Tom Tunguz

MARCH 11, 2020

In 2006, VCs invested about $3.5B The most recent event to use as an analogy is the 2008 financial crisis. In 2008, I had just joined the venture industry, and then Lehman fell. So this was a bit of a trip down memory lane. Let’s look at the data. per quarter in seed, A, B, and C rounds. in the quarters following the crash.

Marketing 359

Marketing Startup Investment Trends 359

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2023

Steady, Strong Growth — Since 2006 Appfolio was founded way back in 2006, and they never quit. AppFolio is what the markets want in a software+ company, at least in 2023. Let’s dig in. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. 10 years later, they hit $100m ARR in 2016 and growth just compounded from there.

Payment Services 281

Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payments 281

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

Founded way back in 2006, adoption was slow as first, but they kept at it and Smartsheet is now growing faster than ever 15+ years later. It’s an interesting one, with a very broad base of SMBs and a slow-and-steady path to going upmarket. They are now growing a stunning 42% year-over-year at over $400,000,000 in ARR!!

Payment Features 330

Payment Features Enterprise Business Scaling 330

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2020

SaaS eSignature Market: From $1 Million in 2006 to $1 Billion in 2018. I don’t know if you’ve built a strong enough team yet to really execute here. But I do know that if you hit $10m ARR with 100%+ net revenue retention, and happy customers … well, it can be you, too.

Retention 319

Retention Cloud Churn Pricing 319

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2022

When we started EchoSign / Adobe Sign in 2005/2006, the web-based e-signature market was $1m in market size. SaaS eSignature Market: From $1 Million in 2006 to $1 Billion in 2018 to $5 Billion in 2023. Add 10-100x more value to a market than existing before, and the market size can grow 10-1000x, too. THat’s 2000x growth.

Sales Hiring 362

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Startup 362

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

An incredible journey from a fairly simple product at founding in 2006. Wix has benefitted from those trends, not just crossing $1B in ARR, but growing a very impressive 29% year-over-year at $1B in ARR! And a $15B+ market cap!! 5 Interesting Learnings: 1. Existing $1B in Customer ARR is Worth $9.2B Over Next 8 Years.

Payment Methods 304

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments SMB 304

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2022

A classic example from 2006 : [link]. This is a subtle point, but because the best entrepreneurs know (1) it will work, (2) they can recruit the team, (3) they won’t quit and (4) they’ll get the capital they need, at least barely enough … they then (5) know it’s not that risky. This crazy idea and venture isn’t that risky.

Marketing 271

Marketing 271

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Congratulations to the entire Amplitude team on having built an impressive business and importantly the first publicly traded analytics company since Omniture debuted in 2006. Following the model of Asana, Slack, Spotify and others, Amplitude will conduct a direct listing on the day of their IPO.

Metrics 294

Metrics Benchmarks PayPal Enterprise 294

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

SaaS eSignature Market: From $1 Million in 2006 to $1 Billion in 2018 to $5 Billion in 2023. Really, because of that, because no one has ever really heard of you in the grand scheme of potential customers — I highly doubt at this point you have even tapped 1% of your practical, addressable market. .

Scale 338

Scale Marketing Acquisition Scaling 338

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

Some are laughably dated, but some are still as relevant today as ever: 2006: Fax integration. We launched in the first AppExchange class in late 2006 with the first true, deep Salesforce integration. Actually, looking back I see I made a video of our 10x Features in order. Many companies still wanted fax at this point.

Scale 246

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2020

A bit more of a deep dive here: SaaS eSignature Market: From $1 Million in 2006 to $1 Billion in 2018 to $5 Billion in 2023. But these can often be enough in the Seed and Series A days to convince investors to go on the unicorn journey with you. Even if your TAM isn’t quite huge today. I’ve lived this myself.

Scale 313

Scale Cloud Enterprise Startup 313

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2019

Some are laughably dated, but some are still as relevant today as ever: 2006: Fax integration. We launched in the first AppExchange class in late 2006 with the first true, deep Salesforce integration. Actually, looking back I see I made a video of our 10x Features in order. Many companies still wanted fax at this point.

Scale 219

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 219

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2019

We launched on January 1, 2006 on TechCrunch , and while we closed some good names that first year (Dell, BT, Qualcomm, GE, Comcast, etc.), At EchoSign, now Adobe Sign, there’s a large group of well-known customers that I closed, Back in The Day … that now have been customers for 10 years.

Scale 352

Scale Churn Construction SMB 352

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2023

SaaS eSignature Market: From $1 Million in 2006 to $1 Billion in 2018 to $5 Billion in 2023 | SaaStr Dear SaaStr: I’ve Been Asked to Take Over as CEO of a 1 Year Old Startup with 20 Employees. A small segment of a large market is often where most of us star t. What Should I Expect?

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Marketing Sales Hiring Market Segmentation 246

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 15, 2017

Written in 2006, the book summarizes Kofman’s experiences as a management consultant to some of the great leaders in technology and other industries. I’ve been reading Fred Kofman’s book, Conscious Business.

Management 189

Management Consulting Communication Technology 189

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2022

Atlassian customers started building many plugins for different use cases in 2006, so the company built a website for customers to share and exchange their plugins for free. Having solution partners on your side translates into more resources to solve customer pain points. This meant so many new features to use for every Atlassian customer.

Scale 260

Scale Scaling Marketplace as a Service Entrepreneurship 260

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2021

SaaS eSignature Market: From $1 Million in 2006 to $1 Billion in 2018 to $5 Billion in 2023. Instead of just focusing on hitting the number for this year, and working on the next — a full time job already — I should have found a way to also focus on hitting the numbers for 4 and 10 years out. But it’s not. My 10, FWIW.

Sales Recruiting 271

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 271

SaaStr

AUGUST 3, 2019

That was back in 2006 in SaaS! Going from no product to $200k in ARR in SaaS in 2006 was pretty awesome, actually. To tell me $2m ARR in Year 1 wasn’t just ambitious, but borderline insane for a new product in a new market in a new category in 2006 in SaaS. And for real. I was 100% sure we’d hit it. We probably hit $0.2m

Business 139

Business SaaS Marketing 139

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2024

In B2B, the classic metric for this is 2% now and was 2% in 2006. That’s up from 60% in 2023. While free trial offerings have increased, conversion to paid remains fairly low at 1.7%. A lot of folks try to go down or upmarket by bolting on a PLG offering or bolting on a higher-value add because 5% churn can be brutal.

Payment Features 297

Payment Features Subscription B2B Mobile 297

Hitenism

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

In 2006, after Amazon Web Services (AWS) helped pioneer what we now call the cloud, product development changed forever. What once took millions of dollars and a team of engineers to create, a lone developer could suddenly hack together in half an hour. Today, one-third of daily internet users visit websites built on top of AWS.

AWS 189

AWS New CTO Scale CTO 189

IT World

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

Then in 2006 Google came along with Google Docs & Spreadsheets , a collaborative online word processing and spreadsheet duo that was combined with other business services to form the Google Apps suite, later rebranded as G Suite, and now as Google Workspace.

Business 143

Business 143

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2019

More here: SaaS eSignature Market: From $1 Million in 2006 to $1 Billion in 2018 | SaaStr. But in the end, I didn’t ride the rest of the wave that would have also carried us to 20x growth by 2019. We couldn’t quite see it at the time. Now I know.

Startup 133

Startup Revenue Marketing SaaS 133

Neil Patel

JANUARY 27, 2021

The term “inbound marketing” was coined by HubSpot in 2006. That original HubSpot inbound playbook was introduced in 2006. You can’t keep doing the same things that worked in 2006, or we’d all be keyword stuffing our blog posts to rank #1. Inbound marketing has changed quite a bit since HubSpot first introduced it in 2006.

Trends 144

Trends Marketing Social Media Systems Review 144

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2014

Looking at the gross dollars invested in engineering, the 2014 cohort spends much more than the 2010, 2006 and 2002 cohorts, setting aside one outlier year in the 2006 cohort. But in the 2006 cohort, DealerTrack spent only 4% on engineering investment, besting the 2014 engineering winner, Fleetmatics. 1998 34 11.

Engineering 100

Engineering Investment Sales SaaS 100

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 7, 2014

Above, I’ve plotted the mean and median investment amounts for Series As, Bs, and Cs from 2006 to through September of 2014 in the US, as reported by Crunchbase data. In fact, the median Series A in 2006 equals the median in 2014: $5M. The data reveals three trends. Second, Series C sizes have ballooned.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Startup Marketing Trends 100

Nimble - Sales

MARCH 25, 2019

For example, Facebook marked the beginning of a new era in digital marketing when they went public in 2006. Many technologies and trends have disrupted the digital world in the past. Today, almost every brand (local or global) uses this and several other social media platforms for marketing. The digital landscape will witness a few […].

Trends 105

Trends Social Media Marketing Technology 105

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 16, 2012

Example: This is how Basecamp looked like in 2006 , and this is how it looks like today. Interestingly, if you look at the evolution of popular SaaS sites you'll often notice that they got simpler and simpler over time. I've mentioned secondary conversion options above.

SaaS 164

SaaS Transportation Startup Marketing 164

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 27, 2024

Subscribe now Foundation Models Are to AI what S3 was to the Public Cloud Many people look at 2006 as the birth of the public cloud - the year Amazon launched AWS. Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 179

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) AWS Azure 179

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 26, 2022

. “The magic of Intercom’s technology is that it makes the internet feel human, which is a compelling value proposition at this stage of the digital evolution” She joined Google in 2006 and for 10 years was in a variety of business leadership roles including Vice President of Global Sales and Vice President and Managing Director for (..)

Healthcare 118

Healthcare Leadership AI Cloud 118

Payrix

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

Truncation When only some digits of a customers card number appear on a sales draft or receipt to provide better security while still enabling identification (for the cardholder) of the card used; its required by federal law (since 2006) that no more than the last five digits of a card may be shown on a receipt.

Payment Services 147

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payment Methods 147

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 2, 2014

The first row contains data from IPOs between 1998-2002, the second bucket contains data from IPOs between 2002-2006 and so on. 2006 66 4.0 These figures are inflation adjusted and are in 2014 dollars. IPO Cohort Median VC$ Raised Median # of Rounds Median Round Size $M Median IPO Size Number. 1998 42 2.5 2002 71 3.0 2010 101 4.5

Finance 100

Finance Trends SaaS Cloud 100

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 3, 2014

But afterwards, in both the 2006 and 2010 buckets, the median exceeded 1.15, indicating a remarkable increase in capital efficiency. The line chart above shows the trend across the four different IPO cohorts from 1998-2014. The blue line shows the median ROIC and the red line shows the average ROIC. over the course of the same 16 years.

Startup 100

Startup Trends Investment Cloud 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2014

HUBS 2006 8 113*. WIX 2006 7 81. I’ve plotted a subset of them in the chart above. Company Founded Years to IPO Rev in $M at IPO. RNG 1999 14 162. QLYS 1999 13 91. DATA 2003 10 232. FLTX 2004 10 128. CTCT 2007 9 31. estimated from the first six months of the S-1.

Benchmarks 113

Benchmarks SMB Metrics SaaS 113

IT World

MAY 18, 2023

In January 2006, Apple took an important step toward success in the business world — it began to transition the Mac onto Intel processors. In so doing, the company paved the way for Macs to natively run Windows and Windows applications.

Business 89

Business Software 89

Sales Hacker

MAY 30, 2025

He also founded Kieden, a search marketing company, that got acquired by Salesforce in 2006. Previously, he was the founder of GetFeedback, which was acquired by Campaign Monitor in 2015. Listen on Apple , Spotify , YouTube , or wherever you get your podcasts by searching The GTM Podcast.

Scale 104

Scale AI Search Technical Review Systems Review 104

Tom Tunguz

JULY 29, 2015

In 2006, according to the company’s S-1, the business shifted from longer term contracts to one year contracts. As the company disclosed in their last annual report , Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, owns 47.4% of Netsuite common stock, implying the company is strategically important to Oracle.

Benchmarks 113

Benchmarks Outsourced Development Metrics Scale 113

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 25, 2010

million used books, CDs, DVDs and games from private sellers since 2006, has been equally impressive. Thanks and merci to you, Jack and Rian , and your growing team of hand-picked rock-star developers and industry experts. The development of Momox , which has bought more than 8.4

Cloud 106

Cloud Investment B2B Subscription 106