Tom Tunguz

MARCH 25, 2024

In 2014, I remember joining a panel at the Gainsight annual conference Pulse, then in its second year. Sellers & the startups they represent will need to re-imagine roles. In a sense, selling AI agents is analogous to category creation. About a decade ago, Nick Mehta & the Gainsight team created the customer success category.

AI 212

AI Startup Customer Success Technology 212

Tom Tunguz

MAY 18, 2014

If the fundraising trends in Q1 continue for the year, VCs will raise twice as much capital in 2014 as 2013 ($36B vs $17B). Q2 will be an important bellwether to gauge the bullishness of the venture industry for 2014. It’s still unclear to me how this growth investment market correction will impact earlier stage investments.

Marketing 100

Marketing Investment Trends Enterprise 100

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2021

In 2014, when I invested in then up-and-comer Talkdesk , it had long since IPO’d and was struggling at a $200m market cap. Five9’s revenues were 60% enterprise at IPO in 2014, but now are 83% enterprise. And Five9 has grown from just 3 $1m ACV customers in 2014 to 91 today: #2. Five9 is particularly interesting.

Systems Review 341

Systems Review Technical Review Software Review Cloud 341

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

DECEMBER 3, 2013

I know you’re up to your eyeballs already with your 2014 planning, but I’m going to add another chore to your “to do” list. I'll start by apologizing.

Headcount 100

Headcount Social Media Interviewing Mobile 100

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2024

<< I remember back in 2014, I was at an event with a CEO that was truly great. Building something customers actually want and will pay for is special. Even if some patches don’t feel like it. >> >> Don’t quit. << But: He couldn't raise any money from anyone. Quite a bit.

Startup 297

Startup Investment Product Marketing Revenue 297

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 18, 2022

2014’s correction stalled and then reversed Series D round sizes for 2 years through the second correction in 2016. Three corrections in the last ten years have contracted multiples by 40% or more. These are marked in peachpuff orange rectangles above. The Series D mean round size is plotted in red.

Marketing 362

Marketing Startup Finance Technology 362

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 14, 2022

During the dotcom crash in 2001, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and the SaaS corrections in 2014, 2016, and 2018, Lee was either COO/CFO or CFO at Twilio, SAY Media, and Ofoto. Lee Kirkpatrick is no stranger to downturns.

Management 262

Management Finance Subscription Payment Features 262

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2023

I remember back in 2014, I was at an event with a CEO that was truly great. Every startup I’ve joined or startup has almost failed. Heck, SaaStr itself has almost failed. We lost $10,000,000 in March 2020, and half the team then quit. But: He couldn't raise any money from anyone. Quite a bit.

Social Media 240

Social Media Startup Revenue 240

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2023

UIPath History 2005: Started as a tech outsourcing company 2014: $500k rev. UiPath has had an incredible history, taking 10 years to get to that first $1m in ARR … and then turning into one of the fastest growing software companies to $1 Billion in ARR ever ! seed round 2015: $1m rev. 2016: $3.5m rev 2017: $30m rev. 2018: $155m rev.

Company Culture 244

Company Culture AI Innovation Enterprise 244

The Daily Egg

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

The company initially launched back in 2012 but didn’t officially acquire its first customers until two years later, in 2014. Monday.com has become one of the most popular project management solutions available. Today, 115,000+ organizations worldwide rely on Monday.com.

Management 284

Management 284

CloseSaaS

SEPTEMBER 6, 2014

Jot down September 12, 2014 in your calendar if you're in San Francisco, because that's when SalesConf will be taking place. Nick O'Neill put together an spectacular startup sales speaker lineup, which includes, among others, Aaron Ross, Jason Lemkin, Hiten Shah, Lincoln Murphy. and myself :)

Startup 52

Startup Sales 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

Previously, he served as Weber Shandwick’s Western Region president from 2014-2019, managing a staff of 200 people. Most recently, Penati was the founder and chief advisor at Penati and Partners, a marketing and communications consultancy that worked with startups and nonprofit organizations.

Consulting 192

Consulting Communication Startup Branding 192

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2021

In 2014, it had 6 employees. Folks want to start startups because they have a chance to look like this: The true definition of a tech startup is probably one that if it truly achieves product-market fit, can scale almost infinitely. The above example is of my third venture investment, Talkdesk. Today, it has 2,000 employees and is worth $10B.

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Startup Scaling Investment Product Marketing 279

CloseSaaS

DECEMBER 30, 2014

2014 was the year we focused on sharing the lessons we've learned from building and scaling sales for more than 200 venture-backed startups.

Scale 52

Scale Startup Scaling Sales 52

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2022

2014 $4.1B. It’s not slowing down Salesforce, Snowflake, or almost any other SaaS or Cloud leader. Salesforce Growth: 2023 $31.8B (guidance) 2022 $26.5B 2021 $21.25B 2020 $17.1B Thank you Ohana! pic.twitter.com/CMhrBXgHSF. — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) May 31, 2022. We may be headed for a big downturn, we’ll see.

Sales Hiring 308

Sales Hiring Acquisition Cloud Enterprise 308

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 1, 2019

In 2014, I published a post called Do Startup Require Less Capital to Succeed than 10 Years Ago ? In 2014 we saw increasing efficiencies over time, which was very exciting because it reaffirmed the efficiency of SaaS go-to-market. It’s been five years and time to see how things have changed. The chart above updates that analysis.

Startup 279

Startup Software Review SaaS Acquisition 279

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 7, 2019

The top left chart shows a $1M round had about 41% market share in 2010; that grew to about 54% in 2014; now it has fallen to 35%. Today, the first institutional round of capital is that $3-5M in 54% of cases, up from 39% in 2014. These numbers would be more extreme if benchmarked to 2014. But something changed.

Marketing 214

Marketing Benchmarks Trends Startup 214

SaaStr

OCTOBER 21, 2021

VC in Algolia back in 2014, and it’s now a $2B+ search API giant. CEO of Algolia, Bernadette Nixon. First up was a walk-and-talk with one of my favorite CEOs, Bernadette Nixon of Aloglia. I was lucky enough to be the first U.S. Casey did a deep dive on the future of APIs and more here: 2. Jeff Yoshimura, CMO at Synk.

Scaling 241

Scaling SaaS Marketing 241

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 26, 2023

He’s also the author of six international bestsellers, including “Money: Master the Game” (2014), “Unshakable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook” (2017) and “Life Force: How New Breakthroughs in Precision Medicine Can Transform the Quality of Your Life and Those You Love” (2022).

AI 72

AI Education Business 72

SaaStr

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Since 2014 Jay has invested in over 90 startup companies with 35 successful exits. Jay focuses most of his time working with the current portfolio companies and looking at new investments in the software-as-a-service, Internet media and green tech space.

Development Team Review 215

Development Team Review Management Technical Review Social Media 215

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

After the initial event exceeded our expectations, I decided to up my game for 2014. So at Pulse 2014, I became a “grown-up CEO.” Pulse 2014 was by far my worst keynote of all time. I hired a speaking coach (who was great in her own right, despite this story). Try writing out your speech and reading from a teleprompter.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 255

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2019

HubSpot is a great one that IPO’d way back in 2014 ?? HubSpot has gone global with a fury since 2014, driving from 22% international revenue to 40%. 5 Interesting Learnings from Slack at $700m in ARR. 5 Interesting Learnings from Zoom. As it IPOs. 5 Interesting Learnings from Bill.com’s IPO. With a $10k ACV. RingCentral ).

Outsourcing Services 312

Outsourcing Services Scale SMB Pricing 312

CloseSaaS

MAY 29, 2014

Here are some of our takeaways from Pulse 2014. More and more SaaS companies are implementing customer success strategies and hiring dedicated customer success managers (CSMs). We recently attended Gainsight Pulse, the preeminent gathering for customer success professionals.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Hiring SaaS Strategy 52

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2019

First, the science of building SaaS companies is better understood today than in 2014. To be fair, 22% of companies raised at $0 in ARR. But the average MRR has increased substantially from the last time I analyzed the data. note I’m switching from median to average here). That’s quite a growth rate.

Benchmarks 260

Benchmarks Startup SaaS Data Analysis 260

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2022

Early businesses tend to create more instruments to hire, grow, and incentivize. tokens resemble equity in most ways, but possess one additional function: they can be used to pay for service. Trailing 2 Year Inflation Rate. Founded Year.

Startup 311

Startup Sales Hiring Government Outsourced Development 311

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2023

Founded in 2014, PSG has since raised over $14 billion in capital and has a team of more than 150 investment professionals. RapidAPI is the world’s largest API Hub where millions of developers find and connect to tens of thousands of public APIs.

Outsourced Development 197

Outsourced Development Acquisition Pricing B2B 197

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

This led to our first meet-ups in 2013 and 2014, the first SaaStr Annual in 2015 , the industry’s leading podcast in 2016, the first SaaS founder coworking space in 2017, and SaaStr Pro , the first learning management system for SaaS founders in 2018. But all this was pretty novel back in 2014.

Scale 272

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 272

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 5, 2021

Over time, rates decline and then in the 2012-2014 era, they begin to surge upward culminating 6-8 years later at the top-left of the chart and $200b+ invested. The y-axis tracks enture capital investment by year and the year of the data point resides in the reddish circle. Do you remember this shape from high school math?

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital Marketing Government Investment 363

Tom Tunguz

MAY 23, 2021

2014: Alibaba. If we plot the annual growth rates for the 75th percentile Series A, we observe the expansion in valuations occurs in fits and starts. 3 of the 11 years recorded 40%+ growth. 3 of the years saw declining prices. Perhaps these prices are tied to blockbuster IPO markets. 2012: Facebook.

Software Review 364

Software Review Venture Capital Cloud Pricing 364

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2020

When I invested in Talkdesk in 2014, Five9 had a $150m market cap. That’s accelerated more Cloud leaders than it has harmed. It’s not just Zoom and Slack. Many other functions have quickly moved to the Cloud, e.g. call center like RingCentral and Five9. Today, six years later, it is $7 billion. Let that sink in a bit ??.

SaaS 362

SaaS Cloud Investment Marketing 362

IT World

MARCH 28, 2023

When Satya Nadella took over as CEO from Ballmer in 2014, Microsoft began a slow, steady ascent, betting on the cloud rather than relying on Windows. Then after a federal anti-trust suit and CEO Steve Ballmer’s poor leadership, the company fell into a tailspin and lost its tech luster during a “lost decade” that began in 2000.

Cloud 137

Cloud Leadership Innovation Technology 137

ReSci

MARCH 13, 2015

For 2014, it was the data scientist. The post Why the hottest job of 2014 is the marketer’s secret weapon appeared first on ReSci. 2013's hottest career was the social media marketer. Data mining and statistical analysis hit the top of the charts. We live in an increasingly data driven world,….

Social Media 40

Social Media Data Marketing 40

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2021

Pretty incredible for a product that just launched in 2014. And that’s with direct and indirect competition from Asana, Atlassian, Clickup, Wrike, Smartsheet, Notion and so many others. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. 121% NRR from 10+ seat customers, 107% overall, ~85% from smallest customers.

Scale 360

Scale SMB Government Enterprise 360

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2022

Seed in 2014, and then proud to double down: Super pro rata in Series A Invested big in Series B First check into Series C. But the compensation, both in fees and carry, diverges widely across partners, for many reasons. note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer. Top Dog image from here ). Today is @algolia ’s 10 year anniversary.

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Compensation Investment Management Sales 213

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

It was April 2014, and the company was raising its Series B. and in 2014, it had the lowest digital penetration of any category. Investing in Instacart was perhaps the hardest decision I had to make as a venture capitalist. And by the time we saw the pitch, they already had multiple term sheets.

Marketplace as a Service 142

Marketplace as a Service Scale Underperforming Technical Team Construction 142

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2021

2014 $4.1B. Salesforce Growth: 2021 $20.8B Guidance 2020 $17.1B Thank you Ohana! — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) August 25, 2020. If you haven’t done a SaaS start-up before, it’s different. The reasons are many, but I think they can almost all be summed up in one key factor: SaaS compounds.

SaaS 313

SaaS Travel Churn Revenue 313

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2021

2014 $4.1B. It seems like every market in SaaS is even bigger than we expected, and importantly, able to not just hit $1B in ARR but accelerate afterwards. Seize the day. Salesforce Growth: 2022 $26B (guidance) 2021 $21.25B 2020 $17.1B Thank you Ohana! From 1st Earnings Call Inside. We’re all vaccinated!) pic.twitter.com/DQAwBNHm2A.

Cloud 274

Cloud Scaling SaaS Revenue 274