SaaStr

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

Within the next 12 months, Adam Seligman, VP of Generative Builders at AWS, believes there will be an inversion of SaaS. That many of the standard assumptions and ways of doing SaaS will change a lot. He believes we’re rapidly approaching that new world where anyone can build a great SaaS product. What does that mean?

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Generative AI AWS Artificial Intelligence AI 300

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Subscribe now Amazon ReInvent This week Amazon had their annual AWS ReInvent conference. ” AWS fully embracing the breadth over depth approach. Looking at the mid to long term, we feel very optimistic about the outlook for strong AWS growth. Follow along to stay up to date! This year, there was tons of experimentation.

AWS 299

AWS Cloud AI Search Cost optimization & reporting 299

SaaStr

MARCH 9, 2025

How AI is Really Changing SaaS From the CEO of Procore, co-CEO of Monday and Chair of HubSpot #5. The 2025 SaaS Vibe Check: What Founders Need to Know Right Now with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin #5. Going Long: How Procores Founder Tooey Courtemanche Built a Billon-Dollar SaaS Empire Over 23 Years Is Deflation Coming?

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AWS AI B2B Startup 208

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

AI is already reshaping B2B SaaS, and its only going to accelerate. Gross Margins Will Improve for AI-Driven SaaS. AI is also transforming the economics of SaaS. AI is forcing every SaaS company to level up. Heres what I think is happening and whats next: #1. AI is Table Stakes Now. Now It’s Time to Make It S-Tier.

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AI Trends SaaS AWS 147

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2021

We all know times are good in SaaS and Cloud — but just how good? It really is almost everyone at SaaS that is at scale and has a winning brand. AWS accelerated to 37% YoY growth , up from 32% last quarter. Some public SaaS companies that are less competitive than they used to be (e.g., But the majority are.

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AWS SaaS Cloud Scaling 340

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Thats what all the last 5 SaaS IPOs, all the SaaS IPOs since 2021 in fact, were doing at IPO: Rubrik, Klaviyo, ServiceTitan, OneStream and Sailpoint. Thats $500m ARR growing 50%.

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AWS Scaling SaaS Data 215

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2023

18 Billion of SaaS M&A During A Banking Crisis. SaaStr 644: Lessons Learned in Scaling Early-Stage to Hyper-Growth Companies: From VMware, AWS and Databricks with Databricks SVP and GM Ed Lenta  2. Lessons Learned in Scaling Early-Stage to Hyper-Growth Companies: From VMware, AWS and Databricks 2. 74% of You Say No!

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AWS Scale Sales Hiring SMB 243

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What’s the Harder Part About SaaS Companies, At Each Stage? Most SaaS products are inexpensive. Enough to pay some salaries and AWS bills, but it’s not that much. At $1B+ ARR, the hardest part is you have to be so Multi-Product that you are really running 2-5 SaaS companies. But it is so slow.

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SaaS Headcount AWS Churn 351

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2022

Per LinkedIn data, SMB AEs at some of the top SaaS and B2B companies have: an average base salary of $70k, an average OTE of $125k, and. Sales Organization 1 Miro 2 Okta 3 Arctic Wolf 4 Sprout Social 5 Google 6 Clickup 7 Cisco Meraki 8 Microsoft 9 Klaviyo 10 AWS 11 Rippling 12 Fivetran. And it’s super helpful.

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SMB AWS SaaS B2B 337

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2022

Why Customer Success and Product Should be Best Friends: Lessons Learned with AWS’ Head of Customer Success Harini Gokul. In this session, Harini will discuss the optimal engagement model for the product , services, and customer success teams in the SaaS world to deliver value and innovation to your customers.

AWS 246

AWS Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

So there are a lot of rough and arm chair metrics for fundraising in SaaS in terms of valuations. For years, the standard was “about 10x” Top tier SaaS companies would tend to raise at around 10x ARR, with ones with slightly lower growth often raising at 5x. Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds.

Venture Capital 67

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 67

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

So one thing that has exploded in SaaS in the past decade is the role of Private Equity buying both public SaaS companies (to take them private, “fix” some metrics, and IPO or sell them again), and generally later-stage private SaaS companies. They are generally looking for good but not great deals.

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AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 321

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2023

So there’s no doubt things are a bit harder for everyone in SaaS and Cloud right now. A few of us are seeing no macro impacts, but probably the biggest tell are Cloud platform giants — AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. SaaS spend is still growing. All are still growing at very strong rates. But they are still growing.

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Azure AWS Cloud SaaS 277

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

Many SaaS and Cloud leaders are down more than 50% from their all-time highs. A Covid Hangover in SaaS stocks.’ Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and even Google Cloud are on fire, adding insane amounts of revenue this year. The top SaaS and Cloud leaders are even accelerating at $1B in ARR, for goodness sakes!!

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SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 348

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2022

The markets for SaaS and Cloud stocks are down 50%+ in just a few months, and it hasn’t spared even the leaders. But let’s step back a bit … the damage hasn’t been even, and capital-efficient SaaS stocks in many cases have held up pretty well. The post Some SaaS Stocks Are Actually Still Doing Pretty Darn Well. They’re worth $2.7

AWS 296

AWS SaaS Cloud Scale 296

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What is The Average Ratio of Support Staff to Customer Count in SaaS? Typically support consumes about perhaps 5%-7% of your revenue at scale (excluding customer success) in most SaaS models. Another 5%-7% go to core infrastructure costs (AWS, Azure, Snowflake, etc). Have instant support while you can.

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Azure AWS SaaS Customer Success 279

SaaStr

DECEMBER 7, 2020

Ok the Best But Craziest Year Ever for SaaS isn’t quite over, but as it drives to a conclusion, we thought it would be worth looking back at top posts you may have missed in 2020. “The Era of the SaaS Decacorn is Here” That’s for sure. The Era of the SaaS Decacorn is Here. What a crazy year for Cloud.

Venture Capital 336

Venture Capital Sales Hiring AWS Cloud 336

SaaStr

AUGUST 3, 2024

So a lot of good stuff has happened in SaaS recently. OneStream had an epic SaaS IPO at $500m ARR, growing 34%. Overall Cloud spending has bounced back off lows for sure: AWS at a $105B run rate growing 19% Quarterly YoY growth trends below. Many some of the first good news in a stretch. 200m for Clio. # Keep calm and carry on.

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AWS Scale Social Media AI 239

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2022

We’d all love to run 100% PLG SaaS companies that magically self-replicate customers. It took me a while as a SaaS CEO to see that a customer conference was worth it. I didn’t get these at first as a SaaS CEO. But third-party events like AWS, Dreamforce, SaaStr, Shoptalk? And it does happen, sometimes.

Scale 332

Scale Sales Hiring Marketing SaaS 332

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2022

So follow AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. So there’s much angst and even panic with so many SaaS and Cloud public stocks down 50% or more from their peaks. Will things get worse for SaaS products themselves on a day-to-day basis? And is buying of SaaS and Cloud products accelerating, decelerating, and/or flattening out?

Cloud 300

Cloud Azure AWS Engineering 300

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

You know what’s back in fashion today in SaaS? And that’s a lot rarer in SaaS. But so many SaaS leaders aren’t really profitable at $1B ARR even, Why not? And it’s not just public SaaS companies that are often struggling to get profitable. I’m an investor in maybe 30 SaaS startups. So is SaaS cursed?

Scale 300

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 300

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2022

There are many ways to slice-and-dice public market data, but the headline one Bessemer called out is the most visceral I’ve seen: Public SaaS and Cloud companies lost $1 Trillion in market cap so far in 2022. And the number of public SaaS and Cloud decacorns has fallen from 50 to 17. Strange Days, Indeed.

Cloud 338

Cloud Azure AWS Marketing 338

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

In this new SaaStr series called “What’s new at…,” Jason Lemkin chats with WorkOS CEO and founder Michael Grinich about what it takes to be Enterprise ready in SaaS, building vs. buying, and who the stakeholders are in a B2D motion. That’s unheard of in other SaaS categories. 50% of SaaS sales are outside of North America.

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Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 290

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2021

A lot of our SaaS older times don’t quite know what to make with a lot of B2B startups these days, let alone some public SaaS companies. But like “Cloud” and “SaaS”, its definitely has evolved. But like “Cloud” and “SaaS”, its definitely has evolved. Call it ARR.

Merchant Services 360

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 360

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

So we’ve talked about it often here at SaaStr, but things are just so … odd right now in SaaS. And while AWS’s growth is down a bit, it’s still at epic levels, Azure isn’t even really down, and Google Cloud is growing faster than ever. It’s very, very quiet at $300m+ valuations.

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AWS Venture Capital Azure Cloud 351

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2024

SaaS outside of classic “B2B’ is often holding up well. And AI is obviously on fire, pulling up AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, etc. But classic B2B SaaS is definitely in many cases seeing tougher times. So not everyone is seeing tougher times these days. Klaviyo, Toast, etc. just had very strong quarters.

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Azure AWS Sales B2B 307

SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2021

Just how fast is SaaS and Cloud growing? After polling CIOs, Gartner found that total SaaS spend will grow from $100B in 2020 to $140B in 2022: A few interesting implications and learnings: The growth in SaaS buying should give you a +20% a year boost on top of your other sales and marketing efforts. Go grab your piece.

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GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure AWS SaaS 241

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2023

SaaS products and services like Pilot track the finances of 1,000s of SaaS and other startup so they’re an interesting source of hard data. SaaS and Cloud growth overall will remain strong. Shopify , Datadog, Crowdstrike , Google Cloud-Azure-AWS, Snowflake , etc. What does Pilot’s latest data say?

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Startup Venture Capital Azure AWS 357

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

So we’ve had a lot of fun in our 5 Interesting Learnings profiling the top SaaS and Cloud companies at scale, from Slack to Zoom, from Shopify to Datadog, from Box to DropBox. But are AWS, Azure and Google Cloud just too big for us to learn from? AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud is one of the greatest case studies of all time.

Cloud 299

Cloud Azure AWS Scale 299

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

So there’s a curious thing anyone close in venture capital fundraising and rounds today: Valuations for Hot VC Deals remain far higher than pre-March 2020 … even though growth for the overall public SaaS and Cloud companies has slowed to … all time lows. Most likely no matter how well you are doing — that’s likely not quite you. We’ll see.

Venture Capital 304

Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scaling 304

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2022

Most SaaS products are inexpensive. Enough to pay some salaries and AWS bills, but it’s not that much. The post Dear SaaStr: What is the Hardest Part About Starting a SaaS Company? The hardest part changes every 12–24 months. You work so, so hard to close 100 customers … at $10/mo/customer … and that’s only $1,000 a month!

Headcount 246

Headcount AWS SaaS Churn 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2023

It will be the #1 place to talk SaaS, learn SaaS, and share SaaS learnings in APAC in 2023! We’ll have dozens and dozens of workshops, braindates, and much more! The post The Full SaaStr APAC Agenda for Feb 22-23 in Singapore is Here!

AWS 299

AWS Cloud Trends Startup 299

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Welcome to the latest installment of our “ What’s New ” series where SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with some of the top leaders and founders in SaaS and Cloud to discuss What’s New and what should be top of mind for fellow founders. AWS can’t support 20 partners equally. Otherwise, it falls apart.

AWS 286

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 286

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

We’ll see 1,000+ of the best SaaS founders, execs, and VCs February 22-23 at SaaStr APAC 2023 ! CloudKeeper from TO THE NEW, is a cloud spend optimization solution that guarantees to cut down your AWS bills by 5-15%. Grab tickets here. Join these incredible companies to experience all the value of SaaStr! No lock-ins.

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Cloud spend optimization AWS Scale compliance 264

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. Customers bought because they thought their organizations needed this functionality, and so they wrote the checks for Year 1, and even Year 2.

AWS 338

AWS Churn Enterprise Engagement 338

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

So is it possible to be too efficient in SaaS and Cloud? Many have used Digital Ocean at the cheaper, simpler version of AWS-Azure-Digital Ocean to get going fast and quickly. And if so, maybe that’s Digital Ocean. If you haven’t heard of Digital Ocean, ask your developer. It’s gotten crazy good.

Scale 298

Scale AWS Azure Cloud 298

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2020

Recently, we welcomed Lisa Lawson to SaaS Office Hours to talk about building a channel go-to-market strategy for SaaS companies. Marketplaces: AWS marketplace, Heroku marketplace, Salesforce marketplace. Lisa built the channel at Optimizely, which accounted for a meaningful fraction of new business. Here are my notes.

Scale 349

Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 349