Tom Tunguz

JUNE 23, 2024

We gathered data on the US venture-backed software companies that went public between 2010 & today. While there are still many companies sub-$200m in revenue who go public, the late-stage private markets enable those who would wait to achieve much higher scale. What does it take to go public? Has it changed over the last 15 years?

Revenue 308

Revenue Finance Trends Startup 308

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2023

Rewind The Clock — How Did We Get Here Most small businesses in pre-2010 didn’t have computers in their store or restaurant. The key takeaways for SMBTech companies to scale in today’s economy are: Now is a great time to build for SMBs. Know Your Customer and be choosy as you scale. Most didn’t even have internet.

Scale 245

Scale SMB Merchant Services Payment Methods 245

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham shares five big bets that paid off as he scaled this multi-product company. Big Bet #1: Cast Your Net Wide — Bet On Inbound While Going Global Freshworks was founded in October 2010 in Chennai, India. The total capital at the time was $85k. Why did he do this?

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Scale SMB SaaS 278

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. As we’ll see below, going upmarket and more enterprise has been key to SproutSocial’s growth at scale. So sometimes steady and even is the right path. SproutSocial is one of those.

Social Media 276

Social Media SMB Enterprise Scaling 276

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

The point is that SaaS multiples are still higher than where they were from 2010-2017. And generating real cash flow at scale. #2. The Bear Case: Multiples are still elevated compared to the pre-2018 period. You can see a lot of VCs and others talking about this on Twitter. It just went nuts during Peak Covid.

SaaS 347

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 347

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 309

Azure Cloud Enterprise Subscription 309

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 321

Social Media SMB Cloud Scale 321

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. 2010: Ease-of-Use. By 2010, we were finally started to get to basic feature parity. And it also means once you have a strong enough brand, that partners often can fill these gaps.

Scale 246

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 246

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

If you’re a leader, he says, don’t try to scale your job. Since 2010, he’s helped the company grow to more than 40,000 customers and helped scale the support team to more than 500 employees to assist those users. Scaling support as you grow. As you go from a startup to scaling up, people pull away. Short on time?

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2024

He created a culture of “structured chaos” – enough process to scale, enough freedom to innovate. The Culture Play Zinman’s secret weapon? Building in Tel Aviv but thinking global from day one. Result: 93% employee satisfaction even post-IPO. Becoming the default operating system for work, period.

Scale 235

Scale SaaS Company Culture Leadership 235

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2024

Prior to these roles, Mark was the founding CRO at HubSpot, where he scaled annualized revenue from $0 to $100 million and expanded his team from 1 to 450 employees. He was also awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year at the MIT Sales Conference. Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes’ Top 30 Social Sellers in the World.

Technical Review 294

Technical Review Scale Management Sales Hiring 294

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

In 2010, he joined DGF Investimentos, one of the top VC firms in Brazil. In 2010, he became one of the Co-Founders of Warehouse Investimentos, a prominent Brazilian VC company. Talk: Scaling & Exiting: Dreams, Designs & Dramas. He co-founded Praesto Convergence in 2005 and served as its Managing Director until 2010.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Scale Entrepreneurship Sales Hiring 207

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2023

.” — Brian Halligan, co-founder and chairman of HubSpot “Secondary” liquidity for SaaS founders has been part of the VC toolkit for funding later stage SaaS founders since at least 2010-2011 or so. I got a significant offer as we approached $10m ARR back in the day at Adobe Sign / EchoSign — and I should have taken it.

Scale 245

Scale Pricing Acquisition Scaling 245

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

I argue that standard saas metrics make it possible for founders to scale using debt capital (production capital thats cheaper) instead of solely relying on venture capital (financial capital thats more expensive). . Why haven’t more founders turned to cheaper venture debt options as they look to scale?

Venture Capital 272

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 272

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2019

His new venture focuses on creating a central knowledge network for scaling businesses so that employees aren’t wasting hours by chasing down important resources and company history scattered across a host of apps like Google Docs, SharePoint sites, Evernote and more. Collaboration pains increase as you scale. Short on time?

Scale 156

Scale Scaling Underperforming Technical Team AI Search 156

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. 2010: Ease-of-Use. By 2010, we were finally started to get to basic feature parity. And it also means once you have a strong enough brand, that partners often can fill these gaps.

Scale 198

Scale Mobile Branding Engineering 198

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. Vista Equity Partners invested in Zapproved in 2017. Monica Enand: Yeah.

Scale 136

Scale Product Marketing Scaling Marketing 136

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2021

In 2010, COSS was valued at $10B, and 90% of that value was attributed to a single company: Red Hat. The developers you engage with often become your first adopters, who then become product evangelists—and they’ll help you scale and solidify trust within enterprises, too. We’re currently in the age of the public cloud.

Enterprise 246

Enterprise AI SaaS AWS 246

Tom Tunguz

MAY 23, 2017

In January 2010, Andrew Parker wrote a post called the Spawn of Craigslist. After a company reaches a particular scale, teams grow and specialize, collaboration becomes more important, and so does control. Andrew identified companies that had built businesses by unbundling Craigslist. Etsy dominated the arts and crafts for sale.

Scale 198

Scale SMB Education Startup 198

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2019

DataDog provides a very popular IT monitoring solution that has grown from its founding in 2010 to a huge business. DataDog is 2x the scale of New Relic but growing just as fast. An amazing feat to be growing fast at scale and profitable. DataDog is no exception. The company published its S-1 Friday.

Metrics 189

Metrics Benchmarks Scale User Experience 189

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

Our Senior Director of Demand Generation Brian Kotlyar recently spoke with Yvonne about her experience scaling Udemy for Business. This is Season Two of Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on moving from startup to scale-up. This is Season Two of Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on moving from startup to scale-up.

Marketplace as a Service 243

Marketplace as a Service Scale Sales Recruiting Business 243

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 16, 2020

In 2010, leading management thinker Roger Martin declared we’re entering the age of “customer capitalism.” This post is part of Scale, a place where we explore how businesses are driving growth through customer relationships. The era of customer capitalism.

Scale 237

Scale Social Media Customer Support Scaling 237

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 8, 2020

She was Trello ’s very first sales hire in 2010, built the company’s sales and account management teams, and was instrumental in scaling its business from 5 million to 25 million users within two years. But if anyone knows how to walk this tightrope and make it to the other side, it’s Kristen Habacht.

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring Software Review Technical Review 205

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2021

We can look back at how Datadog scaled. We scaled them from scratch, basically. We started the company in 2010. Neither my co-founder or myself came from Google or Facebook so we didn’t have the credentials for helping companies run at very large scale. And the story there was that we knew each other very well.

Scale 311

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Engineering 311

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

About 2010, we started a completely different product line. Jason : You resisted that, and then usually there’s another time, as you start to scale, whether it’s 20 million, 30 million, when you want to get ahead of the curve, and also sometimes your inefficiencies increase, right? Peter : We have a suite of products.

Sales Hiring 337

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Headcount 337

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 25, 2010

As 2010 is drawing to a close I’d like to take a moment to give you a quick update on my angel investment activities and more importantly, thank the incredibly talented and hard-working people who have made it such an amazing year. Mange tak to Mikkel , Morten , Alex , Michael and the whole crew.

Cloud 106

Cloud Investment B2B Subscription 106

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

Scaling companies that need insight can get it easily with the help of a specialized platform that guides them through all the necessary and applicable sales tax obligations and processes. . Leverage automation to support scaling. “But with AutoFile, we’ve scaled to doing taxes in 40+ states.”

Merchant Services 184

Merchant Services Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring 184

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

Customer success teams are basically about building at scale this self-serve engine. When Patrick and John in 2010 were at Y Combinator and spend their days doing office hours with the whole Y Combinator and a little water in the valley. Which is basically scaled marketing and things like that.

SaaS Payments 246

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 246

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 13, 2014

As the chart above shows, the total number of venture-backed acquisitions, in red, has exceeded the 14 year average (gray dashed line), every year since 2010. This could be because tech companies have achieved such a huge scale that the material acquisitions ten years ago, are no longer material today.

Acquisition 127

Acquisition Trends Startup Marketing 127

SaaStock

MARCH 1, 2019

In May 2019 we are landing in Hong Kong to help the local ecosystem (as well as those looking to expand into it) get a fast track to growth and scale. Founded: 2010. Founded: 2010. We are bringing together investors, founders, executives, and influencers for 3 days of learning and networking. Size of fund: $250M.

SaaS Payments 190

SaaS Payments Venture Capital Payment Services Telecommunications 190

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

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. We hit a million dollar run rate by 2010. In 2010, we decided to go out in Phoenix to do an angel round of funding. Want to see more content like this? We were profitable by 2009.

Scale 177

Scale SMB VP of Engineering Leadership 177

IT World

AUGUST 1, 2022

Apple has had an advertising business of its own ever since Apple’s then CEO, Steve Jobs, introduced us to iAds in 2010. The scale of that offer was always limited to Apple’s platform, but the service arguably failed, with its technology living on in the form of ad slots in Apple News and the App Store. What Apple is doing.

Advertising 91

Advertising Technology Scaling Development 91

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 27, 2015

In the Cloud Era, the economies of scale powered the company to achieve all time gross margin highs in 2010 of about 72%. Professional services (training and customization) represented the majority of cost of goods sold (COGS) for the business during the License Era. Let’s shift to profitability (net income).

SaaS 113

SaaS Travel Cloud Business Model 113

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

And from about 2007 till 2010 we bootstrapped and built the first version of the Pluralsight you see today. That was in 2010, and we committed the company to go big with this cloud-based SaaS business model that would allow us to reach individuals anywhere in the world. We were succeeding at large scale.

B2B 150

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 150

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

In May 2010, I bet a good friend of mine that Android would overtake iOS in total devices shipments in 12 months' time. And those margins are increasing as the company drives leverages economies of scale. My prediction was completely off the mark. In May 2011, iOS led cumulative shipments by more than 100%: 191M to 95M.

Mobile 100

Mobile Trends Scale Forecasting 100

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 17, 2016

According to Crunchbase data, US SaaS investment has grown tremendously since 2010 from about $1.5B In some cases, those unique approaches and solutions can grow to global scale. As these successful startups have boomed, how has the early stage fundraising market for them evolved? per year to $7B.

Startup 100

Startup SaaS Software Review Finance 100

Frontegg

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

In 2010, the IETF OAuth Working Group released the initial draft of the OAuth 2.0 are solid in terms of usability: Both protocols are founded on JSON, which is supported by most mobile and web applications Both are simple to implement and don’t demand specific expertise Both are easy to scale and robust, even for mega-scale applications.

Mobile 144

Mobile PayPal Identity management Cloud 144