Tom Tunguz

APRIL 1, 2019

In 2014, I published a post called Do Startup Require Less Capital to Succeed than 10 Years Ago ? In 2014 we saw increasing efficiencies over time, which was very exciting because it reaffirmed the efficiency of SaaS go-to-market. SaaS companies go public later. The chart above updates that analysis. of revenue at IPO.

Startup 267

Startup Software Review SaaS Acquisition 267

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2019

How far along was the typical SaaS Series A in 2018? The chart below shows a representative sample of SaaS Series As’ ARR and projected ARR growth rate for 2018. In 4 years, we’ve seen a 4x increase in the median MRR of a Series A SaaS company. The median business was at $1.8M in ARR and growing at 250%.

Benchmarks 237

Benchmarks Startup SaaS Data Analysis 237

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2020

IPO in 2014 at $1B. These are the Best of TImes in Cloud and SaaS. The post The Power of Going Long in SaaS appeared first on SaaStr. in first angel round in 2007. Worth $2B by 2017. Crossed $1B in ARR in 2020. Today worth $16B. Obviously, these are outliers. And revenue has grown to $1B+ ARR for all the winners.

SaaS 202

SaaS SMB Cloud Revenue 202

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 25, 2024

In 2014, I remember joining a panel at the Gainsight annual conference Pulse, then in its second year. The companies who master this skill will be the early leaders of the next era of SaaS. Sellers & the startups they represent will need to re-imagine roles. In a sense, selling AI agents is analogous to category creation.

AI 172

AI Startup Technology Customer Success 172

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2021

Five9 is a $12B SaaS company many of you haven’t heard of, but it’s an interesting beneficiary of Covid in many ways. In 2014, when I invested in then up-and-comer Talkdesk , it had long since IPO’d and was struggling at a $200m market cap. And Five9 has grown from just 3 $1m ACV customers in 2014 to 91 today: #2.

Systems Review 339

Systems Review Technical Review Software Review Cloud 339

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2024

If you got 10, 50, 100 businessess to actually buy Yet Another SaaS Product — that is something. << I remember back in 2014, I was at an event with a CEO that was truly great. I know you aren’t doing as well as Figma or OpenAI. But it’s possible you are doing better than you think. Quite a bit.

Startup 299

Startup Investment Product Marketing Revenue 299

SaaStock

MARCH 26, 2019

As we have showcased in previous pieces, there are many reasons to be excited about the Latin American SaaS ecosystem. Not only is the region producing superstar SaaS contenders, but the interest from local and international VCs is increasing. However, our interest goes beyond the current state of SaaS in Latin America.

Startup 210

Startup Artificial Intelligence SaaS Construction 210

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2017

When I analyzed the SaaS fundraising market in 2016 , three trends emerged. The number of SaaS companies raising rounds had stalled, while the total number of dollars plateaued. A year later, those trends have continued to converge, and SaaS valuations have resurged, reaching their highs of the 2014-2015 boom.

Venture Capital 176

Venture Capital SaaS Trends Startup 176

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2022

Some areas of spending are slowing in the economy, but SaaS overall is still growing faster than ever. It’s not slowing down Salesforce, Snowflake, or almost any other SaaS or Cloud leader. 2014 $4.1B. 2014 $4.1B. But it’s not here yet, at least not across the board on average in SaaS. 2021 $21.25B 2020 $17.1B

Sales Hiring 318

Sales Hiring Cloud Acquisition Enterprise 318

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2023

UIPath History 2005: Started as a tech outsourcing company 2014: $500k rev. UiPath has had an incredible history, taking 10 years to get to that first $1m in ARR … and then turning into one of the fastest growing software companies to $1 Billion in ARR ever ! seed round 2015: $1m rev. 2016: $3.5m rev 2017: $30m rev. 2018: $155m rev.

Company Culture 253

Company Culture AI Innovation Enterprise 253

SaaStr

DECEMBER 7, 2023

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. What’s the #1 bit of advice you’d give to SaaS founders today? Since 2014 Jay has invested in over 90 startup companies with 35 successful exits. Why did you do the deal?

Development Team Review 222

Development Team Review Management Technical Review Social Media 222

How To Buy Saas

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is one of the transformative services in the modern digital landscape. The SaaS development market evolves rapidly and, according to Fortune Business Insights, by 2030, will reach 908 billion dollars. Businesses of any size and industry can find reliable SaaS development partners.

DevOps as a Service 40

DevOps as a Service Development Technical Review Blockchain 40

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Debt for SaaS companies done right is a gift. Few folks have more data than Nathan Latka and he offers up some insights on how to properly leverage up in SaaS. Geoffrey Moore calls this group the Late Majority and the Laggards in his book Crossing the Chasm , a secret bible for many SaaS CEO’s. . — ed.

Venture Capital 219

Venture Capital Technical Review Banking SaaS 219

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2023

We’ll see 2,500+ of the best SaaS founders, execs, and VCs June 6-7 at 2022 SaaStr Europa ! Founded in 2014, PSG has since raised over $14 billion in capital and has a team of more than 150 investment professionals. Vertice is a tech-enabled SaaS purchasing platform. Grab tickets here. We think about it in 2 parts.

Outsourced Development 207

Outsourced Development Acquisition B2B Technology 207

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.

Management 214

Management Finance Subscription Payment Features 214

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

DECEMBER 3, 2013

I know you’re up to your eyeballs already with your 2014 planning, but I’m going to add another chore to your “to do” list. This work by Peter Cohen, SaaS Marketing Strategy Advisors is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 I'll start by apologizing. Contact me and I can tell you more.) Why not now? Unported License.

Headcount 100

Headcount Social Media Interviewing Mobile 100

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2019

We kicked off our 5 Interesting Learnings series with “newer” SaaS companies for the most part, and learnings as they IPO’d: 5 Interesting Learnings from PagerDuty, as It IPOs. HubSpot is a great one that IPO’d way back in 2014 ?? If you have something great in SaaS, never sell ??. As it IPOs.

Outsourcing Services 324

Outsourcing Services Scale SMB Pricing 324

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 21, 2017

Last week, I participated in two discussions about the changes in the SaaS world. The level of competition in many core SaaS segments is intense. The SaaS era is about 20 years old. Over that 20 year period, annual SaaS investment has increased 20x, peaking in 2014 at $7B. The table stakes in SaaS are rising.

SaaS 180

SaaS Venture Capital Finance Machine Learning 180

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2022

Here are the total shares outstanding for a few public SaaS companies. Older companies SaaS companies (Salesforce/CRM) and newer ones (Coupa/COUP) show similar trajectories. The patterns for crypto token issuance diverge wildly compared to SaaS stocks. How similar are equity inflation and deflation patterns to tokens?

Startup 265

Startup Sales Hiring Government Outsourced Development 265

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2019

In 2014, the median touched 7.7x Forward revenue is the sum of the projected revenues over the next 12 months. The blue line the chart is the median over the period which is approximately 5.7x. The red line shows the median across the stocks in that particular month. forward before falling by about 60% to 3.3x two years later.

SaaS 279

SaaS Enterprise Software Metrics 279

SaaStr

OCTOBER 21, 2021

VC in Algolia back in 2014, and it’s now a $2B+ search API giant. A great chat with a veteran SaaS CMO on how to scale marketing and more: 3. I was lucky enough to be the first U.S. Casey did a deep dive on the future of APIs and more here: 2. Jeff Yoshimura, CMO at Synk.

Scaling 250

Scaling SaaS Marketing 250

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2021

Pretty incredible for a product that just launched in 2014. Perhaps not a surprise that SaaS leaders like Wix and Monday that started outside of the U.S. Many SaaS startups that start outside the U.S. We’ve seen this again and again with so many SaaS leaders. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. have more revenue there.

Scale 361

Scale SMB Government Enterprise 361

Incredo

JUNE 25, 2019

But when it comes to SaaS, freemium plans become a reality. SaaS freemium model: The What, The How and The Why. The concept of freemium is mainly typical for the SaaS world (yeah, SaaS means the world to us) and the video games industry. But Slack’s free-to-paid conversion rate in 2014 reached 30%.

SaaS 236

SaaS Pricing Software Review Acquisition 236

SaaStock

JANUARY 25, 2019

The Latin American SaaS landscape is hustling and bustling, having seen more IPOs in the last 6 months than the previous 20 years combined. We will gather 300 leading SaaS founders, executives and investors for three days packed with opportunities and rich exchange of knowledge to push the whole ecosystem forward. Founded : 2013.

SaaS Payments 257

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payments 257

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2021

and as Cloud continues to scale: Many of the best in SaaS are accelerating even at massive scale. The grandparent of SaaS blew out last quarter, growing 23% at $24B+ in ARR!! It seems like every market in SaaS is even bigger than we expected, and importantly, able to not just hit $1B in ARR but accelerate afterwards. 2014 $4.1B.

Cloud 279

Cloud Scaling SaaS Revenue 279

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2021

23 SaaStr 179: What It Means To Be An ARR First SaaS Company, The Most Commonly Misunderstood SaaS Metrics & Why Renewals Does Not Mean Happy Customers with Dave Kellogg, CEO @ Host Analytics. #22 The post Top 25 SaaStr Podcasts of All Time – Part 1 (#25-#13) appeared first on SaaStr.

Scale 241

Scale Benchmarks Enterprise Leadership 241

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 17, 2018

Recently, people have been asking just where are we in the SaaS valuation cycle. Since 2013, we seen an incredible amount of volatility in SaaS forward multiples. The peak occurred in February 2014 at 7.7x. Since that moment, SaaS multiples have more than doubled from to 7.2x. The answer is close to ten year highs.

SaaS 147

SaaS Healthcare SMB Enterprise 147

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 26, 2018

Just where are we pricing SaaS companies today? The answer is yes, they have, but enterprise value to forward revenue multiples are still at some of the highest levels for SaaS companies in the past eight years. In February 2014, forward multiples touched 7.7x. Reading the news in the past week made me wonder.

Pricing 156

Pricing SaaS Startup Investment 156

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Also, 2014 to 2016 saw a 57% reduction in multiples and of course after 2008. Cloud companies’ fast growth multiplied by an appreciation in multiples has pushed valuations higher since 2014. The post The Fifth SaaS Correction appeared first on OPEXEngine. Today, we’re in the midst of the fifth. Correction Year.

SaaS 52

SaaS Cloud Enterprise Software 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

And when we wrote in 2014 that Box would surely cross $1B in ARR , many at the time didn’t quite get SaaS yet — or the power of recurring revenue. This is a common theme from almost all SaaS leaders at scale. Box has been an important part of SaaStr almost since the beginning.

Scale 281

Scale compliance Enterprise Scaling 281

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 28, 2017

The public markets have changed the way they value SaaS companies. The median forward revenue multiple for SaaS business reached its peak in February 2014, fell to its nadir two years later, and has since recovered, hovering at around five times forward revenue – where it has remained with little variance over the last six months.

SaaS 100

SaaS Acquisition Trends Retention 100

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

Lesson: It wasn’t without its flaws, but Prescriptive Methodology, to me, is one of the most critical step functions for any SaaS company in a new category. After the initial event exceeded our expectations, I decided to up my game for 2014. So at Pulse 2014, I became a “grown-up CEO.” Try to have more gravitas.”

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 263

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 27, 2015

The first SaaS startup started as a packaged software company. So the business evolved again and became a pure SaaS business, selling software accessible to anyone with a browser. Thirteen years later, the company generated more than $600M in annual revenue in 2014 and sold to SAP for $8.3B SaaS history isn’t very long.

SaaS 108

SaaS Cloud Travel Business Model 108

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2021

UiPath is one of the most amazing not-really-an-overnight success stories in Cloud, SaaS and software. 2014: $500k rev. One of the fastest-growing SaaS companies ever. Is it really SaaS? Even if a lot of the revenue isn’t truly recurring SaaS revenue. Revenue grew nicely at first from $1m to $3.5m

Outsourcing Services 361

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Payment Features Cloud 361

The Angel VC

AUGUST 26, 2015

Yesterday I argued that SaaS founders and investors shouldn’t worry about short-term movements of SaaS stocks and said that there are a lot of reasons to be bullish about the Cloud. 1) SaaS is quickly becoming the norm In the last years there’s been a dramatic shift in deployment preferences of software buyers.

SaaS 173

SaaS Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Construction 173

CloseSaaS

MAY 29, 2014

More and more SaaS companies are implementing customer success strategies and hiring dedicated customer success managers (CSMs). Here are some of our takeaways from Pulse 2014. We recently attended Gainsight Pulse, the preeminent gathering for customer success professionals.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Hiring SaaS Strategy 52

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 22, 2015

In 2015, SaaS companies trade at a 30% lower multiple of revenue than last year. In early 2014, the typical SaaS company traded at about 9.2x Since August 2014, that figure has dropped by about 30% to about 6.0x. Almost every public SaaS company has seen multiple compression. their next-twelve-months of revenue.

SaaS 100

SaaS Forecasting Investment Trends 100