Recently Bessemer Venture Partners did another great deep give on Cloud metrics at the Cloud 100.  They’ll update their classic “State of the Cloud” on Sep 27-29 at SaaStr Annual 2021 in the SF Bay Area so come join us there for the latest!

A few metrics really stood out to me this year:

  • Their “Cloud 100” top private Cloud and SaaS companies are now worth on average a stunning $5.2B. That’s the average of the 100!  And that’s more than doubled just since last year!
  • The average “Cloud 100” company is growing 90% at well north of $100m ARR.  SaaS is scaling faster than ever.  While valuations are at an all-time high — so are growth rates.
  • Fintech is the biggest driver, pulling away from all other categories.  But Sales & Marketing / CX is #2.  The amount of innovation in sales, marketing and CX SaaS products continues to exceed my expectations, when it seemed for a while this category had sort of stabilized:

  • 30% of the Cloud 100 is international.  We’ve all seen this, but the trend is accelerating.  The SF Bay Area is still the HQ for the majority of public SaaS companies today.  But the next generation?  That’s less clear.
  • Valuations are at an all-time high — but you have to bring the growth.  Top tier SaaS companies are valued at 34x ARR today, up from a pretty consistent 10x or so through 2018.  That’s incredible multiple expansion.  But only the best SaaS and Cloud get these multiples.
  • M&A isn’t keeping up, at least not yet.  This isn’t a flag, but it’s a topic that isn’t discussed enough.  Unicorns are born at a breathtaking rate, and the IPO window remains wide open.  And PE firms are doing billion+ acquisitions seemingly every week or two.  But you can see below public companies aren’t doing their part yet ;).  They’re not really acquiring ever more unicorns.  Unicorn acquisitions, unlike unicorn VC rounds, remain rare.

The full report from Bessemer here.

You can also catch a deep dive on a number of these metrics and trends we did with Byron Deeter of Bessemer here:

 

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