SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2021

I thought updating that list would create a useful checklist for things not to do in SaaS in the early days … since they are all avoidable. – My Top 10 Mistakes Starting An (Ultimately Successful) SaaS Company. – My Top 10 Mistakes Starting An (Ultimately Successful) SaaS Company. – Launching Too Early.

Sales Recruiting 279

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 279

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

And SMBs are back in SaaS. An incredible journey from a fairly simple product at founding in 2006. They want a slick site that does more, from eCommerce to payments to marketing and more. Especially post-Covid. And a $15B+ market cap!! 5 Interesting Learnings: 1. Existing $1B in Customer ARR is Worth $9.2B Over Next 8 Years.

Payment Methods 312

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments SMB 312

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

One of the things that causes a lot of anxiety in SaaS is market size. SaaS is more confusing. The challenge is that, because SaaS compounds, but starts slow , you’re going to get a lot of confusing data early on. When stories of their ROI with your SaaS product spread. Happy customers, but just not enough of them?

Scale 340

Scale Marketing Acquisition Scaling 340

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2022

But I’ve learned a lot since then, especially in SaaS. 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. And even harder to think about Going Long.

Sales Hiring 362

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Startup 362

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

The summary statistics of the business reveal a company with a fairly high contract value of $98,600 and the largest customers generating 72% of revenue, putting the business squarely in the enterprise segment of SaaS companies. Amplitude has demonstrated improving efficiency characteristics across three key areas.

Metrics 295

Metrics Benchmarks PayPal Enterprise 295

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2020

In the end, this is why 70% of leading SaaS companies are really just new entrants in old, large markets: On the other hand, most startups don’t enter a very crowded part of a market, or they redefine a market. Or they see a space that is small today getting a lot bigger as it gets SaaS-ified or Cloud-ified.

Scale 317

Scale Cloud Enterprise Startup 317

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

Talk to any experienced SaaS sales leader in a competitive space. But still, that takes time in SaaS. 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.

Scale 246

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 246

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2024

A lot of you reading SaaStr are probably more B2B SaaS oriented and may not be paying attention to the consumer market, but it’s already massive and is continuing to grow quickly. So, let’s look at the state of subscription apps and how B2B SaaS can learn from it. In B2B, the classic metric for this is 2% now and was 2% in 2006.

Payment Features 306

Payment Features Subscription B2B Mobile 306

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.), This is the one thing you can really bank on in SaaS and with recurring revenue. SaaS: Maybe Plan for 30+ Years as a Founder. My mistake. Forever Customers build Forever Companies.

Scale 353

Scale Churn Construction SMB 353

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2023

This is the reason 70%+ of SaaS companies that IPO are just new version of old, successful things: About 70% of SaaS Unicorns Are New Versions of Existing Categories of Software | SaaStr But … but … Small markets can grow into large markets if you change the market or there is otherwise disruption in the market.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Marketing Sales Hiring Market Segmentation 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2019

Talk to any experienced SaaS sales leader in a competitive space. But still, that takes time in SaaS. 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.

Scale 216

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 216

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 16, 2012

If you're building a modern SaaS solution for the Fortune 5,000,000 , the importance of your marketing website cannot be overstated. Compare that with the website of a modern SaaS solution like Zendesk and I'm sure you'll understand what I mean. Example: This is how Basecamp looked like in 2006 , and this is how it looks like today.

SaaS 164

SaaS Marketing Startup Transportation 164

SaaStock

MARCH 1, 2019

As we first looked at bringing our leading SaaS conference to Asia and considered what help we could offer, we thought about localization and know-how about legal and cultural differences as some of the critical success factors. SaaS Investments: Goodera, and others. SaaS Investments: Ezetap, and others. Founded: 2001.

SaaS Payments 190

SaaS Payments Venture Capital Payment Services Telecommunications 190

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.

Business 145

Business SaaS Marketing 145

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2014

Last week, we proved SaaS startups are raising more than they have in the past and newer SaaS companies seem to be generating more revenue per dollar invested. But do newer SaaS companies actually spend less on sales and engineering than their older counterparts? IPO Cohort Minimum Sales Spend % Rev Minimum Eng Spend % Rev.

Engineering 100

Engineering Investment Sales SaaS 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2014

One of the best ways I’ve found to understand SaaS companies is to pore through their public filings. HubSpot’s revenue trajectory is effectively identical to the median publicly traded SaaS company. HUBS 2006 8 113*. WIX 2006 7 81. A few months ago, I analyzed Box’s S-1. RNG 1999 14 162. CTCT 2007 9 31.

Benchmarks 114

Benchmarks SMB Metrics SaaS 114

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 2, 2014

As the number of publicly traded SaaS companies has grown with time, it’s possible today to examine whether those statements are proven in the data, at least for those 41 publicly traded companies. I’ve gathered the financing histories of the 41 publicly traded SaaS companies and adjusted them for inflation. 2006 66 4.0

Finance 100

Finance Trends SaaS Cloud 100

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 140

Startup Revenue Marketing SaaS 140

Tom Tunguz

JULY 29, 2015

Founded in 1998, Netsuite is worth about $7.7B, making it the sixth largest SaaS compay behind Salesforce, LinkedIn, Workday, ServiceNow and Splunk. In 2006, according to the company’s S-1, the business shifted from longer term contracts to one year contracts. Netsuite’s sales efficiency is below the SaaS median of 0.6

Benchmarks 113

Benchmarks Outsourced Development Metrics Scale 113

Tom Tunguz

MAY 27, 2015

Of the 43 SaaS companies to have gone public in the time period between 2006 and 2014, 60% are trading above their IPO pop price – the price at the end of their first day of trading. The median company has appreciated 69% since its IPO. The chart above shows the trends for each of the companies in this data set.

Marketing 100

Marketing SaaS Pricing Trends 100

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 10, 2014

SaaS companies are the darlings of the public market. The average publicly traded SaaS company enjoys twice as strong a revenue multiple as ten years ago. SaaS companies’ time to IPO has been decreasing steadily from over 10 years since founding to under 7. Quite an exciting time to be a SaaS entrepreneur!

Startup 100

Startup SaaS Finance Trends 100

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. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 176

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) AWS Azure 176

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 3, 2014

Last week, we analyzed the fund raising history of billion dollar SaaS companies and determined SaaS startups are raising nearly twice as much capital as 16 years ago before going public. But afterwards, in both the 2006 and 2010 buckets, the median exceeded 1.15, indicating a remarkable increase in capital efficiency.

Startup 100

Startup Trends Investment Cloud 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

Founded in 2006, Mulesoft is an 850 person company based in San Francisco that builds data integration tools. The company started originally as an open-source product and then focused on its paid offering. Today, the business generates nearly $200 million annually in revenue, and is growing at 70%.

Metrics 100

Metrics Benchmarks Scale Finance 100

Clouded Judgement

JULY 26, 2024

I asked ChatGPT how many price changes AWS has made to S3 since it’s inception in 2006, and the answer it gave me was 65. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Staggering! Real competition in the open source will make AI more affordable for all Synthetic data.

Cloud 144

Cloud Technical Review Artificial Intelligence Software Review 144

User Pilot

JULY 23, 2024

In this article, we examine some tools that can help your SaaS team to drive product growth. Examples are: Marketo Founded in 2006, Marketo is arguably the most popular marketing automation software. Thanks to the abundance of tools out there, marketing has never been easier. Still, you may be unsure where to begin.

Technical Review 105

Technical Review Social Media Software Review AI Search 105

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Since 2006 the era of “Everything as a service” has advanced quickly. ” At Intercom, we build a SaaS solution for our customers, but we don’t consider ourselves a software company. This work is necessary and important but it doesn’t help you win against the competition. Cloud computing is dominant. We are a product company.

Outsourcing Services 224

Outsourcing Services Software Review Software Outsourced Development 224

Cobloom

FEBRUARY 1, 2023

Inbound marketing is a great way to grow an SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) company. It's how I originally grew my file storage service, File Den , to 3 million registered total users and thousands of paying customers way back in 2006. But how do the best SaaS companies use inbound marketing to grow -- today?

Marketing 52

Marketing SaaS Software 52

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2025

For SMB SaaS, aim for 6 quarters of LTV:CAC, not 4 Ren adjusted the traditional benchmark because SMB customers stay longer than typically measured. Founded in 2006, Bill.com has grown to: $1.4 This network effect concept was baked into the company’s database design and workflow from day one. From Zero to $1.4

SMB 130

SMB Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments 130

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

In this session, hear from three women who founded, funded and are leading WebPT, one of the nation’s fastest-growing SaaS companies in the specialty electronic medical record sector. Learn what it takes to create your own category, achieve scale in a niche SaaS vertical and how it requires more than just discovering an unmet need.

Scale 185

Scale SMB VP of Engineering Leadership 185

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

OpenView Labs

JULY 21, 2021

In the book are 111 plays for building a hyper-growth SaaS startup from the SaaS founder who started it all. The chances are high that SaaS companies that have reached Salesforce’s scale follow the same pattern (regardless of whether they’re following Benioff’s advice). Today the book is as relevant as ever.

Business 101

Business Artificial Intelligence Blockchain Software Engineering 101

Frontegg

APRIL 29, 2021

Before you even get started with picking the right authentication for SaaS applications, you should consider implementing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), which has become a common requirement with the steep rise in cybercrime caused by accelerated digitalization across multiple sectors. SSO for SaaS Apps – Read More.

Software Review 98

Software Review Technical Review Systems Review Azure 98

Chargify

AUGUST 17, 2020

The latter, of course, was pioneered by Amazon, which launched the billing model based on user events in 2006. When AWS first entered the cloud services business over a decade ago, the SaaS market was known for subscription-based business. How AWS Does It.

AWS 98

AWS Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 98

How To Buy Saas

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

This Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach revolutionized the industry, making powerful CRM tools accessible without on-premise installs. HubSpot: The Inbound Marketing Innovator HubSpot entered the scene later, founded in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at MIT. Founded 2006; Inventor of inbound marketing methodology.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Software Review 52

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

“Industry-Centric” SaaS business models offer an alternative SaaS company categorization to the “Customer-Centric” SaaS model, which is defined based on the “go-to-market” strategy used by a management team. Both the Customer-Centric and Industry-Centric classifications provide valuable frameworks for evaluating SaaS companies.

Business Model 52

Business Model Business SaaS Scale 52

SaaSHolic

FEBRUARY 23, 2022

If you’re looking for the top SaaS blogs and influencers you’ve come to the right place. We’ve decided to put together a killer list, categorized and organized to help you find and consume world-class SaaS and subscription content from the best people and companies in the market. He tweets at lot and also writes at Intercom’s blog.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital SaaS Social Media Entrepreneurship 52