Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

It would entail a scenario where the labor market remains very strong (ie low unemployment), which leads to wage growth, which leads to inflation staying “sticky” (or even reversing course and going back up), economic growth, and the Fed starting another hiking cycle. You can interpret this in 2 ways.

Cloud 268

Cloud Software Review Technical Review Systems Review 268

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

So there’s a question I’ve had for some time in SaaS: does high NRR really equal higher growth? Yes, most of the best in SaaS have high NRR, at least once they are public. SaaS Capital asked this question among some other great ones of 1,500 private SaaS companies here. And what they learned is: Yes.

Startup 242

Startup SaaS SMB Banking 242

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So we don’t know quite as much about Canva as we do SaaS companies that have IPO’d. jasonlk) December 19, 2023 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. Importantly, growth has accelerated this year. The average public SaaS company has now gotten more efficient, to about $300k per employee. But the very, very best in SaaS?

AWS 245

AWS B2C AI Scaling 245

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 19, 2024

Their GAAP revenue grew 5% in 2023, and 29% in Q4 ‘23 YoY. Rubrik’s subscription ARR was $784m at the end of 2023 and growing 47% YoY. For context, full year GAAP revenue in 2023 was $628m. The right way to view Rubrik is really more of a high growth software business growing >40%. Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 141

Cloud Scale Subscription Payment Features 141

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 10, 2023

Growth Deceleration of Consumption Companies So far, 2023 guides have not been pretty for consumption software companies. The two charts below visualize the last few years of growth with ‘23 company guides shown, as well as what implied 20% growth decay would be. Bucketed by Growth. Mid Growth Median: 6.1x

Cloud 244

Cloud Trends Subscription Payment Features 244

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 1, 2024

Funds have gotten quite large and haven’t deployed much in 2022 / 2023. The below chart shows the aggregate net new ARR added each quarter for the subset of companies who have reported Q4 so far (set of ~45 companies). The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years.

Cloud 311

Cloud AI Investment Metrics 311

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 2023

A handful of companies achieve record-setting growth rates. US VC investment falls from $275b in 2022 to $200b in 2023 & sustains at about $200-220b in 2024 as LP interest in venture attenuates after the euphoria in 2020 & 2021. SaaS did see a second wave fueled by AI, but the productivity gains remain to be seen.

AI Search 238

AI Search AI Scale Headcount 238

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2022

Despite economic headwinds, SaaS spending continues to grow, with most companies having self-reported increasing or maintaining SaaS spending. These insights from the world’s largest software marketplace come from 3 sources, namely: G2’s Annual buyer behavior report, which researches 1000+ global software users.

Software Review 187

Software Review Software Azure Cloud 187

Chart Mogul

DECEMBER 20, 2023

In January, venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote “Surviving is thriving in 2023” and I think he couldn’t have been more right. This year has been tough, and the whole SaaS industry has experienced a delayed hangover effect. This year has been tough, and the whole SaaS industry has experienced a delayed hangover effect.

Scale 52

Scale Subscription Payment Features Benchmarks 52

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 26, 2024

Subscribe now ServiceNow Kicks Off Q4 Earnings Season ServiceNow kicked off Q4 earnings season on Wednesday (they are almost always the first software company to report), and I thought I’d dig in to see if they left any clues for what we should expect for the broader software market. Bucketed by Growth. Mid Growth Median: 9.2x

Cloud 161

Cloud Marketplace as a Service AI Subscription 161

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2023

Learn about the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023 with the CEOs of the most metric-oriented company, monday.com, and the founder of SaaStr. For a quick recap on SaaS metrics: What is ARR in SaaS? How Is CAC Calculated In SaaS? Read More: What’s The Right CAC These Days? And it’s possible!

Metrics 183

Metrics SaaS Sales Hiring Finance 183

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 29, 2023

Subscribe now 2023 Top Performers In 2023, there were 14 cloud software companies that were up 100%+ this year (in the index I track of ~80 total)! Below you can see the top performers from 2023. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 189

Cloud Software Review Subscription Payment Features 189

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2023

So Capchase surveyed 900 SaaS businesses between $1m and $15m ARR, and their data showed what I’ve seen as well: it’s tougher out there,and media growth is down. And the median at $1m ARR was “just” 60% annual growth. But the top performers in 2023 are doing just about as well as any other year.

Venture Capital 186

Venture Capital Startup SaaS Data 186

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2023

So we wanted to do a little weekly look at who in SaaS and Cloud is doing well. But many are still doing well — as despite tougher macro pressures, Cloud and SaaS spend continues to hit record levels. Okta did note it is getting tougher out there, but not so tough that growth isn’t still very impressive. Billion in ARR.

Cybersecurity 187

Cybersecurity Cloud Innovation Subscription 187

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2022

So we focus more on the newer up-and-coming public SaaS companies in this 5 Interesting Learning series, from Datadog to Zoom to Snowflake to Monday and Shopify. billion, representing 21 percent year-over-year growth or 24 percent adjusted year-over-year growth1.”. Adobe – Adobe Reports Record Q4 and Fiscal 2022 Revenue [link].

Scale 255

Scale Cloud Subscription Payment Features 255

Chart Mogul

MAY 24, 2023

I couldn’t be more excited to launch the 2nd edition of the ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report. In this report, we analyze anonymized and aggregated data from over 2,100 SaaS businesses to bring you the latest SaaS benchmarks and growth trends. The top decile of public SaaS companies grew 48% in 2022 (vs.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks SaaS PayPal Retention 52

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 27, 2023

Azure (Microsoft) Quarter The week the first of the cloud giants reported - Azure. Q4 ‘22 (I’m talking about calendar quarters here, not their fiscal quarters), came in at 38% growth YoY in constant currency. Needless to say, 38% growth was significantly stronger than anyone expected. So call it 30-31% growth in Q1.

Cloud 141

Cloud Azure Pricing Subscription 141

Clouded Judgement

MAY 12, 2023

Earnings Update So far about half of the cloud software universe has reported Q1 earnings (43 companies in the universe I track). Of the 43 companies to report, 38 gave guidance for Q2. There are some outliers, but for the universe who’ve reported so far the takeaway is 2023 guides were de-risked.

Cloud 130

Cloud Government Entrepreneurship Subscription 130

Clouded Judgement

MAY 26, 2023

Early Look at May Consumption Trends This week kicked of Q1 earnings reports for companies with April quarter ends. Azure / Confluent / Datadog reported a few weeks back (they all had March quarter ends), and their commentary suggested the worst was behind us. This means we got commentary for the first time on May trends.

Cloud 141

Cloud Azure Trends Retention 141

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2023

While now mainstream, our early thinking on the power of Second Order Revenue in many ways informed a generation of SaaS entrepreneurs and the whole CS space. Pressure from slowing growth. Having CS report to sales. But … things have change in the past 24 months or so. There are a lot of factors at play here.

Customer Success 238

Customer Success Pricing Revenue Sales 238

User Pilot

JULY 31, 2023

Intercom is a messaging platform and onboarding tool that enables SaaS businesses to communicate with their customers in an efficient way. Despite its strengths, like the ability to automate personalized messages across different channels for multiple user segments or the analytics and reporting features, it has its drawbacks.

Social Media 93

Social Media SaaS Marketplace as a Service Communication 93

Chart Mogul

JUNE 9, 2023

What can be said about growth in the SaaS marketplace in 2023? Our data shows an uptick in 2023, possibly a … What can be said about growth in the SaaS marketplace in 2023? Our data shows an uptick in 2023, possibly a … What can be said about growth in the SaaS marketplace in 2023?

Trends 52

Trends SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 52

BetterCloud

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Hot off the press: the 2023 State of SaaSOps report is now available! We’re back this year with our tenth annual exploration of trends in SaaS operations (SaaSOps). After a burst in pandemic-driven SaaS app growth, IT is facing more challenges (and opportunities) than ever. Download the Full Report.

Trends 59

Trends SaaS Onboarding Enterprise 59

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

In part one of this week’s Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, he answered the community’s questions about whether all anyone cares about is AI anymore, investor appetites going into 2024, vertical SaaS, and thriving as a solo founder. The multiples fell off a cliff in 2022 for SaaS and remained crummy in 2023.

Scale 221

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success AI 221

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2022

My quick review of Miami for SaaS: – Met ton great CEOs, including 2 unicorns – 5x the size for SaaS vs. 2019 – Meet some good VPs, etc. Be Back Bigger in 2023!! But with all the talk of Miami, where is it for SaaS and B2B today? We’ll go bigger in 2023! Dominates, not B2B. Look for it!

Technical Review 229

Technical Review B2B SaaS Engagement 229

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 5, 2024

I’ll report more on this as we start getting to the start of Q4 earnings season in the end of January. If we look at where estimates were in the fall (for year end 2024), vs where they were at the end of 2023, the median company saw their 2024 consensus estimate fall 1%. Bucketed by Growth. Mid Growth Median: 8.2x

Cloud 152

Cloud Trends Subscription Payment Features 152

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2022

But even there, the growth is real. Even when the global economy literally melted down, and >froze< in 2009 — the buyers in SaaS still came. No, if your growth has radically slowed the past few months — it’s you. Gartner is still predicting epic growth in CIO spend in 2023.

Marketing 293

Marketing Startup Cloud Churn 293

Clouded Judgement

MAY 5, 2023

Early Learnings from Q1 Reports Another big week of software learnings. Growth typically comes from two vectors - new customer acquisition and expansion of existing customers. I’ve charted Datadog’s quarterly YoY growth. 2023 numbers are probably close to fairly de-risked. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 130

Cloud Construction Trends Revenue 130

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 13, 2023

That was more broadly a period of ZIRP, and it’s interesting that today the 10Y isn’t hugely different from where it was in the period of 2010 - 2020 Morgan Stanley CIO Survey Everyone is eagerly awaiting 2023 forecasts to be “de-risked.” The top down analysis is looking at IT budget growth. Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 130

Cloud Forecasting Subscription Payment Features 130

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 12, 2023

The 63 companies that I’ll discuss here (which is not an exhaustive list, but is still comprehensive) all reported quarterly earnings sometime between January 25th – March 30th. My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g.,

Cloud 161

Cloud Software Benchmarks Retention 161

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 3, 2023

Snowflake reported this week with interesting results. 3 months ago they guided to 47% growth for 2023. The chart below shows Datadog's quarterly YoY growth. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Bucketed by Growth. Mid Growth Median: 6.1x

Cloud 141

Cloud Forecasting Subscription Payment Features 141

User Pilot

JULY 24, 2023

The article explores the best Zendesk integrations for: Customer support Customer feedback Productivity Email and social media communication Analytics and reporting Let's get right to it! As of 21 July 2023, there are 1,503 integrations in the Zendesk marketplace. If so, you’re in the right place! How many apps does Zendesk have?

Marketplace as a Service 90

Marketplace as a Service AI Search Social Media Customer Support 90

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

Summers","date":"Sun Feb 12 21:48:44 +0000 2023","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":26,"like_count":158,"expanded_url":{"url":"[link] Sees ‘Turbulent’ Time","description":"Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure Revenue Subscription 130

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 12, 2024

There are certainly some deals that happened in 2023 that haven’t announced yet (there’s always a lag), so I’d expect the 2023 bar to be slightly higher once everything has announced. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 284

Cloud Venture Capital Acquisition Metrics 284

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

This week Walmart and Home Depot reported earnings (I know, not the usual cloud software suspects!). They guided this year below expectations at ~3% YoY growth. As I noted above, so far companies are telling us 2023 estimates are ok. BUT - if we do fall into a deeper recession growth + multiples will definitely fall.

Cloud 130

Cloud Subscription Payment Features Revenue 130

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 20, 2023

The 63 companies that I’ll discuss here (which is not an exhaustive list, but is still comprehensive) all reported quarterly earnings sometime between April 2th – June 8th. My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g.,

Cloud 161

Cloud Software Benchmarks Scale 161

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 24, 2023

The end result was the expected result prior to the banking crisis - a 25bps hike 2023 Full Year Guides We’re nearly through Q4 ‘22 earnings season. The chart below shows 2023 guides vs 2023 consensus estimates to star the year. The chart below shows 2023 guides vs 2023 consensus estimates to star the year.

Cloud 130

Cloud Banking Subscription Payment Features 130