Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 10, 2020

Each quarter, a group of analysts, including me, publish analysis on the trends in the venture capital market. This retrospective analysis compares Crunchbase data from April 1, 2020 to data from October 10, 2020 across three dimensions: round counts, investment total, and median round size. Last is median investment size.

Venture Capital 355

Venture Capital Trends Investment Data 355

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Did You Learn From Your Worst Venture Capital Investment? You can’t keep investing in the same companies, at the exact same stage, same valuations, etc. When I’ve cut a corner here and invested in startups with customers that aren’t super-happy, it hasn’t worked out as well. Trust — but verify.

Venture Capital 278

Venture Capital Investment CTO Churn 278

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

If I had to summarize venture capital today, it would be like this: There is Very Little Oxygen Today Above $200m Valuations What do I mean? It’s still a weird world in venture: Firms are both shutting down and raising new funds. More entrepreneurs are doing direct investing themselves than ever. But Series D? -41%.

Venture Capital 360

Venture Capital AI Investment SaaS 360

SaaStr

MARCH 9, 2021

Q: What are the pros and cons of working in the venture capital space, and why? I’ll list the pros and cons, but before we get there, it’s important to note a few things: Venture Capital is a tiny industry. There are very limited promotion paths in venture. It’s fiercely competitive. Why will you win? Do you know?

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Venture Capital Finance Startup Investment 306

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

Now this isn’t new in venture, but 2017-2018 actually were pretty good times to invest. But it does show just how hard it is to do well in venture. And interesting, this stacked chart shows 2020 funds and 2021 funds … when things got a bit loopy in venture … aren’t looking too good.

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Venture Capital Investment Data 312

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2025

But just how much of venture capital overall is going to … the top names? In 2024, 31% of all VC capital went into just 20 deals. From 2020-2022, the top 20 deals were just 6%-8% of all VC capital. Massive investments, at massive valuations, into the biggest leaders of AI.

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Venture Capital AI Scaling Investment 316

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How are Funds Invested by Venture Capital Firms? It varies of course, but roughly for bigger funds: Funds tend to invest in 20–40 startups over 2–4 years. Another way to see the math is that most funds put 1%-2% of “the fund” into each investment — initially. Here’s How & What That Means.

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Venture Capital Investment Startup 244

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2020

Q: Are Silicon Valley VC firms suspending or significantly cutting down on startup investments during this pandemic given the vast economic uncertainties of this time, or is it business as usual? VCs have not fully adjusted to remote investing. I’m glad you asked! But everything is still … nervous. This just slows things down.

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Venture Capital Cloud Investment Startup 312

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2023

Should We Go After Venture Capital, and When? There are only two reasons to raise Venture Capital: You need it. If the only way you can get to the next level is to raise capital, then do it. Venture capital is very expensive in the early days, in terms of dilution. Dear SaaStr: We Don’t Need It.

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Venture Capital Investment Leadership 325

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

US venture funding went from 8 to 300 over 15 years. It’s now falling to 150 because 81% percent of the dollars invested in venture capital at the height of the boom came from non-traditional venture capital firms which are all very likely to leave investing.

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 333

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Is Late-Stage Venture Capital More Stressful than Early-Stage Venture Capital? If you do late stage investing … well, every company you invest in is pretty darn good and growing nicely. In SaaS, growth investments generally will all be at at least $20m ARR, or $40m ARR, or more.

Venture Capital 246

Venture Capital Investment Cloud Pricing 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

Back then, folks all over Twitter were making fun of Sequoia for investing $20m+ in an iOS app that never launched and failed. The post Going Big in Venture Capital appeared first on SaaStr. So the original post below I wrote a full 10 (!) years ago in the first few months of SaaStr.com, in November 2012.

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Venture Capital AWS Enterprise Investment 286

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Is 5 Co-founders Too Many When Raising Venture Capital? My first venture investment was Pipedrive, it had 5 co-founders and sold for $1.5 10 Years of Investing pic.twitter.com/zsSupe0CRP — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  ?? But it will also clean-up the company for most VC firms to invest.

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Venture Capital Investment SaaS Business 279

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2024

Having been through 4 acquisitions in different forms (founder, exec, etc), it’s a lot like a venture capital investment. A ton of time is invested negotiating price, and then way, way too much time on inconsequential legal terms, and then … it closes. The real work starts. Not really.

Venture Capital 264

Venture Capital Acquisition Investment Pricing 264

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2024

Logan Bartlett, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, shares their yearly “State of the Market” report to understand what is and isn’t happening in venture capital today. These non-traditional venture investors participate meaningfully. 2024 is the tale of two markets, so let’s get into some of the data.

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Venture Capital Management Scale AI 305

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2024

jasonlk) January 23, 2024 So I thought the toughest times for venture would be behind us now. Personally, I’ve got several investments for example that I marked down. VCs Have Run out of Reserves VCs used what extra “reserve” capital they had for bridge rounds in 2022 and 2023. They’re just tough.

Venture Capital 305

Venture Capital AI Startup Investment 305

SaaStr

JANUARY 1, 2025

In fact, in 90% of SaaS IPOs, the founder CEO is still the CEO at IPO: SaaS CEOs That Go The Distance, To IPO … Tend To Be Founder-CEOs (Updated) Of all the investments Ive made since 2013 , in only 1 have the VCs replaced the CEO. When a start-up raises a ton of capital, misses all the milestones, and is in danger of running out.

Venture Capital 262

Venture Capital Investment SaaS 262

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2025

Marketing automation vendor Act-On acquired for $53 million [link] — Jason SaaStr 2025 is May 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) January 25, 2025 So a lot of folks somehow think venture capital is bad, that it throws founders under the bus. Thats just how investing work. I used to sort of think that way. So who makes what here?

Venture Capital 239

Venture Capital Investment Retention Pricing 239

SaaStr

AUGUST 19, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What are The Top Challenges of Venture Capital Firms? 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. Probably … not.

Venture Capital 246

Venture Capital Benchmarks Investment Startup 246

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2021

Q: Is venture capital really necessary to do a start-up? Squarespace’s solo CEO managed to go years without taking any investment at all. Atlassian never raised any primary capital and waited many years until raising money at all for secondary liquidity. The post Do I Need To Raise Venture Capital At All?

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital Scale Investment Scaling 279

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2024

Share everything anyone would want to know to invest in you. But unless you are raising from folks that truly invest pre-revenue, investors are going to want to see 3 strong months of growth in a row. The Three Months of Strong Growth Rule in Raising Venture Capital # 6. Share the deck when asked. Share it all.

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital Investment AI Metrics 279

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Many Good Months Do I Need in a Row to Raise Venture Capital? Growth investors are going to want to see a full strong year or close to it after a slow one before they invest. But they do need to see things starting to come together, usually, before investing millions. And more for later rounds.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Investment Trends 270

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Is The Job of a Venture Capital Fund Manager? Otherwise, their own investors (the LPs) should just invest in … Nasdaq. Net net, this means returning at least 3x the capital they are given to invest. Roughly: Source new investments. Roughly: Source new investments.

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Management Investment Startup 242

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2020

Byron started off as a SaaS CEO and has invested in probably more SaaS IPOs than any other VCs, from Twilio to Sendgrid to oldies like Eloqua and Cornerstone OnDemand. Sign up here to join Byron and me on Thursday at 12:15pm where we do a deep dive on what’s going on in venture capital, fundraising and Cloud right now.

Venture Capital 264

Venture Capital Cloud Investment SaaS 264

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2020

He said the biggest change in venture capital wasn’t investing over Zoom, or Cloud multiples, or even the pace of investing today. Look at the dozen+ VC investments in second tier digital events software companies since Covid. Look at the massive investments in productivity software.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Cloud Investment Software 263

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2022

In venture today, most growth stage investing has simply ceased. Many growth funds are doing 1/10th or less of the investing they did 12 months ago. I moderated a session with 3 of the best investing in SaaS: Doug Pepper, GP at Iconiq, Arun Mathew, GP at Accel, and Alex Kayyal, VP and head of all of Salesforce Ventures.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Investment Cloud Startup 263

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2020

Over 1,500 of you registered for an incredible deep-dive we did yesterday with Byron Deeter, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Byron has invested in over a dozen Cloud unicorns and even more importantly, has been investing in SaaS and Cloud since the very earliest days. The agenda: What’s happening in venture today.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Cloud Investment SaaS 265

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2020

At least from very early-stage investing. It doesn’t take that long in venture to make a decent salary. Invest in seed round of Procore in 2003. Finally, today, that investment is worth a lot. So an incredible, hypothetical investment. Early-stage investing is often 14+ years to a material “profit” or carry check.

Venture Capital 243

Venture Capital Investment SaaS Compensation 243

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 6, 2023

What will a venture capital turnaround feel like? In 2008, I had just become a venture capitalist. With 15 years’ perspective, I plotted the QQQ (Nasdaq) value against venture Investing activity & venture Exits activity (all log normalized). for QQQ/Investing & 0.93 for QQQ/Exits.

Venture Capital 231

Venture Capital Acquisition Investment Marketing 231

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2023

SaaS Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin and Atrium Founder and CRO Pete Kazanjy sit down to discuss the state of investing in 2023 and what founders should keep in mind for the year ahead. . So, who are these two SaaS leaders, and what experience do they draw from that helps inform their thoughts on capital, the market, and entrepreneurship?

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Investment Sales Hiring Entrepreneurship 242

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

These are the Best of Times for venture capital. And as part of this, more and more big corporations are adding and expanding their venture arms. Traditional VCs usually reserve another 1x-2x of their first check for later investments. If the synergies are real, they’ll happen irrespective of some token investment.

Outsourcing Services 352

Outsourcing Services Investment Venture Capital Pricing 352

SaaStr

JUNE 20, 2019

I’ve watched many bridge rounds over time from a far, and took $500k in bridge capital at EchoSign myself when our seed round didn’t end up being quite enough to get us to the Series A. And usually only for their core investments. But if they’ve invested say $500k of a $3m round? But not all.

Venture Capital 275

Venture Capital Scale Finance Pricing 275

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2020

With venture capital investments that fail, is the problem most often with the entrepreneur or was it a bad investment by the VC? The earlier stage you invest, the more often some of them just … don’t work out. Bill Gurley’s answer to How much money did Benchmark capital lose on Webvan?

Investment 267

Investment Venture Capital Benchmarks Startup 267

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2023

In an AMA at SaaStr APAC 2023, Black Mangroves Founder and Managing Director Arnaud Bonzom, and SaaStr Founder and CEO, Jason Lemkin answered some of the bigger questions about venture investing in 2023. Everything peaked, and there was a ton of capital. Pay attention to multiples to get a pulse on venture capital.

Venture Capital 246

Venture Capital Management Business Model Trends 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2023

G2 had us back for another great deep dive on just where SaaS investing is there days, and it was a great panel: Accel Partner Arun Mathew Inspired Capital Founder & Managing Partner Alexa von Tobel Salesforce Ventures Managing Partner Paul Drews and Jason Lemkin! Are things any better in venture than twelve months ago?

B2B 287

B2B Investment Venture Capital SaaS 287

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2024

So venture capital turns out to be a pretty tough business. Those rare investments that return enough money to the VC fund to pay off at least 1x the total fund size. And you can see VCs are often pretty careful to make sure structurally, any given investment can do it. Investing in the #3 or #4 in a space?

Investment 307

Investment Venture Capital Social Media Startup 307

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2019

Q: How do venture capital firms determine when and how to help stalled or stuck portfolio companies? And then generally reserve some extra cash if you are doing OK but not great, often another 25% more than the initial investment for a bridge or small second check if that gets you over the help. No fake metrics.

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Venture Capital Investment Metrics 193