Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Enterprise software businesses strive for 90-95% gross retention (generally the percent of revenue that sticks with you vs churns altogether), with net expansion in the 120%+ range (the aggregate change in expansion - contraction - churned revenue).

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

The other day I checked in with Bernadette Nixon, the new CEO of search-as-service leader Algolia. SaaS passed media as their #2 customer category. We all know SaaS got big, but I didn’t realize it had become their #2 category, passing media. From a niche to huge. This was interesting, too.

Scale 305

Scale Enterprise Development Revenue 305

FastSpring

APRIL 18, 2024

FastSpring is proud to announce that our support team has won a Silver Stevie® award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year in the “Technology Industries – Computer Software” category! The post FastSpring Customer Service Team Wins Silver Stevie® Award appeared first on FastSpring.

Artificial Intelligence 78

Artificial Intelligence Customer Support Engagement Technology 78

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2024

In the latest episode of our What’s New series, Founder and CEO at Secureframe, Shrav Mehta, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin to share what’s new at Secureframe, a rising SOC-2 and compliance software company breaking out in SaaS. Even if your product’s not there, they’ll buy from you.’

AI 148

AI SMB compliance Sales Hiring 148

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Any startup in any reasonable category likely has dozens of competitors, and Altman believes the best strategy to compete in 2023 and beyond is multi-product. What Caused This Crowded Software Market? It has become much cheaper to build software — You can build high-quality products cheaply in your dorm room with a laptop.

Scale 222

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 222

User Pilot

APRIL 10, 2024

Knowledge base creation is critical to enhancing self-service support. As your business grows, you can expect the number of support tickets to increase and the stress levels of your customer service team to go up. TL;DR A knowledge base is a centralized library that offers access to helpful information about a product or service.

Software Review 94

Software Review AI Search SaaS Technical Review 94

Tom Tunguz

JULY 8, 2021

There are six key categories of players. Tokens might be used as stores of equity value, as a replacement for government money, to pay for a particular service, or simply as as collectible. Software vendors - a software ecosystem is blossoming around crypto. Software spans many categories.

Outsourced Development 267

Outsourced Development Marketplace as a Service Banking Construction 267

Stax

APRIL 18, 2024

Typically, the merchant’s payment processing software will build the credit card processing rates into their fee. Merchant: The business or entity selling goods or services and accepting credit card payments. They often provide services such as authorization, clearing, and settlement. Pre-pandemic, 62.3% Card Network (e.g.,

Merchant Services 88

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 88

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 28, 2021

UIPath, leaders in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, filed their S-1 last week , revealing an impressive business. UIPath offers software to build robots, programs that automate repetitive work. The UIPath suite includes the software to write, execute, monitor, and maintain these robots.

Payment Services 359

Payment Services Metrics Payment Solutions Payments 359

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Part 2: How to Automate your SaaS Expenses – Payroll with Gusto and QuickBooks Part 3: How to Automate your SaaS Expenses – QuickBooks Bank Rules Part 4: How to Choose SaaS Billing Software This post – Part 1 – focuses on how to categorize your SaaS expenses properly by using QuickBooks or Xero, and what are the benefits of doing so.

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 22, 2022

We are delighted to announce that Intercom has once again been recognized as among the best solutions in a number of Customer Service categories in the newly released G2 Winter Reports 2023. This season, we were rewarded a whopping 101 badges and awards, a recognition of Intercom’s position as a leader in the field of Customer Service.

Software Review 118

Software Review Systems Review Communication Software 118

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2022

Q: How can enterprise software (SaaS) pricing be optimally defined, taking into account that two of three versions of the software can be offered, e.g. ‘small’, ‘medium’, ‘large’? Let’s look at Salesforce.com — it now has 11 (!) Use pricing similar to other players.

Pricing 214

Pricing Cloud Enterprise Software 214

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 26, 2024

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. They weren’t living up to their potential and, as a result, there remains a huge category of repetitive processes that humans still perform manually.

Investment 126

Investment Healthcare AI Business Model 126

Tom Tunguz

MAY 4, 2022

It encapsulates software, infrastructure, and consumer services- unlike the other buckets which are more narrow. While the segmentation may skew the data somewhat, the data point does underscore investor interest in the category broadly. The 75th percentile of Seed startups raises at 30m valuation and Series A at $100m.

Data 245

Data Healthcare Marketing Construction 245

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

“Disco” is a leader in next-generation eDiscovery software, i.e. managing documents around lawsuits. Really, it’s a next-generation Cloud player in eDiscovery, one of the oldest and largest categories in legal tech (a $15B category already). And the first to IPO. Billion even with the market correction.

Technical Review 246

Technical Review Software Review Scale Cloud 246

Totango

DECEMBER 20, 2023

We are delighted to share that Totango was recognized in the G2 Winter 2024 reports for its exemplary performance in the customer success software category. These awards reflect superior engagement and commitment from our users, who continue to highlight and share the key aspects of Totango and our software they find most beneficial.

Software Review 108

Software Review Technical Review User Experience Enterprise 108

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

“I don’t know about you, but I fail a lot,” Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, says as his opener at SaaStr Annual 2023. In SaaS, we talk a lot about hyper-growth, uber-successful companies, but many founders, including hyper-growth founders, make mistakes over and over. In this talk, Nick shares his top 10 failures as a CEO while getting to $200M ARR.

Scale 227

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 227

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

This research will tell you whether your “genius idea” is filling a real market gap and whether you’re disrupting or creating a new category. Combine software with services. UserZoom invested in a model where they didn’t just provide software, but services, in a model known as SaaS++. And if it’s the latter?

Scale 204

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring SMB 204

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 5, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. If we were to come up with a hypothetical software startup that will trade at 10x revenue in the public markets, their seed round might be done at a NM (not meaningful) multiple, as they have no revenue. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 161

Cloud Scale Pricing Revenue 161

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Grocery is the largest retail category in the U.S., and in 2014, it had the lowest digital penetration of any category. Prior to founding Instacart, Apoorva was a fulfillment optimization software engineer from Amazon. Both offered consumers a ton of convenience through their service. Instacart is a case study of this.

Marketplace as a Service 142

Marketplace as a Service Scale Underperforming Technical Team Construction 142

Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

Four Main Categories Where Pain Can change to Value. Hard Cost This refers to money spent outside the company on materials, software, technology, etc. Examples include buying software licenses, purchasing materials, or investing in technology solutions like cloud services. Deals can slip due to a variety of reasons.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Enterprise Cybersecurity 52

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2021

Pricing too low can sometimes make sense in the earliest of days, but in the end, almost every SaaS category has a rough norm for pricing these days. Gets them in a comfortable mindset but we’ve had 1 or 2 out of 30+ ever opt out” — Luke Sophinos, CEO @CourseKeyEDU. Unpaid pilots almost never work. But an unpaid pilot?

Pricing 278

Pricing Scale Enterprise Onboarding 278

Subscription Flow

APRIL 1, 2024

A merchant of record for digital products is the legal body permitted to handle client payments for digital goods and services as companies negotiate the intricacies of online commerce. For software companies, an MoR for digital products is an essential middleman who takes on the task of handling transactions and payments on their behalf.

Merchant Services 97

Merchant Services Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Methods 97

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2023

There are two approaches you can take with the platform layer: Developer Tool/API Managed Enterprise Service Large businesses will gravitate toward bespoke models to their specs. In the short term, more money will go toward managed enterprise services, but there is an opportunity for tremendous growth with dev tools and APIs in the long term.

Generative AI 175

Generative AI AI Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 175

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2021

The state of software buying has changed. During SaaStr Annual 2021, Amanda Malko, CMO at G2, shared a fascinating look at the data that reveals shifting patterns in the way consumers purchase software. . Furthermore, 55% of companies plan to increase software spending in 2022.

Software Review 231

Software Review SMB Enterprise Software 231

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Natasha Ratanshi-Stein is the founder of Surfboard , a software company that offers scheduling tooling for customer support teams. Scaling a support team is challenging enough as it is. As a result, there usually comes an inflection point in the growth journey where the internal orchestration of tasks starts to feel a little out of sorts.

Scale 206

Scale Software Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 206

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

Is Software Rebounding? Azure has gone back above trend as they’ve benefited quite a bit form the recent AI boom There’s many ways of answering the question of “is software rebounding” when looking at performance from Q4. net retention and CAC payback). Who are the real AI winners. ” Lots of questions!

Cloud 177

Cloud Software Azure AWS 177

SaaS Metrics

JANUARY 20, 2024

Most of us are familiar with the term SaaS, which stands for Software as a Service, but you might have noticed another term popping up every now and then. The ‘X’ in XaaS refers to a general category of services delivered over the cloud. XaaS (Anything as a Service or Everything as.

Business 52

Business Cloud Metrics SaaS 52

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

Atlassian is trading at over $40B with revenue north of $3B. When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. Not because they planned to start as a product-led company but because they couldn’t afford to. So what should earlier-stage companies do: immediately build out a big sales team or focus on product-led growth?

Sales Hiring 211

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 211

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2020

TechCrunch recently caught up with former founder and active venture capitalist Jason Lemkin to chat about the world of software-as-service companies, better known as “SaaS.” Right before the current tumult, TechCrunch had me on their Equity podcast to talk about how today was the best in times of SaaS. But the points stand.

SaaS 206

SaaS Startup Scaling Software 206

FastSpring

MARCH 27, 2023

I spoke to Ryan about how they created a new enterprise ops category: LearnOps. He also shares insights about how Cognota is maintaining ownership over the category they created while encouraging dialogue and collaboration in the market. We’re enterprise software for a new category called LearnOps.

Payment Solutions 91

Payment Solutions Payment Services SaaS Payments VP of Engineering 91

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 27, 2018

Over the weekend, IBM announced the largest software acquisition of Red Hat, an open-source software company, for $35B. It is the largest software acquisition in history, and the third largest technology acquisition (Dell/EMC at $67B and JDS/SDL for $41B were both larger hardware mergers). This price values the company at a 10.6x

Acquisition 203

Acquisition Application Development Software Engineering Pricing 203

ChurnZero

JULY 27, 2021

ChurnZero is a finalist in the 2021 SaaS Awards Program in the category of Best SaaS Product for Customer Service/CRM. Now in its sixth year of celebrating software innovation, the Software-as-a-Service Awards program accepts entries worldwide, including the US, Canada, Australasia, EMEA and UK. About ChurnZero.

SaaS 98

SaaS Innovation Cloud AI 98

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2021

They will pay $250,000 to solve a Big Problem (including services, implementation, customer success) … where they won’t pay $2,500 for a seemingly similar widget that has similar features but doesn’t solve their business workflow and process problems. Zoom even at $100m ARR still felt like it was in a crowded market. A little more here.

Marketing 351

Marketing Scale Branding Enterprise 351

How To Buy Saas

MARCH 23, 2024

CRM software helps sales and service teams to satisfy and retain customers easily. There are two popular brands used in the CRM and customer service space – Zendesk vs Freshdesk. What is customer relationship management (CRM) software? It equips the sales, marketing, and customer service teams with the necessary tools.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payments SaaS Payments Scale 52

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 16, 2023

Check out our Transparent Pricing Dashboard How our finances have evolved while staying true to our mission Looking at our finances over the last nine years, you’ll notice fluctuations within the different categories. This means our software is hosted on the cloud and used over an internet connection via a web browser or mobile app.

Merchant Services 74

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Features Payments 74

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

In this guide, we compare six Recurly competitors and alternatives according to several categories: Subscription management and recurring billing Checkout Global payment processing Reporting and analytics Pricing Customer reviews We’ll start with a deep dive into FastSpring — our end-to-end payment solution (i.e., These are just two examples.

Payment Services 78

Payment Services Payments Payment Methods Merchant Services 78