SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2022

Investments I've made that didn't work out: – Momentum investment – CEO a bit of bulls**t artist – CEO good at sales but weak product team / CTO. Investments I've made that had so-so outcomes: – CEO not better than me – CEO couldn't control burn rate – Not really SaaS.

Investment 313

Investment Sales Recruiting CTO Startup 313

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2022

Returning for its 3rd year, hundreds of VCs will attend SaaStr Europa who are actively looking for new investments and on the hunt for soon-to-be Unicorns to add to their portfolios. From the Founding Partners, Managing Directors, and big-name global SaaS VCs — everyone who invests in SaaS has a presence at SaaStr Europa.

Venture Capital 291

Venture Capital Investment AI SaaS 291

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2022

marked the upside case for most VC software and infrastructure investment memos. 2022 Return Multiple by Round. The silver lining: the median public software company in 2022 is three times as valuable as in 2015, which suggests valuations should settle higher than that era. From 2007 to 2016, $1.5b 2015 Return Multiple by Round.

Startup 295

Startup Software Investment SaaS 295

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

at the height of 2022 to 6.7. It’s now falling to 150 because 81% percent of the dollars invested in venture capital at the height of the boom came from non-traditional venture capital firms which are all very likely to leave investing. Here’s what they found. #1: US venture funding went from 8 to 300 over 15 years.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 334

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2022

to the firms that send over a dozen of their Partners and Associates — everyone who invests in SaaS has a presence at SaaStr Annual. And make sure you have your team’s tickets to SaaStr Annual 2022 — you can’t meet the VCs if tickets sell out before you’ve purchased them! Megeve Investments.

Banking 278

Banking Investment Innovation Scaling 278

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

.” The SaaS Market Has Turned a Corner According to Brian, who sees the market through multiple lenses as HubSpot’s Chairman and through his role at Sequoia Growth and Propeller VC, the SaaS downturn that dominated 2022-2023 ended recently. “It felt like we came out of the recession in Q3 of 2024,” Brian noted.

AI 291

AI Marketing SaaS Interviewing 291

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2022

Seed funding seems to be all over the place, with many seed investors investing the same as before. But later stage investing has clearly changed. The post Are You Fundable in 2022? The change is still being figured out. YC demo day will still as hot as ever. If nothing else, every round > $10m has changed.

Venture Capital 313

Venture Capital Cloud Investment Startup 313

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Percentage of Total Incoming Deals Do VCs Invest In? — Ann Bordetsky (@annbordetsky) November 7, 2022. A seed stage fund meeting a Series B investment opportunity is a waste of time. — Sarah Cone (@sarah_cone) November 7, 2022. Right here, right now? Deals seen per month?

Investment 279

Investment Venture Capital Leadership 279

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 28, 2021

Here are my predictions for 2022: Web3 consumer products go fully mainstream with more than 35% of Americans, about 100m people, engaging with them by 2023. VCs invested $10b per year. Every year I make a list of predictions and score last year’s predictions. Metamask counts 10m MAU and Phantom is at 1.5m MAU growing quickly.

Scale 275

Scale Blockchain Banking Machine Learning 275

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

What I do know is many of the billion+ SaaS companies I invested in a decade ago would not be remotely competitive today. And a related SaaStr great deep dive with Parker Conrad, founder CEO of Rippling, here: The post The SaaS Era of 2013-2022 is Over. And that’s how it should be. Software, innovation and time marches on.

AI Search 306

AI Search SaaS Headcount AI 306

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 18, 2022

Venture capitalists have continued to invest at similar prices & similar round sizes in the most sought after companies. 220b in dry powder (dollars VCs have raised but not yet invested) will buoy valuations higher than expected. But round volumes have fallen by at least 20% & likely much more. Publics are down 70%.

Pricing 270

Pricing Startup Investment Technology 270

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2022

Dear SaaStr: Should I Tell VCs How Much I Want Them to Invest? Don’t ask an investor for more money than they will invest, if you’d take less. A related post here : And a great deep-dive AMA from yesterday on getting funded in 2022 here, where we talk about this question and so much more: (note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer).

Investment 279

Investment Scale Scaling Sales 279

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2022

We’re 15 days away from SaaStr Annual 2022, and we are excited to feature hundreds of speakers, sharing their knowledge and experience with you! Scaling Revenue in 2022: What’s the Same and What’s Different? The post 15 Most Popular SaaStr Annual 2022 Sessions (So Far!). GET 20% OFF! See You Sep 13-15!!

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service B2B 291

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2022

We wanted to give a special shout-out to some of our newest sponsors for SaaStr Annual 2022. We are passionate about helping businesses and communities thrive by advancing the way the world pays, banks and invests, serving more than 20,000 clients and more than one million merchant locations in over 130 countries.

Travel 265

Travel Finance Banking Development 265

Tom Tunguz

MAY 4, 2022

I wrote down five data points that struck me: Q1 2022 was the most active quarter ever in Angellist history, and likely venture history. 100m post is consistent with what I’ve seen in the market for the most sought-after investments. Web3 is a term that will disappear like web2 and mobile investing before it.

Data 247

Data Marketing Healthcare Construction 247

Tom Tunguz

MAY 8, 2024

The fastest growing category of US venture investment in 2024 is AI. Venture capitalists have invested $18.3 But after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, there’s a marked inflection point. Some of this is new company formation, & there has been a significant amount of seed investment in this category.

Investment 204

Investment Venture Capital ChatGPT Healthcare 204

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 20, 2023

Since then, investing activity dropped precipitously. 1] 2021 & 2022 surged above prediction, while 2023 has operated meaningfully below - sometimes 50% below. The post-Covid surge in venture capital pushed valuations & activity to record breaking heights. By building a linear model we can hazard a guess of when that might be.

Investment 236

Investment Venture Capital Startup Finance 236

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

2022 — the year we’re now in the New Normal. Invest (more) in training and onboarding. Invest heavily in training your reps. Invest in optimizing lead routing, scoring and managemen t. The post 15 Ways to Help Your Sales Team in 2022 appeared first on SaaStr. Do the opposite. Have sane quotas.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 246

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2025

The 3 plans you need to make as a founder: The C10 Plan, The C60 Plan, and the C90 Plan: pic.twitter.com/JSPcjbfzpt — Jason SaaStr 2025 is May 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) October 4, 2022 Youre essentially building three layers of planning to balance ambition, realism, and risk management.

Sales Hiring 166

Sales Hiring Sales Communication Revenue 166

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2022

1/ From "Limited Partners", the ones that give VCs $ to invest. — Jason BeKind Lemkin 2⃣0⃣2⃣2⃣ (@jasonlk) January 14, 2022. Very well for top Limited Partners (“LPs”), the folks that invest in VC funds, and give them the capital to invest in startups.

Venture Capital 342

Venture Capital Benchmarks Investment Startup 342

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2022

jasonlk) June 9, 2022. It depends most on the stage, and the latest stage VCs are the most frozen: * Cross-over and Hedge Funds have redemptions to deal with, struggle to justify almost any unicorn+ stage investments. later stage) investing has fallen 40% this year , but it’s probably more than that. More on that here. *

Investment 350

Investment Cloud Startup Pricing 350

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2023

SaaS Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin and Atrium Founder and CRO Pete Kazanjy sit down to discuss the state of investing in 2023 and what founders should keep in mind for the year ahead. . Since 2016, he prefers to make about three or four investments per year, usually within the $1 – $4 million range. . The Backstory.

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Investment Sales Hiring Entrepreneurship 242

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2023

— Jason Be Kind Lemkin  (@jasonlk) December 30, 2022. But I would tell every startup I invested in or worked with to move onto Salesforce — at least once they hire a real VP of Sales. The final aha moment I had was at SaaStr Annual 2022. But maybe someday, they … won’t anymore. That in fact, they saw no reason to leave.

Startup 71

Startup Sales Hiring Scale Investment 71

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2023

So I’ve been investing since 2013, and have done fairly well. Some of my top investments at seed stage include Pipedrive, Salesloft, Front, Talkdesk, Algolia, Gorgias, Greenhouse and more: But 2022 was a quiet time. My first year with no brand new investments, only follow-ons. So we’re behind.

SaaS 320

SaaS Investment Startup Branding 320

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

— Jason 2022 SaaStr Annual Sep 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 28, 2022. Most VC funds “carry” startup investments at their last round price, unless their value has been materially impaired. And in the middle are growth funds and investments. So, the investment gets marked down. But what about startups?

Startup 331

Startup Venture Capital SaaS Cloud 331

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

My summary of Venture Markets in Nov 2022: Series B and later even worse than looks in data: 85%+ of investing here has simply ceased. — Jason Be Kind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 2, 2022. Seed and Early Series A: Deals take longer but off about 40%. Valuations are down a stunning 75% from their peak last year.

AWS 351

AWS Venture Capital Azure Cloud 351

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2022

Seed investment isn’t slowing down. jasonlk) April 25, 2022. Basically three things are happening right now, which makes the announcements in the press and Twitter and LinkedIn confusing: Seed funds grew 20x in the past 2 years and are still mostly investing like it’s 2021. were in process or even closed before February 2022.

Venture Capital 305

Venture Capital Investment Startup Pricing 305

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2024

Just as in 2012, a surge in seed investments met a relatively stable Series A market. The orange crush of seed investment has outpaced the growth in Series A & Series B rounds. In this category, the heady multiples of 2021 & 2022 still apply. Why is this happening again?

AI 332

AI Investment Startup Software 332

SaaStr

AUGUST 1, 2022

Because in the Best of Times, there’s always more money to invest in top performers — and even mid-pack performer s. That really leaves just $120m to invest. (Yes, Yes, there are ways to “recycle” to get the amount available to invest up, but that’s not super important for this analysis). checks on average ($2.5m

Venture Capital 336

Venture Capital Startup Investment Pricing 336

SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2022

The trick is to invest only when you have enough payoff from the first segment or industry. Invest in a repeatable playbook. The post Key Strategies for Scaling Revenue in 2022 with Confluent President of Field Operations Erica Schultz (Pod + Video) appeared first on SaaStr.

VP of Engineering 245

VP of Engineering Scale Scaling Sales Hiring 245

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2022

Put differently, if you look at multiples of revenue for top SaaS and Cloud companies above from 2014-2022, you could come to one of (at least) two conclusions today: Conclusion #1: Q2’20-Q4’22 Cloud Revenue Multiples Were a Covid Anomaly. — Vivek Goyal (@Goyal_Vivek) March 11, 2022.

Scale 330

Scale SaaS Cloud Pricing 330

Tom Tunguz

MAY 2, 2022

When I asked him what he meant, he replied because capital was so plentiful and accessible today, he hired more expensive people, spent more time developing a product, and invested with a longer time horizon before demonstrating evidence of success. Invest -> Grow -> IPO/M&A -> Re-invest.

Product Marketing 359

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Marketing Software Development 359

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2022

As Crunchbase noted just the other day , growth rounds are down at least 40% as well, and their data likely has more lag than AngelList (and is from a few weeks earlier): The bottom line is every category of venture investment has gotten harder since the go-go days of 2021. — Parker (@pt) June 17, 2022. It is what it is.

Pricing 351

Pricing Investment Data Marketing 351

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2023

2022 was sort of a tale of 2 worlds. At the start of 2022, things were still part of the Boom Times of 2021. Everyone now has a thesis for investing in 2023. I’d roughly summarize as follows: Successful seed investors are planning to invest as usual, just looking for lower valuations. By late Q1, it was over.

Investment 307

Investment Scaling SaaS Marketing 307

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Joselyn Goldfein , Managing Director at Zeta Venture Partners, which invests in AI and data infrastructure-focused startups from inception through seed stage And see everyone at 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!! The bar has risen significantly from the “growth at all costs” mindset of 2021-2022.

Technical Review 195

Technical Review Artificial Intelligence AI Marketplace as a Service 195

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 7, 2022

Seven months into 2022, these figures exceed last year’s totals, something I wondered about last month. As 2022 concludes, transactions like these will inform late-stage venture prices. These figures will fill the comparables sections of investment memos. Acquirer.

Acquisition 324

Acquisition Pricing Startup Software 324