Clouded Judgement

MARCH 28, 2025

That piece of technology was commoditized by an AI lab. The technology sands are shifting so quickly. That juxtaposition is what makes investing in venture markets these days so fun! This is for information purposes and should not be construed as an investment recommendation. That was unheard of in the SaaS world.

Cloud 299

Cloud AI Scale Scaling 299

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2025

This change is driven by advances in AI technology and changing customer expectations. Their platform helps restaurant owners, who typically earn less than $50,000 annually in profit, create professional online presences without significant investment in time or resources.

AI 227

AI Technical Review Artificial Intelligence Systems Review 227

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2025

Cutting Through the Noise: Three Gen AI Pioneers Reshaping Enterprise Technology In a pivotal moment for generative AI, Vanessa Larco, partner at NEA, brought together three visionary CEOs convened at SaaStr Annual to share insights that are redefining the technological landscape.

AI Search 244

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Technical Review 244

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

After Meraki’s acquisition by Cisco, Sekar and several colleagues founded Samsara in 2015 to bring modern technology to physical operations industries that were still using antiquated systems. .” Despite his engineering background, Sekar helped Meraki build a scalable go-to-market engine for their wireless networking products.

Scale 245

Scale Transportation Scaling SMB 245

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Joselyn Goldfein , Managing Director at Zeta Venture Partners, which invests in AI and data infrastructure-focused startups from inception through seed stage And see everyone at 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!! Every public company earnings call mentions AI, and every boardroom discussion includes it. The actual tech stack matters.

Technical Review 194

Technical Review Artificial Intelligence AI Marketplace as a Service 194

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? I invested in a company named CAT Labs in Q1 of this year. What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? My main focus is to invest in Series A with an initial check of $5-15M, although I do reserve an interest in smaller checks for late Seed rounds.

Technical Review 299

Technical Review Management Investment AI 299

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

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Models built by OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have billions of dollars to invest in training these models, so you have more powerful engines under the hood at no cost to you. Infrastructure Buildout Isn’t Trivial People are building novel and interesting applications, essentially playing with the technology and getting used to it.

AI 264

AI Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT Mobile 264

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

With Databricks now one of the largest pre-IPO technology companies, with $10 billion of expected non-dilutive financing and a valuation of $62 billion, Ron’s insights are gold for any revenue leader looking to scale. And we expect our salespeople to understand the technology. We tend to be very technical.

Scale 182

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 182

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2025

The AI Is Shockingly Good – It’s Often Better Than Me (For Some Things) One of our fastest-growing portfolio companies had all board members and investors provide feedback on their investment memo – and the AI won. It beat me and the other investors in feedback. All the feedback was good, but the AI overall was the best.

AI 218

AI B2B ChatGPT Scale 218

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 5, 2021

Let’s examine the relationship between total venture capital investment and the 10 year Treasury in some detail. The y-axis tracks enture capital investment by year and the year of the data point resides in the reddish circle. In short, we should expect some cooling. Do you remember this shape from high school math?

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital Marketing Government Investment 363

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

Alarm about interest rates, QE ending, and geopolitical risk have swirled around public technology companies, kinking the valuation curve. PitchBook surmises non-traditional VC (aka hot money) comprises 78% of venture dollars invested in 2021. The broad market sentiment is they will be lower. But by how much?

Finance 363

Finance Pricing Investment Startup 363

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2024

A few that I thought we were super helpful for SaaS folks: “At the 8th annual East Meets West (EMW) conference, we gathered technology leaders from around the world for three days of thought-provoking conversations and connection building. Private Equity does have record amounts to invest. #4. Coate believes it’s simple.

Software 330

Software AI Scale Investment 330

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2022

In my own portfolio , more of my investments had a record month in October than a rough month. CIOs’ top areas of increased investment for 2023 include “cyber and information security (66%), business intelligence/data analytics (55%) and cloud platforms (50%). So are we in some sort of downturn — or aren’t we?

Forecasting 305

Forecasting Artificial Intelligence Software Business 305

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2020

Asana runs less profitably because of meaningfully bigger investments in both Sales & Marketing (S&M) and Research and Development (R&D). Asana invests 10% more of its revenue in S&M, which is consistent with its higher growth rate. Asana pays back its sales and marketing outlay in 10.5

Payment Solutions 363

Payment Solutions Payments Outsourced Development Payment Services 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2021

The SaaS revenue tech stack can help you grow your business, but if you don’t plan carefully, you might invest in tools that aren’t helpful and don’t yield ROI. This idea of connection and problem-solving should inform your planning to build a technology stack. Process before technology. Invest according to revenue.

Scale 290

Scale Sales Hiring Social Media Technology 290

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? Stage 2 Capital invests $4M to $6M in first checks into B2B software companies that are around $1M ARR. These investments typically occur between the seed and the A round. Check that out here.

Technical Review 306

Technical Review Scale Management Sales Hiring 306

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2024

Lesson #1: Invest In Customer Support Early Cloudinary strongly believes that customer success and support are enablers of PLG growth and aren’t just a cost center. The Technology Side of Things Now, let’s look at this from the technology side. That was a hard lesson for the Cloudinary team: investing vs. scaling.

Scale 316

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Development 316

Sales Hacker

JULY 17, 2024

Discussed in this Episode: The impact of cryptocurrency market fluctuations on the adoption of blockchain technology. Highlights: [3:47] – Annelise explains the relationship between blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. [11:10] ” [31:49] – The potential for blockchain to democratize access to venture investing.[41:49]

Finance 124

Finance Blockchain Investment Compensation 124

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 22, 2020

You need to cross the chasm and reach the second half of the technology adoption curve. I found a beautiful technology curve online and have replicated it above. I’ve since realized I was wrong. Let’s say you’re creating a category. Both of those experiences have brought us to the same conclusion.

Venture Capital 338

Venture Capital Education Innovation Technology 338

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 26, 2024

An enduring promise of new technologies is to find ways to increase human productivity. Software and robotics, for example, have always presented immense potential to automate repetitive mundane tasks that humans perform, freeing them up to do more valuable work.

Investment 130

Investment Healthcare AI Business Model 130

Valuize Consulting

NOVEMBER 11, 2024

Advances in cloud technology and AI have finally matured to the point they are eroding traditional vendor lock-in. No more waiting until renewal time to justify CS investment—when customers feel they’re paying for true value, they engage more readily and pursue broader goals.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Pricing Investment Revenue 52

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Carlota Perez argues in her book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital that in the early days of a “golden age”, financial capital is necessary to fuel new technology innovation. . Once that technology is better understood, production capital moves in to drive mainstream adoption of the technology. .

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 299

SaaStr

OCTOBER 21, 2022

The accelerating pace of new technology has defined the modern era. Technological change needs to mesh with human change to capture new opportunities. Along with the technological change that enabled the formation of a new category called customer engagement, new ways of working and skill sets were introduced to the landscape. .

Mobile 278

Mobile Technology Investment Innovation 278

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Tips: to manage OKRs, and KPIs with ease with Kashinath Kadaba Shrish, Cofounder & CTO at Fitbots Leveraging new age AI technologies(GPT and NLP) to increase Organic Traffic using Scalenut with Saurabh Wadhawan, CoFounder at Scalenut What are the best marketing channels for SaaS B2B businesses?

VP of Engineering 298

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder Outsourcing Services CTO Coach 298

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 17, 2021

From time to time, I chart the fastest growing categories of startup investment in the US for seed through Series C. The leader doesn’t have much to do with COVID ostensibly but is likely propelled by increasing interest in the technology because of recent advances in quantum computing design and manufacture.

Startup 362

Startup Software Engineering Finance Engineering 362

Clouded Judgement

JULY 12, 2024

AI will lead to new drug development, new autonomous vehicle /robotics technologies, better ad targeting (yawn, but real impact!), Because your competitors are investing in AI efforts, you also have to invest in AI efforts. I’m either wrong on the size of the prize here, or you can’t stop investing in AI efforts.

Cloud 288

Cloud AI Investment User Experience 288

SaaStr

MAY 9, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? My most recent investment was Owner.com. Activant Capital is thrilled to have invested in Owner multiple times already. #2. What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? What’s different about your fund / how you invest and support founders?

Scale 275

Scale Headcount Travel B2B 275

USIO

FEBRUARY 19, 2025

Payrix Flexible, but Bring a Developer (or Five) Best for: SaaS companies willing to invest developer time into embedded payments. Biggest Challenge: Feels like using 2005-era technology. Customer Support Rating: 10/10 Actual humans answer the phone. The customization is there, but so is the technical complexity.

PayFac as a Service 179

PayFac as a Service Merchant Services Payfac Payments 179

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 9, 2020

The debate about partnering with Snowflake went back and forth during the investment committee meeting. You can read more about the investment memo and diligence that supported the investment here. It was March 2014. My partners, Satish and John, had met the company and were proposing to lead the Series B.

Technical Review 55

Technical Review Software Review Scale Investment 55

Tom Tunguz

MAY 24, 2023

Today, Nvidia is the fifth most valuable technology company in the US, worth nearly $1t - just 20% less valuable than Amazon. Nvidia has more than doubled its capex in 2023 & the latest earnings release suggested the business plans to invest more. In a decade, the business increased in value about 250x, compounding at about 74%.

Machine Learning 298

Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence B2C AI 298

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? We recently led a [ $50M series B ] investment in Todyl, which is a modular cybersecurity platform for small and medium businesses. What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? What’s different about your fund / how you invest and support founders?

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital Cybersecurity Artificial Intelligence Scale 279