Tom Tunguz

JUNE 14, 2022

During the dotcom crash in 2001, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and the SaaS corrections in 2014, 2016, and 2018, Lee was either COO/CFO or CFO at Twilio, SAY Media, and Ofoto. Lee Kirkpatrick is no stranger to downturns. On Tuesday, June 21st at 10am Pacific time, Office Hours will welcome Lee Kirkpatrick to learn from his experience.

Management 275

Management Finance Subscription Payment Features 275

Tom Tunguz

MAY 11, 2023

In the last five major cycles (internet, social, mobile, cloud, web3), startups seized the new technologies of the era to create a distribution advantage. Google led to search-engine optimization, which startups like Expedia & Zillow grew to become public companies. The iTunes store launch in 2008 enabled Uber.

AI Search 217

AI Search AI Scale Cloud 217

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2024

Creandum led the first institutional round in 2008 and it became Europe’s largest tech company to go public ten years later. Prior to Creandum, Peter started his career at Lazada (South East Asia’s leading e-commerce player) and Paymill (payment startup). No big egos but really act with high trust, integrity and long term thinking. #6.

Payments 196

Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions Scale 196

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2023

So anecdotally, it seems to me sales productivity startups are one of the biggest impacted by the current macro environment. I sold a sales tool in 2008-2009 when the global economy was in total meltdown, and I’ll tell you, we sure didn’t stop selling. It seems like everyone just … stopped buying them. I say No.

Sales Hiring 207

Sales Hiring Sales Startup Investment 207

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 5, 2022

8% annual inflation for a startup means losing a month of runway every year. In the mid-2000s, many startups invested their excess cash reserves in instruments called Auction Rate Securities. In February 2008, the ARS market seized. Startups seeking to sell their ARSs to fund burn were out of luck : no one would buy them.

Venture Capital 231

Venture Capital Banking Startup Investment 231

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Fueled by this capital, startup company formation rates touched fifteen-year highs in 2021. I remember joining in 2008, a green product manager out of Google who had just landed his dream job. After more than 14 years at Redpoint, I’m starting a new chapter. I’m filled with optimism for the future.

Venture Capital 221

Venture Capital Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Innovation 221

Point Nine Land

JANUARY 27, 2023

As we enter month 3 CE (ChatGPT Era), I’d like to share a few observations and questions on the ChatGPT phenomenon and what it might mean for SaaS startups. Great design and UX have been a huge part of the SaaS investment thesis I started building in 2008. What happened? enabled ChatGPT’s meteoric rise.

ChatGPT 65

ChatGPT Startup Artificial Intelligence SaaS 65

Tom Tunguz

MAY 10, 2022

VCs revel in the short term liquidity reminiscent of the late 1990s when startups went public in fewer than 4 years. Each Basel Accord was authored in response to a crisis Basel I - the crash of 1989; Basel II - the dotcom crash, and Basel III - the GFC of 2008. Spectacular booms and busts continue. Regulation.

Banking 262

Banking Government Construction Startup 262

Tom Tunguz

MAY 5, 2020

In March, I published analysis of the fundraising market in 2008. If a startup’s growth isn’t sensational, then it’s a much more challenging fundraising market. It showed that the later rounds, the series B and series C were the most impacted. The early data from March 2020 shows a different pattern.

Marketing 298

Marketing Trends Startup Investment 298

Tom Tunguz

MAY 26, 2016

In 2008, Alan MacCormack and his co-authors researched and validated Conway’s Law in HBR by studying the software produced by companies and contrasting that with open source software produced by communities. But it does raise the question of whether or not a startup’s teams are properly structured.

Software Review 178

Software Review DevOps as a Service Startup Systems Review 178

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 7, 2019

Startups are able to raise larger early rounds because of the financial environment. In 2008, there was a $5M series A product and a $10M series B product. As I’ve written about before, there’s now a continuum of financial products available to startups at the early stage. Those were the most popular.

Marketing 247

Marketing Benchmarks Trends Startup 247

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 14, 2016

2015 is the end of an era, the era of startup growth at any cost. ” This change in investor mentality is catalyzed by the increasing cost of startup capital. Starting in 2014, and perhaps even a bit before, startups have been able to raise capital at better terms than at any time since 2000. Crunchbase tallies $10.1B

Startup 100

Startup Metrics Transportation Marketplace as a Service 100

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 28, 2014

Since 2008, there has been a secular trend to increase cash compensation and decrease equity to startup management teams. I’ve chosen to use non-founder data, in other words, executives who have been hired into startups, because that market has more liquidity and should reflect true market prices better. Cash +10% +16%.

Compensation 100

Compensation Part-Time VPE Trends Startup 100

Tom Tunguz

JULY 19, 2019

The previously fixed financial products that existed in 2008 of a $4-6M Series A and a $10-12M Series B are gone. Namely, much more diverse and varied financing options to suit the precise needs of a particular startup. Competition has brought diversity and innovation into the private capital markets.

Finance 270

Finance Innovation Startup Investment 270

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

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. In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Subscribe Please do not fill in this field. billion in 2012.

CTO Hire 236

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 236

Casey Accidental

DECEMBER 5, 2023

This favors either: incumbents who already have distribution startups that can leverage traditional channels such as sales, virality, user generated content, or paid acquisition because their product value is deeply innovative and very marketable But, this may not be forever. So, as an operator, this feels like 1997 or 2008.

AI Search 66

AI Search AI ChatGPT Scale 66

Mucker Capital

MAY 6, 2020

Startups are uncertain, high-risk exercises under any circumstance. Even in the best economic environment, startups face countless challenges, whether related to hiring, pricing, sales or customer acquisition and retention. This post originally appeared in Forbes, written by Erik Rannala.

Startup 52

Startup Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 52

Tom Tunguz

MAY 5, 2020

In March, I published analysis of the fundraising market in 2008. If a startup’s growth isn’t sensational, then it’s a much more challenging fundraising market. It showed that the later rounds, the series B and series C were the most impacted. The early data from March 2020 shows a different pattern.

Marketing 207

Marketing Trends Startup Investment 207

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2020

Started Twilio in January 2008, just as the last downturn happened. Jeff says he’s realized startups are either “product constrained or distribution constrained “ Make your investments accordingly. ” A good reminder to us all. For months, they couldn’t raise any money at all.

CTO Hire 335

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Airlines 335

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

rates them on 3-Year Growth – a slightly strange metric for start-ups at all different stages), for SaaS and SaaS-ish startups: [note, the higher they are on the list, the faster they are growing on a % basis YoY]. #7 Learnings for this year, for 2011 GAAP revenue (Inc. in 2011 GAAP revenue. Where it Went: Now valued at $1.5B

SaaS 269

SaaS Technical Review Scaling Software Review 269

SaaStock

JANUARY 30, 2019

One of those was 2008/2009 when 5 funds were started. Canary invests in Brazilian startups, aiming to transform the country’s startup ecosystem by filling an early stage funding gap that it has identified. Its focus is on early-stage Brazilian startups, with about half of its investments targeted at SaaS businesses.

Venture Capital 155

Venture Capital SaaS Healthcare Finance 155

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 1, 2024

Like the startups in our portfolio, TxO is constantly evolving to ensure we’re meeting the needs of our founders. His career began in advertising, but the 2008 recession prompted him to shift to radiology. Joel Horsford (RadEmploy) Joel Horsford , a native New Yorker, has over ten years of expertise in radiology.

Technical Cofounder 69

Technical Cofounder Development Team Review Technical Review Software Review 69

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 26, 2013

I’m asked with some frequency which startup sectors are booming. In the last two years, financial services startups have been innovating impressively quickly and challenging some of the fundamental ways in which capital and credit are distributed. Consumer Credit - After the crash of 2008, bank lending collapsed.

Merchant Services 100

Merchant Services Payments Point of Sale Startup 100

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2019

YC has funded over 1,900 startups since 2005 including Airbnb, coinbase, Dropbox, Stripe, Flexport, instacart and reddit. From 200-2008 she held leadership positions at Allegis Corporation and Intuit before ultimately joining Intercom in 2017. Y Combinator is a seed accelerator. Michael Seibel was co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv

Scale 164

Scale Leadership Consulting Metrics 164

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 13, 2018

And the startup demo has disappeared. 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. YCombinator has thrived and scaled.

Scale 189

Scale Innovation Mobile Metrics 189

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

So, what happened is most of the craziness from 2020 and 2021 has been erased, yet we’re not back to the nuclear winter of fundraising in 2008. The good news is that we’re still at the 2019 levels. Series B and Series C had a similar number of rounds, and the amount of capital is down 50-75% from the peak, depending on what you’re looking at.

AI 194

AI Underperforming Technical Team Cloud Strategy 194

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They were aware of it, but startups that I work with closely or invested in, if they got all the way to 25 million with 75% NRR, I would tell them to quit today. We’re startups, but 10 is the crazy CEO. There are too many startups, there are too many companies to join. They had low NRR all the way until 30. But I love you.”

Outsourcing Services 177

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 177

Tom Tunguz

MAY 2, 2015

and $8.9M, both of which occurred in 2008, would likely have been substantially larger today. We can’t prove with this data set that there are meaningful differences in any of four measures of startup efficiency including revenue growth, gross margin, profitability or cash raised. Company $M Raised Company $M Raised. Workday 189.

Startup 113

Startup Venture Capital Mobile Acquisition 113

The Angel VC

MAY 31, 2016

When we invest in a SaaS startup, which almost always happens at the seed stage, the next big milestone on the company’s roadmap is usually a Series A. If you carry this thought further and assume that the biggest goal after the Series A is to get to the Series B (and so on, you get the idea) it sounds like turtles all the way down.

SaaS 193

SaaS Finance Mobile Enterprise 193

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 4, 2017

Machine learning SaaS startups face another trust risk – one introduced by probability. When Nate Silver forecasted the successful election of Barack Obama in 2008 with nearly 100% accuracy across districts, probability theory shined. In both the 2008 and 2016 analyses, the math may have been correct and the theory consistent.

Machine Learning 100

Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Software Management 100

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Its been called the “Facebook for developers” so it’s no surprise that this particular unicorn has our ears perked for insights on how it helped other startups grow along the way. Github was founded in 2008.

Airlines 131

Airlines Benchmarks Engineering Retention 131

SaaStock

MARCH 8, 2019

Because, as she says, building a startup is simply much more fun. She has been around the globe, working in startups and digital agencies in Brazil, Germany, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong. Diane is also passionate about everything startup, digital transformation in our lives, and psychology. The reason? Diny Gomes. Lisa Zhang.

VP of Engineering 264

VP of Engineering CTO Coach Venture Capital SaaS 264

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

The top quartile seed rounds have expanded by 44% in 8 years, and by 75% since 2008. Today, Californian seed-stage startups raise 8.2x as much in aggregate as they did in 2008. Massachusetts startups have increased their seed investment by 20x and NYC companies have raised more than 14x more seed dollars.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Startup Investment Data 100

The Angel VC

MAY 17, 2017

In our weekly investment team call earlier this week we decided to pass on two early-stage SaaS startups that were both on track to grow from zero to $100k in MRR in their first 12 months of going live. The other part is that even as recently as 6-24 months ago, we’d consider a SaaS startup with this growth pattern exceptional.

Business Model 180

Business Model Venture Capital SaaS Underperforming Technical Team 180

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. Well funded Silicon Valley startups. Felix : Yeah, sure. So it’s been awhile. So I mean that works.

Sales Hiring 177

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Government 177

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. Yesterday I posted a brief review of Mikkel’s excellent book “Startupland”.

Scale 155

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Software Review 155

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2021

SaaStr 305: Lessons From Scaling Box From 5 Employees To IPO & The Right Way For Startups To Approach Partnerships with Karen Page, General Partner @ B Capital Group. SaaStr 320: SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta on What It Was Like in 2008-2009 and What We Can Expect for 2020.

Scale 235

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling B2B 235