SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

PST We post twice as much content a year as pre-March 2020, but it yields essentially the same size audience Only 10% of our content is to our homepage “SaaStr.com” So a breadth of content really does help. LinkedIn was flat but X/Twitter was way down as it penalized links in tweets. 54% of readers in U.S.,

Venture Capital 260

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Customer Success 260

SaaStr

JANUARY 15, 2025

So Cloud and SaaS have had a bit of a rollercoaster the past 4 years, from the boom times of 2020-2021, to the tougher times overall of 2023, to the AI boom of 2024+. But one thing has done well through all of it: security. We always need it, and the threats keep coming. And Cloudflare has been one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Scaling 278

Scaling Cloud AI Engineering 278

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2024

Others will have to accept much lower returns, at least for folks that invested in 2020-early 2022. It’s just time. OneStream was arguably one of these, and PE made a big gain on the IPO. Genesys may be the first of a flood of these PE-backed SaaS IPOs in 2025. It just filed to IPO.

AI 316

AI Cloud SaaS Investment 316

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2024

And there is also a quiet wave of apathy in B2B outside of AI. If SaaStr disappeared, would it matter? Maybe that’s a different way of answering the question.

B2B 312

B2B Cloud AI Scaling 312

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2024

And there hasn’t been for a while: It was great times for SaaS liquidity in late 2020 through the end of 2021. And what you can see is there is really almost no liquidity for startups and scale-ups in SaaS and Cloud at the moment. Epic times.

SaaS 316

SaaS Acquisition Cloud AI 316

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2024

Up From Almost None in 2020 to 295 Today. Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) is a Year Old But Fueling $159m in Q2 Bookings Alone To some Cloud and SaaS leaders, AI is a table-stakes addition. But for Palantir, it’s a true accelerant. #3. Commercial Customers Fueling Growth. Fast forward to today, they are closing 300 of them.

Artificial Intelligence 240

Artificial Intelligence Government AI Cloud 240

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 17, 2021

From time to time, I chart the fastest growing categories of startup investment in the US for seed through Series C. Here are 2015 , 2017 , This year, I was certain the categories would have been influenced by COVID19.

Startup 362

Startup Software Engineering Finance Engineering 362

SaaStr

DECEMBER 9, 2024

This isn’t 2020 levels of growth, but acceleration is acceleration. Even folks that were struggling to rebound from pandemic-fueled growth like Twilio have bounced back, to an extent at least. Twilio is now above 10% growth again. Many SaaS leaders are now benefitting from selling AI. Salesforce has seen a boost.

SaaS 305

SaaS AI Cloud B2B 305

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

“The universe slammed SaaS down at the beginning of 2020, then splashed it way up, then slammed it down again. “It felt like we came out of the recession in Q3 of 2024,” Brian noted. Now it’s flashing back up.”

AI 290

AI Marketing SaaS Interviewing 290

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2024

While CFOs have regained some control post-2020, one thing remains clear: if you don’t have buy-in from the technical developers and engineers actually using your product, you won’t get the deal done.

Engineering 290

Engineering Development CTO Leadership 290

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2025

Million Paying Users ARPU increased substantially from 2020 to 2023, and is up modestly again in 2024. #3. Even Box really is an enterprise player, and much of Microsoft’s and Google’s usage is presumably package in and not paid for discretely. #2. ARPU Continues to Slowly Increase Across 18.2 43% of Revenue Outside Of U.S.

AI Search 175

AI Search Scale AI B2B 175

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 9, 2022

In 2020, revenue growth was the most important factor explaining a public software company’s forward multiple. The formula has changed since then. Net income has surged to the highest correlate of a public software company’s multiple surpassing revenue growth. Preference changes pop out of the data. Net income surges to 0.71

Software 364

Software Revenue Metrics Sales 364

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

The late stage venture market is on pace to set a record in 2020. Through Q3 2020, late stage investors have invested as much as the entirety of 2019, and should things continue linearly we should expect the final tally to exceed $100B. Last, 2020 is on track to set a record for total IPO proceeds in a year. Check check.

Venture Capital 353

Venture Capital Government Pricing Investment 353

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 18, 2022

For the next 3 years, Series Ds increased in size until the late 2019/early 2020 correction of 41%. Ds doubled in 18 months starting in 2016, and again doubled from $75m to $150m in 2020-2021 - so the growth has been steeper on the way up and that may suggest a more sudden correction on the other side of the peak.

Marketing 362

Marketing Startup Finance Technology 362

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2025

The last IPO of the 2020-2021 era was HashiCorp in December 2021. And it’s one of the first to be acquired! IBM just closed on its $6.4 Billion acquisition of HashiCorp. And CEO David McJannet came to SaaStr Annual a little ways back to share his top scaling learnings.

Scale 188

Scale Systems Review Scaling Leadership 188

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 12, 2021

Till 2020, the growth rates of the private market valuations and the public valuation multiples paralleled each other at the highest level. 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.

SaaS 361

SaaS Cloud Enterprise Software 361

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 10, 2022

In fact, their revenue trajectories through 2020 are nearly identical. They would both exceed $400m in 2020. Both have grown very fast. Both companies employ a usage-based pricing model: pay for what you use. In 2016, each company recorded less than $50m in revenue. In two years, both would near $200m in revenue.

Startup 338

Startup Pricing Revenue Development 338

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 22, 2023

B2B companies have reduced headcount to a greater extent than at any time since 2020. In 2020, B2C companies cut 8.8x The current wave of layoffs, a difficult component of the innovation boom/bust cycle, differs from the previous years’ dynamics. the number of B2B employees. in 2021, & 6.9x

B2C 321

B2C B2B Headcount Business Model 321

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2022

No, this SaaS Crash is so tough on VCs and public market investors because the market was just so, so high for Cloud stocks from mid-2020 to late 2021: You can see above in the BVP Nasdaq Cloud Index that while these are still Great Times in SaaS, they aren’t the crazy days that peaked around Thanksgiving 2021. I really do.

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Cloud Startup SaaS 364

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 28, 2024

In 2014, 2016, 2020, 2021, these big mergers drove the figures into the tens of billions. X 2019 23.4% - 2020 61.1% Multi-billion dollar acquisitions, the blue bars, are the largest contributors to this swing. It’s no surprise that in those years, the biggest acquisitions accounted for more than 53% of dollars on average.

Acquisition 314

Acquisition Startup Venture Capital Software 314

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2022

Enterprise software spending globally was $529B in 2020, per Gartner. Put differently, enterprise software spending globally was $529B in 2020. In 2023, it will be $750B. That’s a tailwind almost all of us are drafting on. — Jason BeKind Lemkin #???????????? jasonlk) April 13, 2022. in 2022 and 11.8% In 2023, it will be $750B.

SaaS 71

SaaS Enterprise Software Data 71

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

And interesting, this stacked chart shows 2020 funds and 2021 funds … when things got a bit loopy in venture … aren’t looking too good. And 2020 and 2021 funds look a little … rough right now. But it does show just how hard it is to do well in venture. The median 2017 fund is up after 7 years. But not by enough.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Investment Data 312

SaaStr

MARCH 21, 2023

So many of the things we learned from mid-2020 to early 2022 … just don’t apply anymore. It’s tough to say this “aloud”, but the truth is, a lot of folks just didn’t work all that hard from mid-2020 to late 2022. The unicorn age is over, at least for now, but many still don’t totally get it.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital SaaS Startup Marketing 347

Tom Tunguz

JULY 30, 2021

They’ve raised 3x as much year-to-date in IPOs as all of 2020, which was a healthy market. The M&A market is not far behind; it’s on track to double 2020’s decade high of M&A value transacted. Startups are basking in the IPO market. Where will the tally end the year? See that blip in 2012?

Finance 336

Finance Startup Investment Marketing 336

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2021

As a result, it’s quite profitable, with $150m in free cash flow in 2020. #2. This ecommerce revenue was $143m in 2020, about 22% of total revenue. Website revenues grew only 18% in 2020, while ecommerce revenue grew 78%. Over $500,000 revenue per employee. Squarespace has 1,200 employees and $700m in ARR.

Payment Methods 338

Payment Methods Merchant Services Payments Payment Services 338

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

in revenue in fiscal year 2020, to $432m in the first three quarters of fiscal 2022. Atop these sensors, Samsara software executes workflows, provides drivers with apps, monitors equipment, and provides managers and executives visibility into the operations of a site. Revenue, $M. Revenue Growth. -. Gross Margin. Sales Efficiency. -.

CTO Hire 362

CTO Hire CTO Coach Benchmarks Scale 362

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2024

We have to be relentless about this because our sub productivity is so much lower than it was in March 2020, even two years ago, and we don’t have all the answers, but we’ve got hopefully automation will solve it for us as well, because it’s an existential issue of founders.

Sales Hiring 321

Sales Hiring Scale AI SaaS 321

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 10, 2020

This retrospective analysis compares Crunchbase data from April 1, 2020 to data from October 10, 2020 across three dimensions: round counts, investment total, and median round size. There’s a risk to those assessments: the data is incomplete since not all rounds founders close within a quarter are reported in that quarter.

Venture Capital 355

Venture Capital Trends Investment Data 355

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

This already had started to break pre-2020, as the war for talent drove up costs in these “secondary” sales centers. And then of course, post-2020, the world changed for sales reps. Second, sales comp expectations ballooned in the Boom Times of mid-2020 to early 2022, and haven’t really come down.

SMB 317

SMB Scale Sales Hiring Sales 317

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2020

In 2020, they are 40% larger, a $33M swing in round size. In 2020, Series A investors have changed their behavior at the Series B. However, Series B data suggest insiders are leading aggressive rounds into compelling businesses. Witness the red line in this Series B Mean chart. Inside rounds have skyrocketed. What does this tell us?

Finance 363

Finance Investment Startup Data 363