SaaStr

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Additionally, if you look at the mobile shift, the iPhone was released in 2007 but we didn’t get our first mobile apps like Uber and Snapchat until 2009 and 2010. It wasn’t until years later that Workday and Salesforce and a whole generation of SaaS companies came along to build on top of that infrastructure.

AI 261

AI Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT Mobile 261

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2025

Filed April 2025 Stripe 2010 Patrick Collison Payments $1.4T Revenue Valuation IPO Timeline Databricks 2013 Ali Ghodsi Data Analytics $2.4B $62B 2025-2026 Netskope 2012 Sanjay Beri Cybersecurity $487M $7.5B Q3-Q4 2025 Discord 2015 Humam Sakhnini* Communication ~$600M $15B 2025 Figma 2012 Dylan Field Design Software $600M $12.5B volume $91.5B

B2B 187

B2B Payments SaaS Payments Payment Services 187

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 2, 2024

  The first decentralized platform, Diaspora , launched back in 2010.   The evolution of decentralized social media While it might feel like it burst onto the scene in 2023/24, decentralized social media isn’t all that new.  It promises users freedom, privacy, and control of their own data.

Social Media 115

Social Media Underperforming Technical Team Government Blockchain 115

Clouded Judgement

JULY 18, 2025

Finding the right strategic real estate to entrench yourself, building excellence in your trench, and then methodically expanding will lead to even larger platforms than the ones that were built in the 2010-2015 time frame. And that time frame was a GREAT time to start a business.

Cloud 144

Cloud AWS ChatGPT AI 144

Payrix

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

Durbin amendment Part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (introduced in 2010) that limits transaction fees imposed upon merchants by debit card issuers.

Payment Services 147

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payment Methods 147

FastSpring

APRIL 24, 2025

Since 2010, she’s been leading teams, building websites, web applications for nonprofits, K through 12, higher education, government, businesses of all sizes. Through work at Equalize Digital, Amber is striving to create a world where all people have equal access to information and tools on the internet.

Business 108

Business Software Review Underperforming Technical Team AI Search 108

Sales Hacker

MAY 13, 2025

When Yext started our core business as it exists today in about 2009 or 2010 Yelp was something like 65% of all online reviews. I became chairman in 2010. The way we were developing product in 2009 and 2010, which felt incredibly innovative, is we’re identifying these kind of sectoral trends. But they took over.

AI Search 74

AI Search AI ChatGPT Software Review 74

Neil Patel

JULY 19, 2025

Outdated Design Does your site look like it was designed in 2010? Here are a few signals that it’s time for an overhaul. Potential customers might question if your business is still operating — or if it can meet their current needs.

Underperforming Technical Team 46

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Scale Mobile 46

Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 10, 2024

Launched in 2010 by American Express, this day encourages consumers to support local small businesses during the holiday shopping season. November 23: Espresso Day November 27: Thanksgiving (U.S.) November 28: Black Friday November 29: Small Business Saturday You’ve heard of Black Friday, but what about Small Business Saturday ?

Social Media 114

Social Media Branding Education Entrepreneurship 114

Sales Hacker

MARCH 25, 2025

and then like, if I go to 2010 in the startup space. Ray Smith: It’s a great point, Scott is like, as I mentioned, and that cynical phase around 2010, it seemed like every startup, every business was slapping AI. So like, if I go back. And now we’re in this new world. Like what is an AI agent in your eyes?

AI Search 69

AI Search AI Scale Software 69

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2022

In 2010, the median software Series A startup raised $3.2m & employed 15 people at about $150k average cost. If the Series A market follows suit, the median series A will fall to $7.8m, which means a 28 person company will have 17 months’ of runway - effectively identical to 2010 runway. Let me explain : Era. Median Salary.

Headcount 321

Headcount Venture Capital Finance Startup 321

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 11, 2020

The market bounced back to similar levels once in Q2 2010, but needed eight quarters to return to its previous volumes. The Series B market had a nice resurgence as well, followed by a retrenchment in late 2010 and then another surge. That grew to about $5B per quarter in 2007 and early 2008. in the quarters following the crash.

Marketing 359

Marketing Startup Investment Trends 359

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 17, 2022

Let’s compare data from 2010 and 2021 to understand the longitudinal trends in cash and equity compensation. A VP of Engineering in a Bay Area startup that has raised less than twenty-five million dollars earned 33% more in 2021 than 2010. 2010 Equity. Cash Change. A nice bump. 2021 Equity. Equity Change.

Compensation 270

Compensation Startup Engineering Trends 270

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 17, 2022

Series A has dropped from 30% to 20%; Series B from 22.5% to 12%; and Series C from 18% to 11%. Across financing rounds, dilution from capital has fallen by 30-50% in that decade. Cumulative Dilution Points. Here’s a table of cumulative dilution points for a hypothetical startup raising 4 rounds in one year.

Finance 360

Finance Startup 360

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 26, 2017

In 2010, classic SaaS was booming, the benefits of a subscription model were finally becoming clear to the public markets and the mass-market. The chart above breaks out 14 different software categories and shows the amount of dollars invested in each category indexed to 2010 levels.

Startup 255

Startup Software Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning 255

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 1, 2019

In 2010, one venture dollar bought $1.24 If we look at the ROIC across IPOs across the last 12 years or so, we see that same initial dynamic of incredibly efficient companies in the 2010 and 2014 IPO cohorts. It’s tripled from about $92m to more than $300M since 2010. One venture dollar bought forty-two cents at IPO.

Startup 279

Startup Software Review SaaS Acquisition 279

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 7, 2019

The top left chart shows a $1M round had about 41% market share in 2010; that grew to about 54% in 2014; now it has fallen to 35%. But is now at the same level it was in 2010. In 2010, it was very likely that a business raised a $1M round before raising a $3-5M dollar round. The $3M round has suffered a similar loss of share.

Marketing 247

Marketing Benchmarks Trends Startup 247

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2022

in May 2009 … but then returned to normal 2% by 2010: #4. Customers kept buying more SaaS than ever, which masked all-time high churn in SMB accounts. SMBs just plain went out of business in ’08-’09. So our gross SMB churn spiked to a crazy high of 5.5%

SMB 361

SMB SaaS Churn Enterprise 361

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2024

The Seeds of the 2010 era are the pre-Seeds of today, making the comparison impure. Many new seed funds started & the rate of company formation surged during the early 2020s driven by an ebullient capital markets. Also, the definition of a Seed round has changed. Regardless, Series As haven’t grown to nearly the extent of Seeds.

AI 331

AI Investment Startup Software 331

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

And it would be 4x the size of 2010. Let’s go through these one by one using the Pitchbook Venture Monitor Report. VCs have raised $57b through Q3, implying $75b for the year, a total which would eclipse any other year in the last decade. The late stage venture market is on pace to set a record in 2020.

Venture Capital 353

Venture Capital Government Pricing Investment 353

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 7, 2020

Since 2010, the number of round by quarter has followed a periodic growth, with consistent seasonality. Mean round sizes have increased from 5 million in 2010 to 17.5 I wondered if Softbank's changes in investment strategy had much to do with it, but as the chart shows, they were not a meaningful contributor.

Marketing 275

Marketing Finance Investment Trends 275

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2023

It’s 2010 customers have grown their ACV … a stunning 24x over the following 12+ years. Others are seeing this as well, although some, like MongoDB, aren’t. But many in SaaS are seeing tougher times in Europe than North America. ServiceNow’s growth has slowed there: And a few interesting learnings: #6.

Azure 325

Azure Cloud Enterprise Payment Features 325

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 20, 2023

The red is a linear model based on data from 2010 to 2018 that predicts activity rates for each financing series of US & Canadian software companies. [1] By looking at the cumulative rounds since 2010, we can see that Seed, A, & B volumes all trended meaningfully above their predicted counts.

Investment 236

Investment Venture Capital Startup Finance 236

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 18, 2022

Circa 2010, there was only one full-time analyst at the company working on data, and his laptop was effectively the company’s data warehouse. Oh, Revenue_new is the old column. The company moved to customer_revenue last quarter when we hired a new VP of Finance and they updated the definition. Airbnb faced this problem, too.

Revenue 322

Revenue Sales Hiring Finance Metrics 322

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2021

SproutSocial was founded in 2010. It’s not your valuation today that matters. It’s where you can grow into, in SaaS. Also a reminder that power laws are everywhere in SaaS. Nine years layer, it was worth $815m — impressive. But then 2 years after that, they are worth $4.7B. Keep going in SaaS. Value compounds.

Social Media 325

Social Media SMB Cloud Scale 325

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

1 I’m using PitchBook US venture backed software exit data & running Spearman correlations on data from 2010-2020 on the subsequent year’s change in the relevant field. But there is some evidence within the data that laxer monetary policy will increase exit activity in the subsequent twelve months.

Marketing 273

Marketing Acquisition Startup Software 273

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 23, 2024

We gathered data on the US venture-backed software companies that went public between 2010 & today. What does it take to go public? Has it changed over the last 15 years? We corrected the trailing 12 months’ revenue at the time of IPO for inflation & plotted the data.

Revenue 306

Revenue Finance Trends Startup 306

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Big Bet #1: Cast Your Net Wide — Bet On Inbound While Going Global Freshworks was founded in October 2010 in Chennai, India. Big Bet #2: Find Tomorrow’s Great Anglers — Hire Talent With A Learning Mindset In 2010 and 2011, San Francisco was the place for SaaS talent. It helped them get funding in the first round.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Scale SMB SaaS 284

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2024

Founded back in 2010 (SaaS takes time!) So we’ve finally got another SaaS IPO gearing up — OneStream. It’s SaaS for CFOs and financial operations, a large but somewhat under-discussed category. SAP and Oracle are very strong here.

Enterprise 318

Enterprise Scaling Revenue SaaS 318

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

Appearing suddenly in 2010, it promptly disappeared - confoundingly abruptly and surprisingly unexpectedly - in 2015 - albeit, justly in my view. ” As a SaaS investor, these businesses aren’t in my bailiwick, but since.gg suffix certainly is in yours. polyptoton). killing Hemingway softly).

Startup 322

Startup Business AI Trends 322

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2023

The best of us kept growing , albeit with elevated churn through 2010: What Really Happened to SaaS in the ’08-’09 Recession And to those of us who have been doing SaaS a long time … 2023 just feels Like it Used to Be. SaaS markets had fully recovered later that year. Back when you needed CFO approval on a bigger deal.

SaaS 314

SaaS Churn Sales Software 314

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 10, 2019

2018 observed the fewest number of angel-led financing rounds since before 2010. Angel investing was an important part of the Startupland ecosystem. Today, you can’t make the same argument. Angels led 156 rounds last year, a figure that collapsed from 714 in 2015.

Finance 280

Finance Investment Trends Startup 280

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Founded back in 2010, it had steady growth to $100m ARR, IPO’d quietly in 2019, then has grown 30%+ annually every year since. So sometimes steady and even is the right path. SproutSocial is one of those. That’s compounded to $360m in ARR today, and a market cap of $3.4 Billion, so about 9x ARR.

Social Media 282

Social Media SMB Enterprise Scaling 282

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

2010: Ease-of-Use. By 2010, we were finally started to get to basic feature parity. If you haven’t localized an app before, and didn’t architect it that way from the beginning, it’s a big project. We won Google, Facebook, Twitter, and so many other deals just with this feature. Phew, a long time!

Scale 246

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2020

A Good Day: Dec 31, 2009; Dec 31, 2010; Dec 31, 2011; Dec 31, 2012. A Bad Day: When I Had No Salary And Didn’t Get My Requested $10k Bonus Even Though I Brought In an Extra $300k All-Cash Upfront Deal. And again, Dec 31, 2018 and Dec 31, 2019. When we killed it every year on the last day of the year. New Years was spent in the office.

Sales Hiring 357

Sales Hiring SaaS Revenue Churn 357

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

The chart above depicts the total disclosed value of US venture-backed SaaS startups which have been acquired by PE firms since 2010. The median venture-backed SaaS acquisition by PE has increased to $250M, up from $50M in 2010. Private equity hasn’t been a common exit route for venture backed startups in the past.

Startup 199

Startup SaaS Acquisition Pricing 199

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 6, 2022

Venture investing clocked more than $329b invested last year , up 10x since 2010. The rapid halving of software multiples has disjointed the valuations between public and private companies, and between growth and value companies.

Investment 255

Investment Pricing Business Model Enterprise 255