SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2019

Thanks so much everyone for joining us for our fireside chat today, disrupting the desk phone: how and why we made a $50 million acquisition. Jessica Lin : So we’ll chat more about analogy, really milk that, and again, you’ll hear, especially throughout this session why this is not really a story about just one acquisition.

Acquisition 149

Acquisition Technical Review Systems Review AI 149

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. And you start being able to acquire more of them in a scalable way i.e. an acquisition loop. In fact, they complain more, because they like the product enough to care.

Payments 63

Payments Scale Payment Methods Underperforming Technical Team 63

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

With the Salesforce IPO in 2004, we saw the first sign that institutional investors were comfortable with a standard set of SaaS metrics: Churn, sales efficiency , ARPU, LTV, customer acquisition cost , and so on. . Things started changing in 2011. This CNET article captures the uncertainty well: .

Venture Capital 218

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 218

IT World

MARCH 28, 2022

Visual collaboration company Mural has announced it is making its first acquisition with the purchase of Pittsburgh-based provider of learning experiences, digital resources, and certification programs, LUMA Institute. To read this article in full, please click here

Acquisition 63

Acquisition 63

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 1, 2018

In the very early days of Intercom the marketing hat fell on my head, but I’d be doing marketing a disservice (and 2011 Des a disservice) if I said that’s what I thought I was doing. I certainly didn’t have an “acquisition strategy.” I didn’t have a perfectly mapped out startup marketing strategy. Pitching your product.

Startup 201

Startup Strategy Marketing Social Media 201

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 4, 2015

Year 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014. Or it could be caused by a delay in the announcement of these acquisitions. Q2 2010, Q2 2011 and Q2 2012 all saw similar drops before the levels rebounded. Acquihires 59 64 67 68 61. Over the past four years, on average 15 companies are acquihired each quarter. 2014 saw a modest drop to 61.

Startup 113

Startup Trends Marketing Technical Review 113

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2016

In 2011-2013, about 1450 software companies were founded each year on average. In addition, the sheer size of the Martech landscape growing to more than 3500 companies up from 150 in 2011 implies torrid growth as well. The rate of new software company formation seems to have declined materially in the past few years. Why could this be?

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital SaaS Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 100

Sales Hacker

MAY 24, 2023

Tito explains when it makes sense to prioritize customer acquisition vs. retention and vice versa. So we’re willing to pay $50,000 on acquisition for a $30,000 customer because we know year one is gonna be $30,000. I started in 2011. We don’t have as many net new target accounts coming in. It was interesting.

Underperforming Technical Team 84

Underperforming Technical Team Consulting Company Culture Acquisition 84

SaaStock

JANUARY 30, 2019

Another was 2011/2012 where not only were another 5 VC firms started but it’s also when international ones set their eyes on this vast market. Founded: 2011. Founded: 2011. One of those was 2008/2009 when 5 funds were started. Most well-known funds experimented with funding Brazilian and Latin American B2C ventures.

Venture Capital 155

Venture Capital SaaS Healthcare Finance 155

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2015

The typical SaaS company going public in the last three years has a 77% smaller average revenue per customer than companies in 2010 – 2011. In contrast, 2011 companies logged a median customer value of $96,000.

Pricing 100

Pricing SaaS B2C Education 100

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 27, 2018

In 2011 we launched the Intercom Messenger in the same 12 months that iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Whatsapp, and others launched too. The most important thing we’re going to do with this capital, and this year, is improve our existing products based on your feedback. Building a brand-new product.

Artificial Intelligence 224

Artificial Intelligence Scale Machine Learning Technology 224

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

Depending on what calculation you use, LTV can paint an honest picture of whether your customers are spending and staying long enough to cover acquisition costs and hopefully—make you a profit. Tracking your LTV/CAC ratio allows you to spend the right amount on customer acquisition while still making a profit.

Scale 128

Scale Payment Methods Payments SaaS Payments 128

Tom Tunguz

MAY 18, 2015

Both companies eventually offered talent acquisition, performance management, and learning tools for human resources teams. in December 2011, and Oracle bought Taleo for $1.9B In the late 1990s, two of the dominant talent management platforms were founded. But they started in different places. SAP purchased SuccessFactors for $3.4B

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Acquisition 100

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 20, 2018

In 2011 Marc Andreessen declared that software is eating the world. Creating one-off builds for a handful of customers puts you on the fast track to a Frankenstein product and a customer acquisition strategy that doesn’t scale. Trial and error: adding sales input to the product roadmap.

Scale 199

Scale Sales Software Review Strategy 199

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 2, 2015

In a recent podcast , Ron Gill, the CFO of Netsuite - a $7B+ market cap company with about $600M in 2014 revenue, which provides ERP software to mid-market companies - articulated the importance of the Lifetime Value / Cost of Customer Acquisition (LTV/CAC) ratio for his company. In the 2009-2011 period, churn mitigation improved the LTV/CAC.

Startup 113

Startup SaaS Churn Engineering 113

Chart Mogul

JUNE 9, 2023

Logo acquisition is harder: upselling and retention are crucial. Logo acquisition is harder: upselling and retention are crucial When new business falters, shifting resources to retention and upselling can hedge losses and boost revenue. Here are some key insights the panel touches on: SaaS growth is the slowest in recent history.

Trends 52

Trends SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 52

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 17, 2014

At this pace, seed dollars may grow by 8x compared to 2011. Second, median institutional seed fund sizes have increased by 66% to about $50M, likely driven by the great acquisition environment. Six-months through 2014, another $3B has been invested.

Trends 100

Trends Marketing Acquisition Investment 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2014

In 2013, the company recorded a sales efficiency of 0.47, meaning about $2 of sales and marketing spend is required to generate $1 in gross profit and the payback period, the number of years before a customer's revenue offsets the cost of customer acquisition is just over 2 years. Field 2011 2012 2013. ARPC 5,395 6,580 7,752.

Benchmarks 113

Benchmarks SMB Metrics SaaS 113

BrightBack

JANUARY 17, 2022

This is the latest acquisition for Chargebee after acquiring revenue recognition provider RevLock last year to expand product offerings based on feedback received from clients and growing market demand. Founded in 2011, Chargebee counts businesses, like Okta, Freshworks, Calendly, and Study.com amongst its global customer base.

Payments 59

Payments Payment Methods Payment Features Payment Solutions 59

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 2, 2014

It’s a remarkable business primarily because the founders and the team have built an incredibly efficient customer acquisition funnel. The company has achieved a 114% CAGR from 2011 through 2013, an impressive growth rate. Zendesk is a 700 person company that builds customer support software.

Benchmarks 100

Benchmarks Metrics SaaS Scale 100

A Smart Bear

JANUARY 4, 2018

We’ve come a long way from switching this blog to WordPress in 2009, my systematic vetting of the business idea in 2009 (after needing it myself due to the success of this blog crashing my dedicated server every time I got on Hackernews), the “ coming soon ” pre-launch in April 2010, our Series A 3-minute pitch in 2011, our incredible CEO Heather Brunner (..)

Engineering 70

Engineering Investment Revenue Technical Review 70

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 14, 2015

Xero expanded into the US in 2011, which is year five in the chart above. Xero’s efficiency is driven by its customer acquisition strategy, winning accountants and encouraging them to migrate all their business from a competitor to Xero. in gropss profit next year. The median SaaS company charts 0.81

Benchmarks 100

Benchmarks Metrics SMB Outsourced Development 100

Sixteen Ventures

JULY 17, 2020

Churn is the reason that – though you acquired a lot of new logos in 2012 – you had no significant year over year growth from 2011. On the flip side, a high churn rate is the reason you ended 2012 with a whole bunch of new customers… but had about the same amount of revenue. Is 5% Monthly Churn Good?

Churn 133

Churn SaaS B2C Pricing 133

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

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. They’re spending a lot on online marketing and acquisitions and servicing all those leads from a low-cost place like India. It helped them get funding in the first round. The lesson?

Sales Hiring 225

Sales Hiring Scale SMB AI 225

ProfitWell

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

New customers will also become more profitable faster, which helps offset customer acquisition costs (CAC) and increases lifetime value (LTV). The most expensive option outside of Huawei’s new entrant to the market was a Samsung phone clocking in at $1,980—three times greater than the phone’s initial price in 2011.

Pricing 49

Pricing Scale Social Media Branding 49

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 7, 2020

Action Rocket has years of experience strategizing and executing custom HTML and CSS email and CRM development programs for enterprise companies: Founded in 2011, the company works with a knit-team of experienced developers who are excellent at strategy, design, and coding of complex and customized email programs.

Software Review 102

Software Review Marketing Technical Review Outsourced Development 102

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

500 list of Fastest Growing Companies for 2011, and Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes’ Top 30 Social Sellers in the World. Andrew is currently VP of Field Sales at GuideSpark and the former VP of WW Sales Development + Pipeline at Responsys, where he helped lead the company to an acquisition by Oracle for $1.6

Scale 90

Scale Sales Hiring Management Sales 90

ProfitWell

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

Conducting a pricing audit goes through five factors—acquisition, monetization, retention, pricing strategy, and discounts. Acquisition. The first thing a pricing audit will examine is customer acquisition , which is the process of gaining new customers and perhaps the most literal way to grow your customer base. Monetization.

Payments 45

Payments Pricing Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Payments 45

OpenView Labs

APRIL 22, 2020

The main benefit of freemium is its role as a low-cost acquisition strategy—it removes the barrier to trying out a product before buying it. Example : Back in 2011, HubSpot sold its software only in Good-Better-Best packages. But the same old rules of freemium still apply.

Payments 54

Payments Pricing Payment Methods SaaS Payments 54

Brian Balfour

JULY 12, 2017

Don't have team members focused on user acquisition and team members focused on product in silos from each other. Old Channels Get Killed Off In late 2011 Pinterest hit an inflection point and their growth started to take off. This is partly why cross functional growth teams have emerged. The channel does not mold to the product.

Strategy 90

Strategy Growth Hacking Mobile Product Marketing 90

OPEXEngine

JULY 28, 2020

Tencent used the partnerships and acquisitions to enhance its in-house gaming capabilities while giving the smaller companies a large platform to extend their offerings in China. Similarly, Tencent has built WeChat into China’s “super app” by encouraging outside developers to create mini apps that live on the WeChat social platform.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Strategy Payment Services Scale 52

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Specifically, it illustrates the need for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to spend money - lots of it - on customer acquisition. times more on customer acquisition than annual revenues, and in 2007 it spent nearly 18 times more than annual revenues. In 2008, it spent 2.5 A typical sales cycle can extend over 6-9 months.

Acquisition 140

Acquisition Enterprise Revenue SaaS 140

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Yesterday, SAP announced it would acquire Concur for $8.3B, the single largest SaaS acquisition in history in dollar terms. To put this acquisition in context, I looked at six other public-to-public acquisitions, where one publicly traded company acquired another. Year of Acquisition. Transaction. Price ($M). Growth Rate.

Acquisition 100

Acquisition SaaS Pricing Enterprise 100

Brian Balfour

AUGUST 3, 2017

Because their product is focused on simplicity and touchless they can use virality via the free tier as the primary acquisition channel (Product Channel Fit). As a result they've differentiated their product on being simple and touchless (Market Product Fit). One of the reasons were they hit product channel fit.

Scale 57

Scale Marketing Growth Hacking Business Model 57

Sales Hacker

JUNE 11, 2019

The Challenger Sale methodology originated in 2011, when a book authored by CEB’s Matthew Dixon categorized sales professionals into five classes: Relationship builders. Choose a methodology that’s too complex, and you increase the cost of acquisition, spending too much on lower-value customers. SNAP Selling. Solution Selling.

Sales 77

Sales Consulting Business Outsourced Development 77

SaaStock

MARCH 20, 2019

Founded: 2011. Founded: 2011. By making sense of the data, businesses can increase their customer acquisition and retention. Founded: 2011. Founded: 2011. Their products include POS, hardware, software, and payment processing with a large number of additional options provided by their great ecosystem of partners.

SaaS Payments 271

SaaS Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payments 271

The Marketing & Growth Hacking Publication

FEBRUARY 3, 2019

billion in online revenue compared to just $57 million in 2011. eCommerce vendors, re-sellers and other entities need a whole new business cycle to support this kind of acquisition pattern. The subscription eCommerce market has grown by a whopping 100% year-over-year for the past five years.

Payment Methods 40

Payment Methods Payments Payment Features Subscription 40