Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

before the announcement of the acquisition a company traded at a 4.2x The implied multiple after the M&A is 5.7x, assuming the acquisition price is at $28b. The Cisco acquisition continues the trend of take-privates that includes New Relic for $6.5b , Qualtrics for $12.5b , Software AG for $2.4b.

Trends 209

Trends Software Review Acquisition Pricing 209

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Efficient Growth : Word-of-mouth in tight-knit industries reduces customer acquisition costs. Looking Ahead: The Future of Vertical SaaS As we look to 2025, 2026 and beyond, several trends are emerging: Industry Consolidation : Successful vertical SaaS players are becoming platforms, acquiring or partnering with complementary solutions.

Construction 250

Construction Scale SaaS Travel 250

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2020

A bunch of sessions aren’t even up yet — for example, we just added David Wadwani, ex-CEO of Appdynamics, now the newest partner at Greylock — so take these trends with a grain of salt. I’m glad to see it is trending. The post The 20 Trending VC Sessions at 2020 SaaStr Annual!! But grab your spot fast!

Trends 238

Trends Venture Capital Scale PayPal 238

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 29, 2022

In 2017, SaaS companies reported their cost of customer acquisition had increased by 65% in the previous five year period. I observe a few trends. More competition increases costs of customer acquisition. What happened to these figures during Covid? We can examine the sales efficiency of public software companies to get a sense.

Sales Hiring 317

Sales Hiring Sales Startup Acquisition 317

User Pilot

MARCH 30, 2025

But is your mobile user acquisition strategy strong enough? There are many ways to approach each, so lets go over nine of the most effective strategies for mobile user acquisition: 1. Integrate product-led growth in your acquisition strategy I said earlier that you shouldnt rely on your product alone to attract mobile users.

Mobile 66

Mobile Acquisition Software Review Social Media 66

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2021

We’ve all seen this, but the trend is accelerating. Valuations are at an all-time high — but you have to bring the growth. And PE firms are doing billion+ acquisitions seemingly every week or two. Unicorn acquisitions, unlike unicorn VC rounds, remain rare. But the next generation? That’s less clear.

Cloud 335

Cloud Scale SaaS Acquisition 335

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 17, 2024

Plus, an analysis of the top 75 trending sales AI tools. The point is to know the overall trends. The post GTM 126: Reverse Engineering the Founder Journey: From Scaling Twitter Ads to $650M, 20 Years Operating, and a Webflow Acquisition | Guy Yalif appeared first on GTMnow. Why HG Insights? And don’t care about accuracy.

Scale 99

Scale Engineering Acquisition Scaling 99

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2024

Four portfolio companies join Sameer to talk about three trends of the Cloud AI Era. Trend #1: Foundation Models Many models exist: open source, closed source, frontier models. With Jasper’s acquisition of ClipDrop, they can build a catalog of trails across the U.S. All the customer has to say is, “That’s great.

Cloud 167

Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence Healthcare 167

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2023

That people, not companies, do acquisitions. Either the CEO makes a decision (if it’s a Big acquisition), or an SVP does for a (relatively) smaller deal. There are 100, even 1000 decent acquisition candidates every larger public company could acquire. Will an acquisition help them fix their #1 gap, their #1 worry?

Acquisition 284

Acquisition Trends Strategy 284

Predictable Revenue

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

Collin Stewart discusses the emerging trends in sales recruitment with Brisa Renteria, CEO of Improved Growth The post Rethinking Sales Talent Acquisition with Brisa Renteria appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Sales Recruiting 130

Sales Recruiting Acquisition Sales Trends 130

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 18, 2020

Let’s bucket these businesses by growth to see trends. And if it continues, we should expect the IPO, the direct listing, and special purpose acquisition vehicles (SPACs) to present compelling financing options to later stage founders. The valuation multiple has doubled in about two years.

Software Review 363

Software Review Finance Enterprise Acquisition 363

ChurnZero

JANUARY 6, 2025

” So what 2025 customer success trends can we anticipate? Trend 1: Customer teams strengthen their revenue focus. Businesses need to focus on three metrics at the same time: acquisition, retention and customer lifetime value. Trend 2: AI and automation become transformative. Its a bumpy road to the top.”

Trends 52

Trends Customer Success Scale SaaS 52

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2024

There were big opportunities in the QR space, so Bitly made an acquisition that was a big accelerator and set the stage for becoming a multi-product platform. Optimize your acquisition funnel. You’ll have to figure out how to best optimize acquisition funnels for your PLG path. You might have to rebuild your marketing team.

Scale 300

Scale Scaling Underperforming Technical Team User Experience 300

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 23, 2023

Growth continues to be driven by Azure consumption business, and we expect the trends from Q1 to continue into Q2.” At the time of acquisition, Github had about 25m users & projected to reach 100m in 2025. “All of the number of developers using GitHub has increased 4x since our acquisition 5 years ago.”

AI Search 312

AI Search AI Cloud Azure 312

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2024

Shopify has seen the same trend with its SMBs as well. Divvy Acquisition Very, Very Successful Ramp and Brex create the most noise in the expense management space, but Bill scooped up Divvy for $2.5 Float began to get material pre-IPO. Fast forward to today, and only 20% of its revenue is from software subscriptions.

Payments 292

Payments Payment Solutions SMB Acquisition 292

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

AI Demo Stage SaaStr Annual provides a comprehensive view of the current B2B landscape, emerging trends, and competitive movements. Sessions often cover specific benchmarks for customer acquisition costs, churn rates, expansion revenue, sales efficiency, and other SaaS-specific metrics.

Sales Recruiting 180

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 180

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2023

Current events and trends Sometimes your product is so boring that you need an extra boost from current events and trends. People might not pull out the pitchforks, but if something starts to spread, people will jump on it because the trend and current event make them too curious not to. Virality is similar to a mob mentality.

Scale 260

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Entrepreneurship 260

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 9, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Subscribe now Consumption Trends We’re now through earning season. Is there any incremental signal on consumption trends reversing? Very healthy new business (new customer) acquisition. Follow along to stay up to date!

Trends 130

Trends Cloud Azure AWS 130

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 1, 2019

With more capital, startups can take more risk, explore more customer acquisition channels (some which may not work), develop more products and potentially grow faster. None of these trends is a negative implication necessarily. And the financial market has met the need many times over, with bigger checks at larger valuations.

Startup 279

Startup Software Review SaaS Acquisition 279

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 14, 2024

What if you could boost revenue without having to invest a small fortune in new customer acquisition? Start by mapping out the key stages in the journey, for example, awareness, acquisition, activation, adoption, retention , and revenue. You can then visualize the data as trends, funnels, paths, and heatmaps.

Strategy 105

Strategy Payment Solutions Payments Customer Lifetime Value 105

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Just a quick reminder: Payback Period = Cost of Customer Acquisition/Gross Margin The gross margin is the revenue per customer minus the costs to provide the service. Looking at current AI pricing trends in SaaS, there’s significant variance. A decrease in price reduces gross margin and will consequently increase payback period.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

2 drivers stood out as notable: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Churn. In terms of Customer Acquisition Costs, “Rule of 40” Qualifiers spent 31% less to acquire a new customer. As context, the KBCM 2021 survey data showed customer acquisition cost (CAC) payback periods of 18 to 26 months on a gross margin basis.

SaaS 317

SaaS Technical Review Benchmarks Azure 317

User Pilot

JANUARY 8, 2024

With the right customer acquisition strategies, you can convert potential customers to paying users and set the stage for turning them into long-term loyal users. Best practices for effective customer acquisition and product-led growth. Focus on the right customer acquisition channels. What is a customer acquisition strategy?

Acquisition 105

Acquisition Strategy Social Media Underperforming Technical Team 105

Clouded Judgement

JULY 16, 2024

In general, customer acquisition costs and other upfront costs associated with acquiring new customers are much higher in the first year of the contract, though sales commissions allocated to customer maintenance and support are amortized over a five-year period. months and 23.4 months, respectively. months and 23.4 months, respectively.

Benchmarks 295

Benchmarks Data Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning 295

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

In the ever-evolving landscape of SaaS, Venture Capital, Bootstrapping, and Valuations – understanding market trends and investment patterns is critical. We’ll explain Jason’s take on the recent market fluctuations, highlighting major deals that shaped investment patterns and their effects on valuation trends.

Venture Capital 272

Venture Capital Scale Technical Review Software Review 272

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

” – Colin Jones, CRO Emeritus at Wiz You may have seen the news that Google is making its biggest acquisition — by far — of Cloud and SaaS security leader Wiz for a stunning $32 Billion (!). “I thought I had 60 days to get the value proposition right. In the end, we had roughly 4.”

Scale 178

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 178

User Pilot

MARCH 25, 2024

A user activity trend can provide key insights into changing user behavior and help you increase conversion rates and product engagement. In this article, we’ll dig deeper into what user activity trends are and outline the key tips to monitor them. TL;DR A user activity trend represents a pattern or change in user behavior over time.

Trends 105

Trends Acquisition Retention Engagement 105

User Pilot

MAY 27, 2025

How to use it: Break the complete user journey into stages: Acquisition, Onboarding, Activation, and Retention. Assign trackable events to each stage, such as “Account Created,” during the acquisition stage. Create cohorts, build retention tables, and visualize retention trends with Userpilot.

Mobile 96

Mobile Retention Payment Features Onboarding 96

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

This guide will show you 12 proven ways to improve customer acquisition with Userpilot. These insights are the key to optimizing onboarding for higher activation and conversion rates that maximize your customer acquisition efforts. As a result, you’ll be able to streamline both your acquisition and onboarding processes.

Acquisition 102

Acquisition Technical Review Onboarding Software Review 102

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

But now the trend has shifted to the other end of the spectrum. Such an acquisition model means shorter sales cycles and more efficiency in lead qualification, with complete emphasis on the customer experience. The quicker time to value creates sustainable growth and lowers cost to acquisition.

Scale 220

Scale Sales Acquisition Consulting 220

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2023

Squarespace isn’t hitting big GAAP profitability numbers yet, but it’s generating significant cash and trending past a sustained 20% EBITDA. Large mark-down for its $400m acquisition of Tock in 2021. Put differently, it has a fairly efficient self-serve model that’s getting even more efficient.

Scale 291

Scale SMB Churn Pricing 291

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 21, 2021

I can’t see that happening for a number of reasons, but the trend is real: with more dollars to invest, the market is becoming much more liquid. Next, the Special Purpose Acquisition Company boom. Just kidding. Access is the scarcest resource in Startupland , the access to buy shares of hypergrowth startups.

Venture Capital 278

Venture Capital Innovation Startup Acquisition 278

SaaStr

JULY 19, 2023

How are they trending over time? Step Three: Map Your GTM to Your Acquisition Funnel The next thing to think about is how the go-to-market organization maps to the customer acquisition funnel. Blond emphasizes, “We’re trying to map the existing resources both by persona and then also by activity to the acquisition funnel.

Revenue 246

Revenue Acquisition Technical Review Systems Review 246

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2021

Then, consider your customer base and look for trends in potential churn responses. Treat your partner acquisition like a sales funnel. Is it just the lead? Are they bringing in consultants? Then, examine your ecosystem. Start by looking at recurring sales frictions. Track how much value you provide and share that with your partners.

Scale 273

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Funnel Consulting 273

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2024

Identifying the PLG Trap It’s fair to say that most organizations using the PLG playbook focus on B2C or end-user acquisition. Your cost of acquisition increases as you go upmarket, so your growth shifts once you need a legal team and other teams for the Enterprise. Be able to respond to trends as early as possible.

Scale 283

Scale Sales Hiring Sales B2C 283

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2021

The trends indicate that there is an influx of spending on solutions that make remote work more simple. Reduced friction in the software buying process is a trend that has already been building momentum over the years. Look for signs of churn and have a strategy in place to fight the trend. Invest heavily in retention marketing.

Software Review 284

Software Review SMB Enterprise Software 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

In today’s world, there’s a clear shift in what founders, boards, and investors are all after — scalable, low-CAC (customer-acquisition cost) growth strategies. The data above shows it’s a customer acquisition cost on average of $1.05 How to use community as a driver of product-led growth. vs. $1.80, which is a big difference.

Scale 273

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 273