SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2024

That was always the plan when BILL went public in 2019. The network was growing, and they saw real virality. That was probably 2012. Then, in 2017, with around $50M in revenue, BILL added payment capabilities. BILL network has 7.1M network members who have used BILL to pay or get paid. Let’s look at what kind of moat it is.

SMB 312

SMB Payment Services Payments Payment Methods 312

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

And that’s a wrap on @twilio Q1 2019 earnings! — Jeff Lawson (@jeffiel) May 1, 2019. At least, $1B in ARR certainly isn’t the ceiling. 233M revenue, 81% y/y growth, and our first quarter including SendGrid results! Thank you to our customers, partners, and Twilions worldwide on another quarter of continued strong growth.

SaaS 362

SaaS Cloud Trends Revenue 362

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2025

At its peak, Parabus saved millions of dollars for its 10 million customers before being acquired by Capital One after just three years. But it’s what came next that demonstrates the power of bigger, bolder bets.

CTO Hire 213

CTO Hire CTO Coach Scale CTO 213

Tom Tunguz

MAY 10, 2020

We can plug in last year’s numbers in the table linked here to get an approximation for the value of the S&P 500 on Dec 31, 2019, of 3224, and this implies an S&P dividend growth rate of 5.8%. The S&P500 levels in April suggest that the market believes dividends will grow at 4.0%, down 30%. But a lot has happened since then.

Marketing 357

Marketing Investment Pricing Revenue 357

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2024

When Jasper launched in 2019, it started with one model. In 2019, Jasper introduced people to LLMs. Both require precision and accuracy, so 90% of the way there isn’t enough. They use a combination of existing models as well as proprietary models to ensure accuracy in their sensitive fields of healthcare and legal tech.

Cloud 173

Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence Healthcare 173

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 329

Scale SaaS Cloud Pricing 329

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2023

2019: $336m rev 2020: $607m rev One of the fastest-growing SaaS companies ever — Jon Ma (@jonbma) March 27, 2021 Daniel Dines Co-Founder and Co-CEO – UiPath Daniel Dines is the co-founder and Co-CEO of UiPath, a leading provider of enterprise automation software. seed round 2015: $1m rev. 2016: $3.5m rev 2017: $30m rev.

Company Culture 290

Company Culture Innovation AI Enterprise 290

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2021

In comparison, approximately 3,000,000 sqft leased in all of 2020 and over 6,000,000 sqft leased in all of 2019.” ” So that’s not back to the 6m sq ft of 2019, it’s a lot more back than you might think. #3. . “In 2021, leasing activity totals 2,800,00 sqft so far this year. This is interesting to see. .

Scale 330

Scale Cloud Startup Trends 330

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2021

And that number has gone up from 78% in 2019 to 84% today. 62% annual is up from 54% in 2019, so a big push there. A steady march above $5k in ACV. While only 25% of Freshworks’ customers pay more than $5k a year, they represent 84% of total ARR. Freshworks hasn’t gone super-enterprise. And a few bonus learnings: #6.

Scale 361

Scale SMB Scaling Payment Features 361

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2021

Sprout Social IPO’d somewhat quietly at the end of 2019 at about an $815m market cap — small for a SaaS IPO. If that growth from a $815m market cap in 2019 to $4.7B So one of the quieter SaaS success stories in Sprout Social, a leader in social media management. But they kept at it. Billion (!)

Social Media 328

Social Media SMB Cloud Scale 328

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2022

Back to where we were in the markets at the end of 2019. We’re back to 2019. But it’s crazy times with interest rates in one year going from zero to closer to historical norms, and inflation like we haven’t seen in a very long time. Where does that leave us, going into the end of 2022? At least, sort of.

Cloud 304

Cloud Pricing Metrics SaaS 304

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 7, 2020

Investors deployed $117 billion in 2019 up from $106 billion in 2018. However, Q4 2019 saw meaningful dip from Q3, but it's too early to say whether it's an aberration, or the beginning of a longer-term trend. Softbank's turbulent 2019 was one of the key topics of the year. This market has grown 20% over the last five years.

Marketing 276

Marketing Finance Investment Trends 276

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 18, 2022

For the next 3 years, Series Ds increased in size until the late 2019/early 2020 correction of 41%. The Series D mean round size is plotted in red. 2014’s correction stalled and then reversed Series D round sizes for 2 years through the second correction in 2016.

Marketing 362

Marketing Startup Finance Technology 362

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2022

My quick review of Miami for SaaS: – Met ton great CEOs, including 2 unicorns – 5x the size for SaaS vs. 2019 – Meet some good VPs, etc. 2019: 184 attendees at SaaStr Miami Meet-Up. There just weren’t that many in Miami even in 2019. – Still small – Crypto et. Dominates, not B2B.

Technical Review 298

Technical Review B2B SaaS Engagement 298

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2022

Sprout Social IPO’d in Dec 2019 at an $800m market cap. A few case studies: * Sprout Social IPO’d in December 2019 at an $800m market-cap. It IPO’d early, in a crowded space. But they kept on going, and gong, and growing. years later, in a market down 50% …. They’re worth $2.7 Billion #golong pic.twitter.com/nA8jSXgehx. It’s tripled.

AWS 295

AWS SaaS Cloud Scale 295

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2019

The 2019 mergers are in red. These acquisition multiples are in line with the two previous years of large acquisitions, suggesting that the pricing in the M&A market for the first six months of 2019 hasn’t changed materially. in acquisitions suggests that 2019 will be similarly active as 2018, which saw $66B of acquisitions.

Acquisition 271

Acquisition Pricing Startup Software 271

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 7, 2021

The majority of that fall occured before Covid in 2019. How did sales efficiency evolve? Across public software companies, the average sales efficiency fell from 0.6 over the last 3 years. In contrast, sales efficiency improved throughout 2020. Examining the data by quartiles, the sales efficiency has remained largely unchanged.

Software 343

Software Travel Sales Metrics 343

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

And in 2019, only 26% of their fund managers reported a 5%+ value change. in 2020 … the same as 2019. It’s mostly as you’d expect: The Black Swan Year: How 2020 Impacted Venture Investing and Performance. A few interesting learnings: 2020 started with about half their VC managers up, and half down.

Cloud 284

Cloud Investment B2B SaaS 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

The #1 trend is that apart from the huge run-up in SaaS multiples starting in 2019, and a nice bump in 2021 … public SaaS companies have been trading at about 10x forward revenue. But the markets right now seem to be saying we’re heading back to pre-2019 mutliples. Do they deserve more today? I would argue yes.

Cloud 289

Cloud Trends Revenue SaaS 289

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 28, 2024

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

Acquisition 314

Acquisition Startup Venture Capital Software 314

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

While Doximity was EBITDA positive back in 2019, it really exploded as the business scaled. 290 $100,000+ Customers. That’s how they’ve built up to something big. #3. Insanely Profitable — At Scale. Today, it’s on track to generate $181,000,000 in EBITDA in 2023.

Scale 344

Scale Scaling Revenue SaaS 344

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

That’s a wrap on Q4 2019 Earnings: $331M revenue, growing 62% Y/Y… and for FY 2019 – a huge milestone for the company crossing the billion mark at $1.1B! But Salesforce is still growing like a weed as it runs up to $20B in ARR. Twilio is growing 60% at $1b in ARR. Shopify is accelerating. pic.twitter.com/ltyRYkpwoP.

Startup 290

Startup Enterprise SaaS Software 290

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2021

2019: $336m rev. 89 $1m+ ACV customers — up from 21 in 2019. Revenue grew nicely at first from $1m to $3.5m from 2015 to 2016 … and then exploded: UIPath History. 2005: Started as a tech outsourcing company. 2014: $500k rev. seed round. 2015: $1m rev. 2016: $3.5m 2017: $30m rev. 2018: $155m rev. 2020: $607m rev.

Outsourcing Services 362

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Payment Features Cloud 362

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

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

The company spent $47m in 2019 on sales and marketing, and $52m in 2020, an increase of $3m or 6%, while growing revenues 49%. Amplitude offers three key products: analytics for measuring user behavior, experiment for testing new user flows, and recommendation which optimizes content for different user segments. Revenue, $M. Gross Margin.

Benchmarks 294

Benchmarks Metrics PayPal Enterprise 294

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 12, 2022

R^2, meaning yield changes explain about half of the forward multiple’s movement since 2019. The Federal Reserve Bank raising rates has been a strong depressor of valuations. The rates on the 10 year bond correlate at -0.49 With the Fed seems intent on raising rates further, how low could forward multiples fall? 10 Year Rate.

Banking 325

Banking Enterprise Software Revenue 325

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 18, 2020

Starting in 2019 and continuing in 2020, the public markets value these companies with better multiples. Let’s excise this group of 50% growers from the rest and add Redpoint internal data for forward ARR multiples for later-stage companies, which are all growing above 50%. This is a critical shift.

Software Review 363

Software Review Finance Enterprise Acquisition 363

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 28, 2020

As for marketing to people in front of computers all day, the webinar is the new meetup, conference, whitepaper, online ad, or any other campaign that one might have run in 2019. ZDNet reported demand for Azure is up 775%. These charts show our working patterns have morphed radically in just a few weeks.

Trends 354

Trends Azure Software Review Content Marketing 354

Tom Tunguz

JULY 25, 2021

Early stage debt origination and round counts peaked in 2019, while later stage debt has increased quite nearly every year. However, equity dollars are replacing those debt dollars in the last 18 months in the early stage. Meanwhile, venture debt dollars have migrated to later stages.

Finance 338

Finance Startup Acquisition SaaS 338

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2021

Twilio’s NRR since 2019. Pretty consistent. A question so many of us had in the earlier days of SaaS was … will we max out all our bigger customers? We all saw especially larger customers buying more and more each year, but most of us founders a generation or so ago in SaaS worried we’d max out our larger accounts.

Scaling 340

Scaling Investment Cloud Customer Success 340