SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2023

So 2023 wasn’t a rough year for everyone. Shopify, Canva, Monday and tons of other SaaS leaders less focused on tech and startups had big years. And broader Cloud players had great years too, from MongoDB to Cloudflare to Azure, if not quite as crazy as at the peak of 2021. But overall, overall … well SaaS and Cloud growth hit record lows per the BVP Cloud Index: As you can see, even though 2022 was a tough year in the public markets and for valuations, revenue growth still held up

Azure 291

Azure Cloud SaaS Trends 291

The Daily Egg

DECEMBER 5, 2023

If you are a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) user, you may experience some occasional glitches and choppy sounds. These can be. The post How To Know If SIP ALG is the Problem, and Steps to Disable It appeared first on The Daily Egg.

300

300

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2023

The typical software startup raised their Series A 15 months after raising their seed at 2x their seed valuation. A year ago, that Series A would have been raised three months earlier at 3.5x the valuation. Here’s another way of visualizing the data. The red dot is 2023 - the other years are in grey. Across rounds for the 50th & 75th percentile of companies, step-up valuations are the lowest multiples in about ten years.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Startup Investment Software 308

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 6, 2023

Smart energy grids. Voice-first companion apps. Programmable medicines. AI tools for kids.
We asked over 40 partners across a16z to preview one big idea they believe will drive innovation in the coming year.

AI 145

AI Innovation Healthcare Enterprise 145

Advertisement

Discover how top SaaS companies are earning up to $700k + and zero upfront cost with Usio Integrated Payments.

Payments

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Numbers don’t lie, but sometimes the stories we tell around them do. Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital and 25-year C-level veteran, shares the top 14 signs that you have a SaaS metrics problem, the five reasons those symptoms exist, and a SaaS metrics maturity model with five layers to help you move the needle at every stage. First, let’s deep dive into the 15 ways that people misuse and abuse SaaS metrics.

Metrics 287

Metrics Sales Hiring Benchmarks SaaS 287

Stax

DECEMBER 20, 2023

When you research payment solution providers , you’ll start hearing the term “interchange” used when talking about payments. Interchange is the fee that credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard charge businesses to accept their cards. The interchange fee depends on a number of factors and isn’t always easy to understand. In this article, we will break down credit card interchange fees so you will know exactly how much you’re spending when running your business.

Payment Services 167

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 167

The Daily Egg

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Efficient customer support can set your business apart from the competition, and in today’s tight market, you need every advantage you can. The post Helpshift Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Customer Support 278

Customer Support Marketing Business 278

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 5, 2023

Mongo announcing earnings yesterday concludes this quarter’s index of software buyers. As the chart above shows, the software market is plateauing & some companies are rebounding. Why is a flat growth rate something to cheer? First, 30% growth is now top quartile. Second, each of these businesses has scaled, doubling or more in the last three years.

Cloud 290

Cloud Software Scaling Revenue 290

FastSpring

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Looking to be truly hands-on with the technology and tools needed to boost your career in the music industry? If so, join FastSpring at NAMM 2024 on Jan. 25–28, at the Anaheim Convention Center at booth 8200! We’d love to talk with you in person! The NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Foundation celebrates and promotes the intrinsic value of music education.

Merchant Services 153

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS Payments 153

Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science

Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.

Innovation

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

If I had to summarize venture capital today, it would be like this: There is Very Little Oxygen Today Above $200m Valuations What do I mean? It’s still a weird world in venture: Firms are both shutting down and raising new funds. More entrepreneurs are doing direct investing themselves than ever. Unicorns are hurting, but — Nasdaq is at an all-time high.

Venture Capital 304

Venture Capital AI Investment SaaS 304

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 29, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! 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)! Only 20 traded down on the year, and the median year-to-date performance of the basket of companies was +40!

Cloud 189

Cloud Software Review Subscription Payment Features 189

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Originally discovered in bacteria, CRISPR quickly became the workhorse gene-editing system underlying the next generation of programmable medicines. Today’s landmark approval by the US Food and Drug Administration of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ and CRISPR Therapeutics’ Casgevy, the world’s first CRISPR-based treatment, marks a groundbreaking shift in how we tackle intractable diseases.

Compensation 143

Compensation Innovation Engineering Technology 143

The Daily Egg

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Fast, friendly, and effective customer support is the backbone of any successful ecommerce or SaaS business. With so many customer service tools. The post Desku Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Customer Support 277

Customer Support SaaS Business 277

Advertisement

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

Revenue

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 10, 2023

The future of LLM evaluations resembles software testing more than benchmarks. Real-world testing looks like this , asking LLMs to produce Dad jokes like this zinger : I’m reading a book about gravity & it’s impossible to put down. Machine learning benchmarks like those published by Google for Gemini2 last week , or precision and recall for classifying dog & cat photos, or the BLEU score for measuring machine translation provide a high-level comparison of relative model perfo

Artificial Intelligence 275

Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Benchmarks Software 275

FastSpring

DECEMBER 19, 2023

If you’re selling video games direct-to-consumer (DTC), there’s a good chance you may be taking advantage of a “merchant of record” payment platform like Xsolla and others. Merchants of Record are a great choice for video game companies because they allow you to offload the complexity of payments, fraud, global taxes, and more so you can spend your team’s time on making great games.

Payment Services 148

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payments 148

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2023

“My App Stack” is a new series where we dig in with top CMOs, CROs, CTOs and CEOs on just what apps they’re really using to run their business. I always learn a lot from these — they are in essence a best practices list from each leader. Last week we had a great one with Jack Moberger, Director of Enablement at Algolia, check it out here. This week we have Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist at Gong!

Leadership 298

Leadership B2B Branding Revenue 298

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 15, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Macro Update the 10Y rate dropped to 3.9% this week. That’s the lowest it’s been since the summer, and down nearly 25% from where it was just two months ago. That’s a huge move in rates in such a short window.

Cloud 183

Cloud Subscription Payment Features Metrics 183

Advertisement

If you're in the software industry grappling with integrating payments into your business model, understanding where others have stumbled can be a game-changer for your revenue goals. Discover 6 key reasons behind the struggles many face. The challenge goes beyond the technicalities of integrating a payment system; it delves into the strategic oversight of revenue shares, negotiations with payment providers, and the full exploitation of potential revenue streams.

Payments

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 13, 2023

We’re excited to announce the second batch of a16z Open Source AI Grant recipients. This program is designed to support a thriving open source ecosystem around modern AI. We provide grant funding (not an investment) to developers and small teams who are building critical pieces of the open source AI stack. More information about the program and a list of prior recipients are available here.

AI 131

AI Investment Development Data 131

The Daily Egg

DECEMBER 6, 2023

Ports are the usual suspects and scapegoats when something doesn’t work right in any internet connection, whether it’s a multiplayer video game. The post If Port 5060 Is For Unencrypted Traffic, Why Is It Used? appeared first on The Daily Egg.

277

277

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 17, 2023

Data teams are becoming software engineering teams. On December 14th we welcomed Philip Zelitchenko , VP of Data from ZoomInfo, to talk about how he has built this discipline within his team & it was fascinating. The video is here. Like the Devops movement, the Dataops movement aims to scale the use of data within companies without increasing the headcount of the data team.

Data 240

Data Government Scale Headcount 240

FastSpring

DECEMBER 20, 2023

As mobile game and app developers gasp for air under a player-gouging 30% duopoly-tax on nearly all mobile game revenue worldwide, Epic Games has emerged as the de facto leader of the gaming community in the fight for open computing on mobile. That said, Epic’s $5B+ in annual revenue, blockbuster titles, and extensive games marketplace makes them an unlikely “little guy” in this fight, as Epic’s needs don’t always represent the needs of most game companies.

Payment Methods 136

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments Merchant Services 136

Advertisement

Need help launching innovative software quickly? Dive into "People, Passion, and Perfection" and unlock the secrets to building excellent products in the digital age. Fast-track your journey with Tech Accelerator: Agile and Cloud-Native for flexibility & scalability AI-powered innovation for faster results Quality at every step for a flawless user experience See real impact across industries: Healthcare: Empower patients and medical professionals with intuitive solutions Education: Transform cla

User Experience

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

So if you are outside of fintech and banking, you may not have heard of nCino. But if you’re in the space, it’s a big player. They’re at almost $500m in ARR, with 1,850 customers, now growing a modest but steady 19% and they have gotten pretty efficient, like most other public SaaS and Cloud leaders. Non-GAAP operating margins are now +17%.

Scale 295

Scale Banking Acquisition Cloud 295

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 22, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Revisiting the “Is Software Expensive” Question The current median revenue multiple for the software universe is 6.4x, which is ~17% below the long term average multiple of 7.8x. However, when looking at growth adjusted multiples, the current median is 0.48x, which is ~75% above the long term average of 0.28x (you can see this chart later on in this p

Cloud 177

Cloud Subscription Payment Features Metrics 177

BlueSnap

DECEMBER 21, 2023

For many businesses, 2023 has been about making the most of the time, resources and money at hand. Our most read content within our Resource Center says a lot about what businesses are thinking about payments today and their impact on the bottom line. The post The Best of BlueSnap: The Top 10 Payment Content Pieces of 2023 appeared first on BlueSnap.

Business 126

Business 126

The Daily Egg

DECEMBER 9, 2023

So you’ve just installed your VoIP phone system, but now you’re facing issues. Maybe your calls are dropping or the audio is. The post When to Use a SIP ALG Detector Test and What To Do Next appeared first on The Daily Egg.

274

274

As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.

Pricing

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 2023

Every year I make a list of predictions & score last year’s predictions. Here are my predictions for 2024. The IPO market remains closed through the first 6 months of the year. But a few mega issuances, especially Stripe & Databricks in the summer or fall, re-open it for others. The Fed cuts rates, which helps. M&A accelerates throughout the year.

AI Search 238

AI Search AI Scale Headcount 238

FastSpring

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Ready to jump start the new year learning about the latest and greatest in the global games industry? If so, join FastSpring at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2024 on Jan. 22-23! We’d love to talk with you in person! Pocket Gamer Connects is the leading international conference series for the global games industry. It brings together delegates from across the entire ecosystem with all the key formats covered, from mobile, PC and console to XR, AI, and blockchain technology.

Merchant Services 130

Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payment Services 130

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2023

So there were barely any SaaS IPOs in 2022 or 2023. The last big SaaS IPO of the Boom Era was Hashicorp in December 2021, and after that, multiples fell off a cliff. There were basically no significant SaaS IPOs for almost 2 years, until Klaviyo (+ Instacast + ARM) all tried to reopen the market in September 2023. After that, crickets again and no IPOs for the rest of the year.

SaaS 286

SaaS Software Marketing Management 286