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. But that doesnt make your life scaling your start-up any easier. Thats $500m ARR growing 50%. Nor, unless you need the capital, the path to IPO or exit any easier.

AWS 209

AWS Scaling SaaS Data 209

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. This is a big deal for scaling companiesit means you can deliver more value at a lower cost, which is a competitive advantage. AI is Table Stakes Now.

AI 147

AI Trends SaaS AWS 147

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.

AWS 243

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.

SaaS 350

SaaS Headcount AWS Churn 350

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2022

With so many incredible sessions to choose from, we thought we’d highlight a few for you here: Building & Scaling Global Product Teams. Why Customer Success and Product Should be Best Friends: Lessons Learned with AWS’ Head of Customer Success Harini Gokul. Why Customer Success and Product Should be Best Friends.

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.

AWS 318

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 318

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!!

SaaS 348

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 348

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2021

Partnerships drive business and thriving ecosystems for SaaS companies unlike anything else. Examples include AWS, Adobe, Microsoft, and Google Cloud. This early phase is where you’re still looking for that perfect product-market fit and scaling the product to market. And remember to scale. You scale the hell out of it.

Outsourcing Services 284

Outsourcing Services Scale Scaling Outsourced Development 284

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.

Azure 273

Azure AWS SaaS Customer Success 273

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

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 337

Cloud Azure AWS Marketing 337

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 293

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 293

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.

AWS 235

AWS Scale Social Media AI 235

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

The role of finance in SaaS is changing. In 2014, storage had historically been Dropbox’s most significant cost driver, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on AWS. You must build a lean, impactful team to help your business scale. No longer are finance teams the traditional “bean counters” of ages past.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2023

Scaling Early-Stage to Hyper-Growth Companies With Ed Lenta, SVP and GM of Databricks Back in the early 2000s, people didn’t entirely accept that a virtual machine could be as good as a physical one. Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks.

Scale 259

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 259

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 293

Cloud Azure AWS Engineering 293

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.

Azure 271

Azure AWS Cloud SaaS 271

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2022

We’d all love to run 100% PLG SaaS companies that magically self-replicate customers. But even there, to truly scale, they went more enterprise and built out a full enterprise sales and marketing function. It took me a while as a SaaS CEO to see that a customer conference was worth it. And it does happen, sometimes.

Scale 331

Scale Sales Hiring Marketing SaaS 331

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. 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. Rico Mallozzi, Sr.

Scale 259

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 259

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. Databricks is Growing 60%+ at $2.4 Billion in ARR. And Accelerating. We’ll see.

Venture Capital 298

Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scaling 298

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. They typically give them just enough to see if it will work, and the startup grows and scales to the next stage. SaaS and Cloud growth overall will remain strong.

Startup 357

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? The power of recurring revenue and multi-year, long-term customers.

Cloud 294

Cloud Azure AWS Scale 294

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 289

AWS SaaS Cloud Scale 289

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So we don’t know quite as much about Canva as we do SaaS companies that have IPO’d. They were $1.7B+ ARR in October , so let’s call it close to $2B at the end of the year, growing 40%+ at that scale –and profitable! (or The average public SaaS company has now gotten more efficient, to about $300k per employee.

AWS 307

AWS B2C Scaling AI 307

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Call me when it scales.” Now let’s talk about SaaS. In the last few years I’ve come to the realization that Josh’s observation can also be applied to the SaaS world: Building a SaaS business with $1-2 million in ARR is not that hard and not that valuable. Let me rephrase that.

Scale 192

Scale Scaling SaaS AWS 192

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 293

AWS Cloud Trends Startup 293

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.

Enterprise readiness 283

Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 283

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. But at scale, even the slightly less long version of the tail is where the money is. And if so, maybe that’s Digital Ocean. Churn Stable.

Scale 291

Scale AWS Azure Cloud 291

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

Whether you’re going from nothing to something or already scaling and thriving beyond $10-100M, healthy, sustainable growth in SaaS is on every founder’s mind. Cockroach Labs’ CEO Spencer Kimball shares hard-won lessons from scaling from $0 to $5B and his time as an angel investor for more than 80 different startups.

Scale 243

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 243

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. After scaling sales enablement successfully, the next step is to understand where your customers are. Marketplaces: AWS marketplace, Heroku marketplace, Salesforce marketplace. Where to Start.

Scale 349

Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 349

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%. Pepper is a powerful content marketing platform that helps you create high-quality content at speed and scale.

Cloud spend optimization 260

Cloud spend optimization AWS Scale compliance 260

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them. When should you scale?

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 257

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 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 CMO of Google Cloud, Alison Wagonfeld. Right now, 70% of the GenAI startups are using Google Cloud.

Cloud 309

Cloud Scale AWS AI 309

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: It’s Now Year 2 of the Venture Downturn Clawbacks and Tracking-to-Cash: Two Sales Management Tools to Be Thoughtful With 8 Things That Are Just Harder in SaaS Now Tier 1 VC is Great. But More Money May Be Even Better. Top Podcasts This Week: 1.

Scale 246

Scale AWS Scaling Enterprise 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

jasonlk) November 13, 2023 Not every area of SaaS and Cloud is seeing big “macro” impacts. Being Multi-Platform / Multi-Product Key at Scale A story we’ve seen many times. 64% of Large Customers Sourced From Partners They are AWS’s largest cybersecurity partner. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1.

Cybersecurity 293

Cybersecurity AWS Benchmarks Cloud 293

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 279

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 279