Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

How much should a SaaS startup invest in sales and marketing at different stages of the business? This is a very nuanced question, but benchmarks do provide some guidance for what is reasonable. The chart above shows the sales and marketing investment of publicly traded software companies at different revenue levels.

Investment 274

Investment Startup Marketing Sales 274

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 29, 2024

GTMfund’s 3 Areas of Focus for Investing Thanksgiving weekend is always a period of reflection and gratitude. Reflection across go-to-market trends, but also on the investment front (not to mention community !). A common misconception is that the name is representative of the type of software we invest in.

Investment 113

Investment Technical Review Development Team Review Scale 113

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 25, 2023

The purpose of the detailed information is to help investors (both institutional and retail) make informed investment decisions. There’s a lot of info to digest, so in the sections below I’ll try and pull out the relevant financial information and benchmark it against current cloud businesses.

Benchmarks 246

Benchmarks Artificial Intelligence Data Software Review 246

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2025

About Ethan Kurzweil Ethan is the founder of Chemistry VC, a focused early-stage venture firm that writes $3-30M checks with an average of $10-12M for Series A investments. Prior to founding Chemistry, Ethan spent 16 years at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he led investments in successful companies like PagerDuty, Intercom, and SendGrid.

Technical Review 162

Technical Review Venture Capital Outsourced Development ChatGPT 162

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 26, 2022

We need standardized reporting for tokens and equivalent shareholder rights to compare equities to tokens: an essential step to enticing more investment in web3. The answer isn’t clear today. Thanks to my partner Urvashi Barooah for inspiring this post!

Benchmarks 309

Benchmarks Headcount Government Business Model 309

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

In addition, this year Mayfield is sponsoring our VC AI Pitch Stage and will invest from $500k-$5m in the winner! Benchmark Data and Performance Metrics SaaStr sessions typically feature transparent sharing of key metrics and benchmarks that are otherwise difficult to access. Meet and Find Your Next VP / CXO!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2025

Rather than vague guidance, each AE receives specific time allocation targets and regular calendar reviews to ensure alignment with these benchmarks. This created personal investment and accountability that no executive mandate could achieve. What’s revolutionary is how they operationalize this insight.

Scale 207

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development 207

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

Before, most investors used forward ARR multiples to value companies, but recently, the 100x multiple seems to be a benchmark for SaaS companies raising rounds. The market is observing investments fetching 200, 300, 400x ARR, sometimes more, so the premium can be substantial. The 100x ARR multiple might be the fundraising meme of 2021.

Benchmarks 362

Benchmarks Startup Metrics Enterprise 362

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2022

1/ From "Limited Partners", the ones that give VCs $ to invest. Very well for top Limited Partners (“LPs”), the folks that invest in VC funds, and give them the capital to invest in startups. The benchmark returns from VC + PE returns was a stunning 62% for 2022. And they had an incredible year.

Venture Capital 342

Venture Capital Benchmarks Investment Startup 342

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? Bessemer’s typical growth stage investment is $20 million+ for series B+, but we invest through pre-IPO. What’s different about your fund / how you invest and support founders?

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Benchmarks Cloud compliance 288

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

The “Rule of 40” is one of the most commonly cited valuation benchmarks in SaaS for both public and private companies. While SaaS is an amazingly transparent community with abundant benchmarking resources, there are much fewer publicly available studies that allow an analysis of the underlying drivers of “Rule of 40.”

SaaS 321

SaaS Technical Review Benchmarks Azure 321

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 18, 2019

Sales efficiency is a measure of the marginal gross profit generated by a dollar invested in sales and marketing. According to the recent Redpoint free trial survey, the 140% net retention puts the business in the top decile of businesses. Next, let’s compare the sales efficiency.

Metrics 222

Metrics Benchmarks Software Review Engineering 222

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

Through these interactions, I’ve built up mental benchmarks for metrics on which I place extra emphasis. I’ve looked at thousands of private companies, and over time have come up with benchmarks for best-in-class, good, and subpar net revenue retention. Altimeter is an investment adviser registered with the U.S.

Cloud 318

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 318

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2019

Here’s why: For every dollar of sales and marketing investment, DataDog generates $1.68 One last chart: revenue dollars at IPO per venture dollar invested. This is a measure of turning investment dollars into revenue, a sort of return on equity metric. An amazing feat to be growing fast at scale and profitable.

Metrics 189

Metrics Benchmarks Scale User Experience 189

Baremetrics

JULY 7, 2021

For every decision-maker in a SaaS company, understanding SaaS financial benchmarks makes a proper interpretation your internal performance metrics possible. All the data your startup needs 1 What are SaaS financial Benchmarks? 2 Why use SaaS Financial Benchmarks? 2 Why use SaaS Financial Benchmarks? Table of Contents.

Benchmarks 105

Benchmarks SaaS Payments SaaS Payments 105

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2025

This isn’t just about priceit’s about the importance of the purchase and how much time/energy buyers will invest in making the right decision. Also crucial: understanding the consideration level of your purchase.

Sales Hiring 207

Sales Hiring Marketing Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team 207

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

Figure 5 comes from our 2023 SaaS Retention Benchmarks for Private B2B Companies and highlights the relationship between growth and retention. This relationship is a rare example of increasing returns from investment in upsells and cross-sells. This is a rare example of increasing returns from investment in upsells and cross-sells.

Startup 299

Startup SaaS SMB Banking 299

User Pilot

JULY 14, 2024

That’s one of the questions about user activation rates that we explore in our Product Metrics Benchmark Report 2024. Companies analyzed in the Product Metrics Benchmark Report by industry. The average activation rate across the companies we studied for our SaaS Product Metrics Benchmark Report was 37.5. Book the demo!

Benchmarks 105

Benchmarks Scale Onboarding Metrics 105

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2024

Alka Tandan, CFO of Gainsight, will share a framework for how to move forward with this.

Benchmarks 299

Benchmarks Finance Business Model Forecasting 299

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

GTM Composition Can Make or Break Profitability and Growth More specifically, Sapphire has seen that the percentage of investment made against quarter-carrying sellers has dropped in the last 6 years. So back in 2018, on average, what we were seeing was around 30% of Go-to-market investment going to quota-carrying sellers.

VP of Engineering 278

VP of Engineering Scale Marketing Benchmarks 278

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 4, 2024

The purpose of the detailed information is to help investors (both institutional and retail) make informed investment decisions. There’s a lot of info to digest, so in the sections below I’ll try and pull out the relevant financial information and benchmark it against current cloud businesses.

Benchmarks 120

Benchmarks Data Cybersecurity Cloud 120

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 20, 2021

As a result, much of the evaluation, investment, and rollout of virtual training technology in 2020 was rushed, limited in scope, and poorly planned. Businesses must take a step back, evaluate their software investments, and rework their implementations. How to maximize customer training investment. Today, not much has changed.

Investment 124

Investment Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Artificial Intelligence 124

User Pilot

JULY 21, 2024

These are the key questions we explore in the article based on our recent Product Metrics Benchmark Report 2024 which investigates company performance in 6 different metrics across 7+ industries. Companies analyzed in the SaaS Product Metrics Benchmark Report 2024 by industry. Check out our Product Metrics Benchmark Report 2024.

Benchmarks 105

Benchmarks Onboarding Healthcare Metrics 105

SaaStr

AUGUST 19, 2023

While Sequoia, Benchmark, Founders Fund, etc. If you can’t raise another fund, you get paid at least something to manage your existing investments for 10+ years. Challenge #3: Not Doing “Pretty Good” Investments. Just as common though is investing in “pretty good” companies. Why will you win? Founders are poised.

Venture Capital 246

Venture Capital Benchmarks Investment Startup 246

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Then I started investing and I came up with a basic ruie that the best startups needed to grow at least 8% a month once they crossed $1m ARR. But if you are really going for it, and hit $1m ARR and want to know how hard to push — well, the data above is super helpful to benchmark yourself against. It took us about 5.5

SaaS 289

SaaS Benchmarks Startup Investment 289

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

In his highly informative session, Tomasz Tunguz, the Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, shares the essential benchmarks you need to track your company’s valuation and where to look to make improvements. Generally, companies are split into different valuation types: Value Investing: Based on the company’s profits. Key Takeaways.

Metrics 278

Metrics Banking Benchmarks Investment 278

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Discover Bessemer Venture Partners’s annual State of the Cloud report, going through trends, benchmarks, and metrics that underpin the Cloud economy. So they came up with a North Star benchmark, used it as a hurdle rate by channel, and any channels that hit that benchmark would justify a continued investment.

Cloud 311

Cloud Payments Software Review Payment Solutions 311

User Pilot

JULY 21, 2024

According to our benchmark, the average month-1 retention rate in SaaS companies is 46.9%. Let’s explore our product metrics benchmark and learn: The definition of month-1 retention rate and why it matters. Check our product metrics benchmark report. Average month-1 retention statistics for different segments.

Benchmarks 105

Benchmarks Retention Healthcare Scale 105

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 2, 2024

Here’s a list of the seven best competitor analysis tools to help you get detailed data on your rivals, analyze trends they use, and get a wholesome picture of competitor performance — benchmarked against yours. RivalIQ has the best use case for social media agencies that need to provide benchmarking reports to their clients.

Social Media 115

Social Media AI Search Benchmarks Software Review 115

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

And when employees, press, later stage investors, and more are deciding which startup to join, to cover, and to invest in … having a strong brand on the cap table does help. It used to be top funds only invested in the seed and A stage. After all, all money is green, and so many VCs really add no value in the end.

Branding 289

Branding Benchmarks Cloud Investment 289

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2021

By analyzing how web3 companies invest tokens, we can calculate the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) for a crypto company. Let’s contrast the sales and marketing investments of web2 companies to web3 companies. We can benchmark them relative to their corporate value. For Edison, Tungsten worked best.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blockchain Acquisition Benchmarks 274

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 28, 2017

Normally, accounting changes are not that interesting, but ASC 606 will change several of the key attributes and benchmarks SaaS startups use. Management teams then face a question: continue to operate at higher profitability, or invest even more in sales, and remain at -10% net income margin? I am not an accountant.

Revenue 230

Revenue Benchmarks SaaS Finance 230

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2022

At the end of day, these campaigns are major investments and the goal is not just to have a sexy ad you can point to and be proud of — it’s to make an impact on your top line. Make sure to evaluate them in the context of historical benchmarks to understand their incremental impact during the period your brand campaign was running. .

B2B 306

B2B Branding Marketing B2C 306

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

“Our journey with JFrog started back in November 2015 when I first met CEO and co-founder Shlomi Ben Haim and the JFrog team,” said Jai Das, who is the president and managing director at Sapphire Ventures , which participated in the $50 million Series C investment. “One That’s the benchmark we are looking for.”.

New CTO 287

New CTO CTO Benchmarks Consulting 287

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2021

If you don’t have the proper security and legal benchmarks in place, you can drastically slow down your sales process. So it’s worth the effort to invest in bolstering your credibility for enterprise customers. Invest heavily in your top-performing reps and create comp plans that align with their success. Key Takeaways.

Scale 299

Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 299

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 5, 2021

To grow faster in general, and to expand into segments where maybe you are less competitive (and thus have to invest more in sales and marketing). And IVP has published some data to help you benchmark it. And VCs are often OK with a Magic Number at low at 0.75 or so (e.g., But low Magic Numbers can be fatal with SMBs.

Scale 299

Scale SaaS Acquisition Benchmarks 299

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

We take on the heavy lifting without requiring you to invest in additional resources. We track your progress and provide monthly executive level reporting on achievement against industry-recognized benchmarks and best practices.

Banking 264

Banking Payment Features Venture Capital Subscription 264