SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Did You Learn From Your Worst Venture Capital Investment? A related post here: 10 of My Top Seed Investing Mistakes The post Dear SaaStr: What Did You Learn From Your Worst Venture Capital Investment? History doesn’t repeat. But it definitely rhymes. appeared first on SaaStr.

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital Investment CTO Churn 279

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2025

Large Audience: Considered the biggest SaaS conference with a large number of attendees from leading SaaS companies, startups, and venture capital firms. The event is known for its focused content on SaaS growth strategies, metrics, and best practices, making it particularly valuable for B2B SaaS companies.

Software 247

Software Scale Venture Capital SaaS 247

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2024

The Three Months of Strong Growth Rule in Raising Venture Capital # 6. Dont Be a VC Snob There are definitely risks raising capital from non-standard investors. Send them to other founders who have raised VC capital. Look at your metrics objectively. Dont waste folks time before then. Re-read that deck.

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital Investment AI Metrics 279

Tom Tunguz

JULY 22, 2017

It’s wonderful to see the expansion of venture capital across these geographies and especially at very healthy growth rates. A 50% growth rate sustained over 6 years implies 11x growth in venture capital investment during the period. The missing piece of data concerning round size is the valuation metrics.

Venture Capital 189

Venture Capital Development Marketing Investment 189

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2023

You can’t make money in venture unless you have companies that get to $100M or $200M in revenue within seven to ten years. Understanding what venture capital firms are looking for helps you make the best decisions for your specific company. Pay attention to multiples to get a pulse on venture capital.

Venture Capital 246

Venture Capital Management Business Model Trends 246

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

During an enlightening session at SaaStr Europa 2022, Zach Coelius (Managing Partner at Coelius Capital) and Tiffany Luck (Investor at GGV Capital) share the secrets and lesser-known players in the world of venture capital. Additionally, be ready to show off some specific metrics to a VC associate. VC Associates.

Venture Capital 246

Venture Capital Management Metrics Investment 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2019

Q: How do venture capital firms determine when and how to help stalled or stuck portfolio companies? No fake metrics. The post How do venture capital firms determine when and how to help stalled or stuck portfolio companies? It is a super interesting topic more should be written about. VCs expect some tough times.

Venture Capital 193

Venture Capital Investment Metrics 193

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2025

Prior to founding Chemistry, Ethan spent 16 years at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he led investments in successful companies like PagerDuty, Intercom, and SendGrid. Focus on the right metrics : Be transparent about your key metrics rather than relying on vanity numbers.

Technical Review 163

Technical Review Venture Capital Outsourced Development ChatGPT 163

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

NPS is one of the three core metrics, along with revenue and unit economics, they use to steer the business. If you’re doing something that requires venture capital to get off the ground, or else it’s not going to be a business, you better be sure you can raise that money.

Sales Recruiting 326

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 326

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2020

Q: How hard is it to raise venture capital? The overall odds of raising venture capital may be 0.05%. >50% of each YC batch does, or can raise capital. They have the right teams, the right metrics, and the right traction. The post How hard is it to raise venture capital? 100% of the time.

Venture Capital 173

Venture Capital Investment Metrics SaaS 173

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2023

Something that’s both not surprising but also pretty impactful: 57% of venture-backed startups will have to go “back to market” in 2024 to raise more capital. And realistically, most won’t have the metrics to pull off another round. VCs don’t give startups 10 years of capital.

Startup 357

Startup Venture Capital Azure AWS 357

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2022

In the 2000s, when capital was scarcer, founders & VCs would derive round size by debating the quantum of money required to achieve Series B milestones. When capital is scarce, it’s rationed. In the 2010s, US venture capital grew 40x in 10 years. In 2021, employment costs per capital increased to roughly $200k.

Headcount 325

Headcount Venture Capital Finance Startup 325

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2023

Almost Everyone’s Gotten Radically More Efficient in SaaS That’s a good metric to think about at scale now. Venture capital is there to bridge the gap, and let you hire more to go faster. The average public SaaS company now has hit $300,000 in revenue per employee or so on average. This starts to get tough.

Venture Capital 341

Venture Capital Scaling AI Investment 341

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2022

Later stage venture capital was so free-flowing, that it made sense to invest in sales, customer success (and marketing to some extent) at much higher levels that before. Now, as SaaS got bigger and we scaled faster, we pushed these metrics up a bit. That’s what venture capital is for, in fact, to some extent.

Scale 290

Scale Customer Success Venture Capital Sales 290

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 16, 2020

Ideally, the management team should raise more capital to move to the upper right quadrant of the matrix. Venture capital, debt, or negotiating better cash collections (multi-year prepay) are all viable strategies to position the business to press its advantage. First, when should the company raise capital?

Strategy 351

Strategy Startup Venture Capital Acquisition 351

Tom Tunguz

MAY 23, 2021

Rather than burn dictating when to raise capital, founders elect to raise when inbound interest arrives, or immediately before launching to sell the dream rather than the metrics, or at other strategic inflection points. Many run auctions effectively, and pick the right partner conducting similar diligence to the investors themselves.

Software Review 364

Software Review Venture Capital Cloud Pricing 364

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

So there are a lot of rough and arm chair metrics for fundraising in SaaS in terms of valuations. So the minor point is maybe we’re just back to 2016-2017 in SaaS venture capital for Series A and later rounds. For the best ones. We’re never “going back” to how things were in late 2020 and 2021.

Venture Capital 67

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 67

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2021

FT: Yamini Rangan’s Top Metrics as HubSpot’s New CEO. How Would a Person Start a Venture Capital Fund? Top Blog Posts This Week: 12 Things You’ll Look Back On in SaaS … And Regret. 6 Key Signs a VP Can’t Scale Beyond $5m-$10m ARR. 5 Interesting Learnings from Samsara at $500,000,000 in ARR.

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital Scale Scaling Metrics 279

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

In the ever-evolving landscape of SaaS, Venture Capital, Bootstrapping, and Valuations – understanding market trends and investment patterns is critical. With market downturns and reduced venture capital funding, some businesses struggle to stay afloat. However, others seem to remain unimpacted by these changes.

Venture Capital 278

Venture Capital Scale Technical Review Software Review 278

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2022

And with that, a lot has changed in the venture capital markets, even early stage. The expectations, the metrics, the pool of VCs. It hit hard, with Nasdaq falling another 15%, and private valuations perhaps 20%. More importantly, many Cloud leaders are down 50% from their all-time highs. The change is still being figured out.

Venture Capital 313

Venture Capital Cloud Investment Startup 313

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

This article looks at the history of SaaS as it relates to financial capital and production capital. I argue that standard saas metrics make it possible for founders to scale using debt capital (production capital thats cheaper) instead of solely relying on venture capital (financial capital thats more expensive). .

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 299

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2024

If you’re raising venture capital or plan to, and you have choices, know that bad investors can hurt you. If venture capital seems alluring when you haven’t raised before, you’ll realize it’s extremely expensive, dilutive, and addictive. 5: Bad investors really can hurt you. You can’t get growth back by spending more.

Sales Hiring 312

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Venture Capital Fractional VPE 312

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2024

A Burn Rate That is Too High Venture capital is meant for investing, for sure. But there’s a fine line between investing and keeping a leaky boat and set of metrics afloat. Almost every founder regrets using capital to keep a high-burn rate engine going that isn’t scaling rapidly. #2.

Trends 318

Trends Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 318

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2021

A few thoughts if you haven’t raised venture capital before: 1. And get them detailed Board packs and metrics at least 3 days before each Board meeting. Share everything, at least, share all metrics and data. Remember you have to prove yourself, still. Be extremely transparent and data-driven.

Venture Capital 289

Venture Capital Management Metrics Data 289

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 30, 2024

Simultaneously, venture markets have expanded dramatically, contributing to this overcrowding. In a world without venture capital (or other sources of external financing for startups), each company would have to grow solely based on the merits of their product and sales. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework.

Cloud 274

Cloud Venture Capital AI Startup 274

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 8, 2019

First, they focused on handful of key metrics. In many SaaS categories as well as in venture capital, this idea is absolutely true. And that starts with a focus on metrics and hiring the right people. That’s the key. It’s the resulting hustle that outlasts product cycles and wins against unremitting competition.

Strategy 263

Strategy Venture Capital Banking Software Review 263

Kellblog

MAY 24, 2022

I have to say it was a combination of luck and foresight that I started talking with Allan Wille and Lauren Thibodeau about capital efficiency as a potential topic for their Metric Stack podcast many months ago. Because now, as the episode is coming out , capital efficiency is the hot topic of the day.

Metrics 120

Metrics Venture Capital Benchmarks Finance 120

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2020

We’re going to do something a little different here, and both catch up on the state of Equality in Venture Capital and Cloud, and also revisit Aileen’s classic pieces in TechCrunch that kicked off the age of the Unicorn. We’ll do a deep dive into the latest metrics on what it takes to build something iconic.

Trends 251

Trends Venture Capital Scale PayPal 251

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2022

The number of global venture capital (VC) investments dipped in 2022, thanks to ongoing geopolitical tensions, turbulence in global capital markets, supply chain issues, and increasing interest rates. Venture capital firms pumped a lot of money into the economy during the pandemic, buying countless software companies.

Venture Capital 264

Venture Capital Marketing Construction Startup 264

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2023

If you need to raise venture capital, preparation is important, both in terms of process and in terms of expectation alignment. Profitability has eclipsed growth as the primary set of metrics that investors care about. But it’s important to be constantly plugging in new assumptions to those to make them accurate.

SaaS Payments 246

SaaS Payments Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 246

SaaStr

JUNE 20, 2022

Logan Allin, Managing Partner at Fin Venture Capital, has reviewed hundreds of deck submissions and shares the secrets to crafting the perfect presentation to win over investors. metrics, and what value-add your VC gives the company. Allin points out, “Capital for the best entrepreneurs is a pure commodity. MoM Growth.

Venture Capital 245

Venture Capital Management Business Model Investment 245

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2021

But here are some things that founders do that perhaps suggest you aren’t yet ready to raise venture capital. You don’t know your core metrics fluently. The best CEOs know their metrics cold, really all of them. Being an amateur is OK, even endearing — if it’s authentic. And up to a point.

Venture Capital 298

Venture Capital Investment Pricing Business Model 298

The Angel VC

JANUARY 17, 2014

Who ever said only startups love vanity metrics? Yesterday I saw this post on the blog of Karlin Ventures. In response to a tweet by Paul Graham which was highlighted in Danielle Morrill's excellent Mattermark Daily newsletter, the guys at Karlin Ventures revealed the "days since last contact" numbers for their portfolio.

Metrics 165

Metrics Startup Communication Venture Capital 165

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

The Bank also offers venture banking products including a comprehensive suite of financial services focused on entrepreneurial and venture-backed businesses and their venture capital and private equity investors, with offices located in key innovation hubs across the United States.

Banking 265

Banking Payment Features Venture Capital Subscription 265

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2019

million funded by Slack and the balance funded by the venture capital funds who partner with Slack Fund.” In fact, it has pretty similar metrics and sales cycles to other SaaS leaders here. .” The Slack Fund is tiny. “As of January 31, 2019, Slack Fund has invested $10.1 million in 46 companies, with $5.2

Scale 279

Scale Venture Capital SMB Enterprise 279

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2021

Make measured customer happiness one of your very core metrics at the company. Yes, venture capital can help smooth out the bumps here. Too few and you can’t see the variances. Too many and it’s too much for everyone in the company to grock. And review it, and grade progress, at every company meeting.

SaaS 363

SaaS Venture Capital Churn Branding 363

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2021

Without venture capital, I’d be nowhere. Both of my first two startups were venture-backed. It may be very certain metrics. Traction, metrics, team, logos, and vision. It bores me personally to hear the same advice and topics again and again, but it’s an important topic. An epic cold email.

Venture Capital 300

Venture Capital Investment Metrics Startup 300