SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2022

Still, they are committing to 20% operating margins that the public markets expect from SaaS and Cloud companies at scale. #8. 14 years ago, in 2008, at the onset of the last global recession, Google pulled their full-time offers for all their summer interns, which included my co-founder at Cloudflare, Michelle Zatlyn.

Scale 269

Scale Cloud Revenue Scaling 269

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2023

Billion way back in 2008. So Domo is an interesting case study on SaaS entrepreneurship. Founder Josh James had one of the earliest $1B+ exits in SaaS when Adobe bought his first start-up, Omniture, for $1.8 Omniture is still big and it dominated web analytics especially for bigger companies in the earlier days of the internet.

Entrepreneurship 247

Entrepreneurship Enterprise Pricing Churn 247

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

But to me the takeaways are: If you have something good at $10m ARR, you can scale forever, at least potentially. Several of the slower-growing ones did well, too — as long as they hit scale ($20m-$40m+ ARR). _. Top-tier revenue retention for SMBs and relatively high pricing for SMBs scales nicely. A decade later.

SaaS 272

SaaS Technical Review Scaling Software Review 272

Casey Accidental

DECEMBER 5, 2023

The App Store launched in 2008, and even though there was fervor around discovering apps on the App Store for a while with the “there’s an app for that” campaigns, that fervor died as did most of the apps featured. Word of mouth can’t scale technological shifts alone. So, as an operator, this feels like 1997 or 2008.

AI Search 65

AI Search AI Scale ChatGPT 65

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

So a playbook on scaling high performance organizations in 30 bit minutes. So the time that I was at Google was 2007, so pre the 2008 recession. So big, big scale. The post The Playbook to Scaling High-Performance Teams with Gusto COO Lexi Reese (Video + Transcript) appeared first on SaaStr. Lexi Reese | COO @ Gusto.

Scale 180

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Scaling Leadership 180

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 1, 2019

The era after 2006 and through the 2008 financial crisis was a different time to raise capital. It’s partly due to more competitive market dynamics, partly due to an ability to raise larger amounts of capital, and partly due to the desire to go public at greater revenue scale. But the efficiency is declining, markedly.

Startup 267

Startup Software Review SaaS Acquisition 267

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2019

” She also joined SaaStr’s podcast where she discussed growing Intercom from 350 to 600 people and here was her advice on two common scaling mistakes: “The first mistake is taking your eyes off the customer. His session focused on scaling an open culture. Leaders who do so will lose their product market fit.

Scale 164

Scale Leadership Consulting Metrics 164

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

But for a while, as you are scaling, you can beat the competition in at least specific deals in specific segments with a 10x Feature. 2008: Cross-platform. But it means many of the core features at least are enough built out in the core competitor group that there aren’t as many obvious 10x features.

Scale 214

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 214

Casey Accidental

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

Most companies have a primary acquisition loop that drives this scalable growth, and unfortunately, there aren’t that many acquisition loops that really scale. Even when they scale, they eventually asymptote, and companies need to find new ways to grow. This can be new growth loops for the same product, or entirely new products.

Payments 62

Payments Scale Payment Methods Underperforming Technical Team 62

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 13, 2018

YCombinator has thrived and scaled. The fundraising pitches of 2008 highlighted leading indicators of success: the product, the vision, the team. I was attending my first YCombinator Demo Day, maybe three months into my time at Redpoint. Much has changed. I’m am not as young or as green. And the startup demo has disappeared.

Scale 167

Scale Innovation Mobile Metrics 167

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2021

Whether it was our interview with Podium’s Eric Rea on how he scaled with a team outside the Bay Area before it was really considered an option, or TripAction’s Megan Eisenberg on how to prioritize trade-offs in marketing without sacrificing pipeline, we’ve covered the gambit of relevant topics throughout the year. .

Scale 252

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling B2B 252

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. David Sacks: SaaS Background and Investments. David’s first foray into SaaS was in 1999 when he joined a startup that would become PayPal, starting as the product leader and later as the COO. Microsoft acquired Yammer for $1.2

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 252

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2019

How does a startup that launched during the financial crisis in 2008 become a unicorn company in 2019? So we started in 2008 June, 2008 I think and in three days we would celebrate our 11th birthday. It’s interesting to see how much has changed over the last 10 years, but in 2008 it was a very different time I think.

Sales Hiring 177

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Government 177

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2020

Started Twilio in January 2008, just as the last downturn happened. He joined StubHub as CTO, but didn’t get nearly as much equity as the other CTO — because he “wasn’t committed enough.” ” A good reminder to us all. For months, they couldn’t raise any money at all.

CTO Hire 346

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Airlines 346

The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 26, 2014

The first date When I stumbled on Zendesk in 2008 I knew absolutely nothing about enterprise software, B2B or SaaS. Today the “consumerization of the enterprise” has become mainstream, but in 2008 it wasn’t. He helped us think about scale—and about the possibilities.

Scale 155

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Software Review 155

Point Nine Land

JANUARY 27, 2023

Great design and UX have been a huge part of the SaaS investment thesis I started building in 2008. It led to my investments in Zendesk in 2008 , Clio in 2009 , and later Typeform , Loom , Factorial , and many others. But as we now know, the combination of a user interface that everyone is familiar with and the power of GPT-3/3.5

ChatGPT 65

ChatGPT Startup Artificial Intelligence SaaS 65

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. Jyoti Bansal : And then he started talking about sales and Dev during the breakfast he convinced me if you can marry the right kind of sales scaling and execution then that’s when your business will really, really take off. Jyoti Bansal: Yeah.

Sales Recruiting 251

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 251

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2019

But for a while, as you are scaling, you can beat the competition in at least specific deals in specific segments with a 10x Feature. 2008: Cross-platform. But it means many of the core features at least are enough built out in the core competitor group that there aren’t as many obvious 10x features.

Scale 176

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 176

Chargify

JANUARY 25, 2018

I recently spoke with Gravity Forms Community Evangelist Jeff Matson to understand how the company harnessed the power of their community, solved for internal tools that didn’t scale, and used Chargify to scale growth more efficiently. Internal subscription management tools didn’t scale. Born from a personal need.

Scale 40

Scale Scaling Payments Payment Solutions 40

Chart Mogul

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Finally, our SaaS Growth Report told the story of how companies scale from zero to $30m ARR and beyond. 2008: SaaS is Really Hard … 2016: SaaS is Really Hard 2017: SaaS is a Great Business 2018: Everyone Invests in SaaS 2019: SaaS Eating the World 2020: I’m Genius 2021: King of World! Bring on 2024!

Scale 52

Scale Subscription Payment Features Benchmarks 52

SaaSOptics

MAY 5, 2022

I was there when the bubble burst in 2001, the meltdown of 2008, and I’ve seen our industry rise again as SaaS businesses have attracted incredible amounts of capital over the past 10 years. How the magic happens. I’ve spent 20+ years in tech–all of it in the Internet sector. What lies ahead. Companies like Maxio don’t just happen.

Scale 98

Scale Technical Review Subscription Payment Features 98

Stax

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Between 2008 to 2018, $26 billion was handed out in fines, with 91% coming from the U.S. eKYC support: A fully manual KYC procedure is almost never feasible given the global scale on which transactions take place. Companies have had to pay serious fines over the years: Commerzbank London had to pay £37.8 million ($47.3

Merchant Services 88

Merchant Services Payment Services Systems Review Technical Review 88

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 17, 2019

High gross margins together with high customer retention rates for a SaaS company at scale contribute to higher valuations, up to 20X or even 30X revenues in today’s market. In the following chart for SaaS companies in 2008, you can see average COR as a percentage of Revenue at 40.4%, and average Gross Margins at 59.6%.

Scale 40

Scale SaaS AWS Revenue 40

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

The NoSQL movement launched officially in 1999 but rose to prominence much later perhaps closer to 2008 when Hadoop and other key value pair technologies became en vogue. F1 promises the performance and transaction support of an SQL database with the scale of a NoSQL database. Today, it’s hard to argue with the success of the movement.

Innovation 100

Innovation Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Banking 100

OPEXEngine

JULY 28, 2020

Since 2008, its revenue has tripled and its stock price has soared 14-fold in response. Those companies that best manage this balancing act between careful planning and agile response rely on four key principles: Scale matters, ownership doesn’t. The economic benefits of scale are as critical in high tech as they are in any sector.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Strategy Payment Services Scale 52

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

? ?. For Rebecca Egger, the CEO and co-founder of Little Otter , a mental health service designed for children, digital transformation will play a crucial role in scaling healthcare. In a heartfelt testimony, Rebecca recalls how her little brother came down with a rare autoimmune brain disorder back in 2008.

Scale 223

Scale Artificial Intelligence Healthcare Technical Review 223

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

I remember when times were toughest, the very toughest at EchoSign, maybe late 2008, I felt so broken I literally couldn’t even walk up the 20 or so steps to my loft office. They will not only help you scale faster and easier. But I think we all know as founders we need to find a way to take care of ourselves if we go long.

Banking 112

Banking Interviewing Scaling Management 112

Tom Tunguz

MAY 18, 2015

As the chart above shows, both companies scaled revenue rapidly, reaching $100M in revenue 7 years after founding. Both of these business weathered the dot com crash in 2001 and the financial meltdown in 2008. Both companies eventually offered talent acquisition, performance management, and learning tools for human resources teams.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Acquisition 100

Mucker Capital

MAY 6, 2020

To overcome them, some companies take a capital-light, iterative approach, experimenting until they find tactics that work and then scaling up from there. That, however, can lead to what the Startup Genome Project calls ‘premature scaling,’ which is a fancy way of describing when a company spends too much money, too early in its lifecycle.

Startup 52

Startup Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 52

Baremetrics

AUGUST 18, 2021

Mastering the Superpower of Fellowship But how exactly does a founder or start-up executive leverage those relationships at scale to get the kind of opportunities that will allow them to skyrocket to achieving your fullest potential? There are two main elements to developing this skill. Sound easier said than done?

Acquisition 91

Acquisition Scaling Investment Churn 91

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 14, 2016

To sustain these growth rates, startups like these require lots of cash because of the customer acquisition payback period, and the more tenuous ones need capital to prove the business model actually works at scale. In 2008, the Fed Funds Rate sat at 5%. First, the Fed will continue to raise interest rates that are at historic lows.

Startup 100

Startup Metrics Transportation Marketplace as a Service 100

The Angel VC

MAY 12, 2018

Salesforce.com generates a similar (actually, even higher) amount of revenue per employee, but the company is almost twice as old and has much bigger scale, so you’d expect them to be more efficient. When Salesforce had around $1B in revenue, in 2008, it had around 3,300 employees, so at that time its revenue per employee was around $327,000.

AWS 187

AWS Scale Subscription Payment Features 187

The Angel VC

JANUARY 15, 2015

As I've written before , when Mikkel told me how Zendesk was doing sales and marketing in 2008, I was intrigued but also slightly confused. mostly SaaS-related questions on Quora , drawing from his experience in founding EchoSign and scaling it to $100M in ARR. Lemkin alone has answered more than 1100 (!)

Growth Hacking 113

Growth Hacking Scale SaaS Content Marketing 113

Tom Tunguz

JULY 29, 2015

Most companies, as they scale, tend to move in the other direction. Netsuite’s revenue per customer averaged $19k in 2008, and $23k in 2009, the last years for which the company provided customer counts. In 2006, according to the company’s S-1, the business shifted from longer term contracts to one year contracts.

Benchmarks 101

Benchmarks Outsourced Development Metrics Scale 101

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2019

235: Andrew Filev is the Founder & CEO @ Wrike, the cloud based collaboration and project management software that scales across teams in any business. In Dec 2008, Vista Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Wrike for a deal reportedly valuing the company at $800m. Do you want to scale the business?

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Sales Recruiting 145

Chargify

AUGUST 6, 2019

2008: 317 customers. 2008: 42 employees. Most notably, $5 million in VC funding from General Catalyst in 2007, $12 million in VC funding from Matrix Partners in 2008 and $16 million in VC funding from Scale Venture Partners in 2009. 2007: 48 customers. 2009: 1,150 customers. 2010: 3,855 customers. 2007: 15 employees.

Subscription 40

Subscription Payment Features Revenue Software Review 40

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2019

Join Rene Yang Stewart, Co-Head and Principal, Vista Equity Partners, and Monica Enand, Founder and CEO, Zapproved, as they discuss growing a company from product market fit to scale. Hear perspectives from both the investor and founder as the company scaled. But, the fundraising in 2008, 2009 was pretty difficult.

Scale 127

Scale Product Marketing Scaling Marketing 127