Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

Through these interactions, I’ve built up mental benchmarks for metrics on which I place extra emphasis. My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., This metric is more self-explanatory, so I won’t go into detail.

Cloud 318

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 318

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

Recently I was catching up with a good friend who used to be CEO of an enterprise-y SaaS social networking company — and the usage and engagement numbers of his business were just awful. So the buyer really doesn’t even have any success metrics going into the first renewal. Yet they would still renew for Year 2.

AWS 337

AWS Churn Enterprise Engagement 337

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

They each have some of the largest cloud businesses in the world in AWS, Azure and Google Cloud respectively. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Overall, there was weakness across the board. Top 5 Median: 22.2x

Systems Review 144

Systems Review Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence 144

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 11, 2024

The hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) are always some of the first companies to report earnings during earnings season (coming up in 2 weeks), and there’s always a read through for consumption names (meaning people believe there’s a correlation). I created this subset to show companies where FCF is a relevant valuation metric.

Cloud 167

Cloud Cost optimization & reporting GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Review 167

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Datadog, ZoomInfo, Atlassian, AWS: Epic Growth — But Some Real Headwinds For The First Time. Gartner: SaaS Spend In the Enterprise Will Grow 17% to $195 Billion in 2023. 5 Interesting Learnings from Duolingo at $360,000,000 in ARR.

Sales Recruiting 284

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So we don’t know quite as much about Canva as we do SaaS companies that have IPO’d. Growing Almost 50% as Approaches $2B in ARR The exact growth rate is based on an The Information report from a few weeks ago, and it seems about right looking at their published metrics. But the very, very best in SaaS?

AWS 300

AWS B2C Scaling AI 300

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2024

A lot of you reading SaaStr are probably more B2B SaaS oriented and may not be paying attention to the consumer market, but it’s already massive and is continuing to grow quickly. So, let’s look at the state of subscription apps and how B2B SaaS can learn from it. In B2B, the classic metric for this is 2% now and was 2% in 2006.

Subscription 294

Subscription Payment Features B2B Mobile 294

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2021

It can be easy for SaaS companies to lose momentum if they haven’t quite found the perfect product-market fit. Commoditization From AWS & Google Cloud. SaaS KPIs Suddenly Taking a Turn for the Worse. How can you get back on track? The Platform: $0 – $5 Million ARR. Competition in the market rose sharply.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Data AWS Leadership 300

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2019

Xero is one of those SaaS companies most of us have heard of and know is a big success and sort of know about, but, not really ??. This is a critical metric. Gross margins have grown to best-of-breed at 83%, after a migration to AWS and more automation in customer support. Inclusive of upsells and churn, their ARPU is $29.25

SMB 270

SMB Customer Lifetime Value AWS Churn 270

Chargify

AUGUST 17, 2020

However, with the introduction of Events-Based Billing by Chargify, this event-based billing model is now available to small and medium-sized businesses, giving them the ability to offer the same pricing models and bill customers just as precisely as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or the popular voice and messaging platform Twilio.

AWS 98

AWS Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 98

Clouded Judgement

MAY 3, 2024

We now have results from the three hypersclaers (AWS / Azure / GCP). The most notable change in tone was Andy Jassy talking about AWS. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.8x

Cost optimization & reporting 190

Cost optimization & reporting Cloud Software Azure 190

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

But if you can’t tell me the future (in your market) at least 3 years out … then it’s hard for me to believe in SaaS you’ll ever build a unicorn. So I always have to pass here, no matter how good the metrics look today. “Quarterly MRR”, 100% Gross Margins, and Other Crazy Metrics.

Sales Recruiting 339

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 339

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2021

There’s a metric the very top founders track quitely, but ruthlessly, that I find other founders either don’t track, or sort of hide from. DigitalOcean is growing more slowly than its mega competitors Azure, AWS, etc. That’s % of marketshare. And importantly, if it’s growing, or shrinking. Why does it matter?

Azure 240

Azure Headcount AWS Education 240

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CEO of ZoomInfo , Henry Schuck. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo? The worst emotion for software sales is uncertainty.

New CTO 305

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 305

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

And it’s one of the three large cloud vendors that we all know: Microsoft, AWS, and Google. AWS’s marketplace has seen 1.5 million subscriptions transacted and Google’s marketplace has seen 3X growth in SaaS sales. Like I said, we run 100% of our platform on AWS, so the fit was great.

Scale 256

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 256

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

I have a strong, semi-proven thesis that in SaaS, market size doesn’t matter that much … at least in the traditional top-down sense. Yes, many of the big winners in SaaS entered already large markets, from CRM (Salesforce) to ERP (Workday) to Collaboration (Workday, Asana). And it’s better than that, these days.

Scale 273

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 273

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

Through these interactions, I’ve built up mental benchmarks for metrics on which I place extra emphasis. My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., This metric is more self-explanatory, so I won’t go into detail.

Cloud 184

Cloud Software Azure AWS 184

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Amazon on AWS : “…customers are continuing to shift their focus towards driving innovation and bringing new workloads to the cloud. Azure (excluding Azure AI) continued to decelerate, and while AWS did come in ahead of expectations, it wasn’t a blow out. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cost optimization & reporting 167

Cost optimization & reporting Cloud Azure AWS 167

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 7, 2025

With a background that includes leadership roles at AWS, Microsoft, and Lenovo, Fred brings a wealth of experience in building high-performing teams and driving revenue growth. And I know you’ve had some great experience, particularly while you were at AWS, running different partner sales, channel sales. They cannot resell.

Outsourcing Services 117

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development AWS 117

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2023

Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks. You need to marry your go-to-market strategy to specific commercial structures that you, as a SaaS company, decide to offer your customers. Of course, we all know how that turned out.

Scale 255

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Now, let’s take this idea and apply it to the world of marketing metrics. Knowing that people are incentivized by what they’re rewarded for, marketing metrics boil down to alignment. If revenue is the North Star metric, everything you do should drive towards that. They are a vanity metric. Our unanimous pick?

Metrics 122

Metrics Revenue Scale Marketing 122

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Subscribe now Cloud Giants Report Q3 ‘23 Not a great signal for software this week from the Cloud Giants (AWS, Azure and Google Cloud)…After Q2 (3 months ago), the tone from the Cloud Giants around optimizations was largely: optimizations have started to ease, and net new workloads have picked up. That is not new.”

Cost optimization & reporting 157

Cost optimization & reporting Cloud Azure AWS 157

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 27, 2024

Subscribe now Foundation Models Are to AI what S3 was to the Public Cloud Many people look at 2006 as the birth of the public cloud - the year Amazon launched AWS. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Top 5 Median: 15.4x

Cloud 176

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) AWS Azure 176

CloudGeometry

MARCH 22, 2022

When developing a SaaS product plan, it’s important to recognize two foundational principles. First, SaaS is a business strategy, not a technology strategy. Second, there is no one-size-fits-all SaaS architecture (the second principle is a corollary of the first).

DevOps as a Service 130

DevOps as a Service Software Delivery Well Architected Framework AWS 130

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 20, 2023

Hyperscaler Preview Next week Amazon, Microsoft and Google report earnings and we’ll see Q3 data for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Even a DCF is riddled with long term assumptions.

Cloud 167

Cloud Azure AWS Software Review 167

CloudGeometry

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

2020 left no doubt: the growth of cloud computing is firmly grounded in the SaaS business model. Investors like Bessemer have bet and made billions on the SaaS trajectory. Done right, multi-tenancy through tenant isolation delivers benefits to both you as a SaaS vendor and to your customers.

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework SaaS AWS Construction 130

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2023

The average mid-size company has 111 SaaS applications. There’s so much competition in SaaS that it can feel confusing to figure out where to start and compare solutions. This is the biggest trend in SaaS. They can provide big-picture ROI, but they don’t have hard ROI metrics, benchmarks, and success stories.

Marketplace as a Service 246

Marketplace as a Service Software Review Technical Review Azure 246

ChurnZero

MARCH 31, 2022

Did you catch our Customer Success and SaaS metrics crash-course webinar with leading SaaS expert Dave Kellogg, of Dave Kellogg Consulting ? We’d like to extend a huge thanks to Dave for his expert insights below, which will help you choose and use Customer Success and SaaS metrics in a more nuanced and purposeful way.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Metrics Technical Review Scale 98

CloudGeometry

MARCH 3, 2022

When developing a SaaS product plan, it’s important to recognize two foundational principles. First, SaaS is a business strategy, not a technology strategy. Second, there is no one-size-fits-all SaaS architecture (the second principle is a corollary of the first). This is known as a unit metric. More on that below.

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) SaaS Cloud 130

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2019

Goodness : We forget about the OS in the Cloud, but we all need to still deal with things like Windows 7 IRL: One perspective on the Top 25 VCs in SaaS now: Pretty Funny. Clippy was AI before AI: China is a whole different world for SaaS. Alibaba is their AWS (or becoming it): The Cloud is better. It is even cheaper.

Cloud 146

Cloud AWS AI Acquisition 146

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2019

I’ve been in venture capital for about 20 years, made my first SaaS investment about 18 years ago and have really been focused on this space for a long time. And the topic here really is as much about key lessons as it is really the reality of the entrepreneurial journey in a SaaS company. I’ll just do a quick introduction.

SaaS 179

SaaS Sales Hiring Scale Innovation 179

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

” We saw some green shoots in AWS and a few other consumption names, and overall sentiment seemed more positive. I’ve put together a number of charts below to show how metrics from this quarter compared to prior quarters. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years.

Cloud 176

Cloud Software Review AWS Trends 176

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 6, 2023

Cloud Downgrades This week UBS came out with a couple research reports citing concerns in AWS / Azure growth. This brings me back to AWS / Azure downgrades. This was the worst tone that we’ve heard in years from large AWS/Azure partners, a group that usually expresses different shades of optimism about AWS/Azure growth.”

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Underperforming Technical Team 130

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 28, 2023

AWS (Amazon), Azure (Microsoft), and Google Cloud (Google) all reported this week. Then AWS appeared to add fuel to that hope before giving us a huge rug pull. After all, they had a lot of AI tailwinds, and benefited tremendously from consolidation (without a headwind of a larger base of smaller startups, like AWS).

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS AI Search 130

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 2, 2024

Cloud Giants Report Q2 We also got the Q2 quarters from AWS / Azure / GCP this week! Quarterly Reports Summary Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples Top 10 Weekly Share Price Movement Update on Multiples SaaS businesses are generally valued on a multiple of their revenue - in most cases the projected revenue for the next 12 months.

Cloud 157

Cloud Azure GCP(Google Cloud Platform) AWS 157

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 4, 2023

” These are two quotes about AWS on the Amazon earnings call. AWS grew 16% in Q1, but called out growth in April (first month of Q2) was 11%. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Top 5 Median: 16.1x

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Cost optimization & reporting 130

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Hyperscalers Report Quarterly Earnings This week we saw AWS (Amazon), GCP (Google) and Azure (Microsoft) report earnings. Overall, it wasn’t pretty… AWS grew 28% when expectations were 30-31%. Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Cost optimization & reporting 130