return at least to 2018-2019 multiples. The reality is, as you can see in the above BVP chart, the Median public SaaS company — a pretty high bar right there — has traded around 6x ARR. To a 8x-10x world.

Cloud 277

Cloud Trends Scale SaaS 277

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2021

Top tier SaaS companies are valued at 34x ARR today, up from a pretty consistent 10x or so through 2018. Valuations are at an all-time high — but you have to bring the growth. That’s incredible multiple expansion. But only the best SaaS and Cloud get these multiples. M&A isn’t keeping up, at least not yet.

Cloud 332

Cloud Scale SaaS Acquisition 332

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 12, 2022

BTC and ETC moved more or less in synchrony from 2016 to 2018. Economics students would argue the discounted cash flow model predicts this behavior. Companies with profits in future years should be less valuable during times of higher interest rates. Three years ago, they went their separate ways.

Software 328

Software Marketing Trends Startup 328

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

In 2018-2019, it grew then a bit, and for very top SaaS companies, 20x ARR wasn’t uncommon for Series A and later rounds. 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.

Venture Capital 66

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 66

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2020

By 2018, it felt like about 50%. MongoDB, Datadog, and others have given New York a stronger and strong place in SaaS and Cloud. In 2013, everyone that could come to the Bay Area to run a SaaS company, did. And yet … and yet … network effects are real. The Salesforce alumns are here in the Bay Area.

SaaS 363

SaaS Cloud B2B Company Culture 363

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

20% of their 2020 revenue, up from just 8% in 2018: Want more? We can this clearly with Shopify, which waiting all the way until 2020 to really monetize its partner base heavily. And the payoff was big. We did a great deep dive with Loren Padelford SVP of Shopify Plus / Shopify here: The post 5 Interesting Learnings From Shopify.

Payments 363

Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions Scale 363