Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2022

2015 Return Multiple by Round. RM at $1.5b (2015). The silver lining: the median public software company in 2022 is three times as valuable as in 2015, which suggests valuations should settle higher than that era. With at least 20 firms and several partners per firm chasing unicorns, upstarts faced stiff odds.

Startup 217

Startup Software Investment SaaS 217

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

2015 will be an exciting year for Startupland. Importantly, investors have raised nearly twice as much capital in 2014 as in 2013 and their coffers are well stocked to finance new and fast-growing companies. There’s a world of potential right around the corner, and it’s plain to see looking at employment and fundraising data.

Startup 100

Startup Finance Innovation Technology 100

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2023

David Sacks (Yammer) & Stewart Butterfield (Slack): Unicorns or Bust A true classic from the very first SaaStr Annual in 2015. #4. The Cadence: How to Turn Your SaaS Startup into an Army w/Craft Ventures General Partner David Sacks A favorite on now to get the team to deliver more — without breaking them. #3.

Headcount 225

Headcount Startup Scaling SaaS 225

Tom Tunguz

JULY 13, 2015

Each year, starting in mid-2012 through mid-2015, these sectors have grown their investment dollars by more than 145%, according to Mattermark data. Bitcoin is the fastest growing sector followed by photo sharing and physical storage (which includes moving and self storage companies).

Investment 100

Investment Startup Transportation Venture Capital 100

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2021

Even ten years on, in 2015, it still had just 10 full-time employees. from 2015 to 2016 … and then exploded: UIPath History. 2015: $1m rev. And then after a decade … it started to come together. Revenue grew nicely at first from $1m to $3.5m 2005: Started as a tech outsourcing company. 2014: $500k rev. seed round.

Outsourcing Services 361

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Payment Features Cloud 361

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2021

From 10,000 customers in 2015 to 50,000 in 2021. Freshworks quintupled its customer base from 2015 to 2021. And Freshssales is the smallest of its big 3 products, but even there, they have 6,500 customers today, vs. 8,900 on Freshservice and 35,800 on Freshdesk. #5. Just a visceral reminder of how things compound in SaaS.

Scale 352

Scale SMB Scaling Subscription 352

Incredo

DECEMBER 29, 2013

5 Digital Marketing Behaviors to Avoid in 2015. The post Outsourcing Social Media: 5 Mistakes To Avoid In 2015 appeared first on Incredo. Social media is a very powerful tool to interact, communicate and connect your customers and outsourcing social media can be very powerful…provided you don’t make the mistakes above.

Outsourcing Services 100

Outsourcing Services Social Media Advertising Communication 100

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

It formed the basis for a career at HubSpot predicated on consistent quantitative analysis to scale the go-to-market, which he detailed in the Sales Acceleration Formula in 2015. Mark Roberge ran this regression in Excel about 10 years ago. I think it’s still one of the best books on how to repeatably scale sales teams.

Sales Hiring 326

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 326

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2023

seed round 2015: $1m 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 ! UIPath History 2005: Started as a tech outsourcing company 2014: $500k rev. 2016: $3.5m rev 2017: $30m rev. 2018: $155m rev.

Company Culture 253

Company Culture AI Innovation Enterprise 253

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 313

Finance Startup 313

Tom Tunguz

JULY 30, 2021

I wrote a post in 2015 called The Runaway Train of Late Stage Fundraising that examined the disparity between the number of growth rounds and unicorns versus the number of IPOs. VC fundraising will achieve a record. Valuations are at decade highs. There are 3-5 financings and M&A every working day.

Finance 329

Finance Startup Investment Marketing 329

SaaStr

MAY 7, 2023

Ray Wang of Constellation Research and Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Officer, had me back after a long time on DisrupTV.

Interviewing 208

Interviewing Investment SaaS Sales 208

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2023

[link] — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  (@jasonlk) August 29, 2023 I was lucky enough to be the first venture investor in a next-gneration ediscovery startup, Logikcull, way back in 2015.

Acquisition 219

Acquisition Scaling Startup SaaS 219

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 24, 2022

In 2015, Dremio started in our offices. Today, the company announced its Series E at $2 billion valuation. The business has cemented itself as a foundational component of the Modern Data Stack. About seven years ago, Dremio’s founder Tomer envisioned a product that would enable customers to manage data and compute separately.

Data 257

Data Cloud Engineering Management 257

Clouded Judgement

JULY 21, 2023

I went back and looked at an old research report from Morgan Stanley from 2015 (believe this was after their first quarter as a public company). In March 2015 the Morgan Stanley model predicted Box would generate $400m of FCF in 2025. What I found was incredibly interesting. In other words, these transitions can be in fact predictable.

Cloud 130

Cloud Software Sales Hiring Scale 130

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2021

Just a few examples: UiPath took 10 years to get to its first $1m in ARR in 2015. . — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 28, 2021. And yet … and yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean they started so fast. Then, it accelerated like a rocket. Procore is a $16B+ leader in construction software, but took a full decade to take off.

Construction 281

Construction Cloud Scaling Product Marketing 281

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2022

In the run-up to SaaStr Annual 2022 on September 13-15 , we wanted to look back at some of the highest-rated SaaStr sessions of all time, since the first SaaStr Annual in 2015. . — dharmesh (@dharmesh) January 21, 2022. If you want to grab 20% off SaaStr Annual 2022 tickets, grab ’em here.

CTO 257

CTO Retention Startup Scaling 257

SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2023

Since late 2015, trusted and empowered “Bobbers” from around the world have brought their authentic selves to work, inspired to build our exceptional HR systems that will revolutionize the work experience for HR professionals, managers, and employees alike.

Cloud 211

Cloud Scale Startup Sales Hiring 211

SaaStr

DECEMBER 7, 2019

The first one defined the Unicorn age in 2013, and the second one updated it in 2015. Aileen / Cowboy found in 2015 that SaaS founders at founding were 35 years young on average, and 39 in the enterprise: The average age at founding was 34 years old (same as our last post). So perhaps the average SaaStr CEO started around 34.

SaaS 213

SaaS Enterprise Data 213

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2023

Then, well, right after we sold EchoSign to Adobe way back in 2011, things picked up, with a slow with material and steady increase in public multiples from 2012 to 2015. Public multiples often were around 4x-5x in 2008, and then the global meltdown came, and public multiples fell to as less than 2x revenue for a while.

SaaS 231

SaaS Trends Enterprise Revenue 231

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2022

It’s not slowing down Salesforce, Snowflake, or almost any other SaaS or Cloud leader. Salesforce Growth: 2023 $31.8B (guidance) 2022 $26.5B 2021 $21.25B 2020 $17.1B 2014 $4.1B. Thank you Ohana! pic.twitter.com/CMhrBXgHSF. — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) May 31, 2022. We may be headed for a big downturn, we’ll see.

Sales Hiring 318

Sales Hiring Acquisition Cloud Enterprise 318

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

My first exposure to the “Rule of 40” was through Brad Feld in 2015. Relative to today’s frothy SaaS fundraising environment, capital was comparatively scarce in 2015 when Brad Feld popularized the “Rule of 40.” Capital efficiency is especially important when capital is scarce.

SaaS 264

SaaS Technical Review Benchmarks Azure 264

ReSci

OCTOBER 8, 2015

The post Insights from Shop.org 2015 appeared first on ReSci. We had the opportunity to interact with some amazing brands, learn about the latest and greatest in retail, and hunt down some authentic cheesesteaks in the City of Brotherly Love.

Retention 40

Retention Branding 40

Aber Law Firm

JUNE 9, 2015

The post The 2015 Update on SaaS Trust Sites appeared first on Software Attorney. . – Also, remember that these sites are external to your SaaS agreement, which I suggest is a good thing. In the SaaS world, a customer is unlikely to buy you service if they don’t trust you! Carve that in virtual stone.

SaaS 52

SaaS Education Cloud Communication 52

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 17, 2021

Here are 2015 , 2017 , This year, I was certain the categories would have been influenced by COVID19. From time to time, I chart the fastest growing categories of startup investment in the US for seed through Series C.

Startup 349

Startup Software Engineering Finance Engineering 349

Aber Law Firm

JUNE 9, 2015

The post The 2015 Update on SaaS Trust Sites appeared first on Software Attorney. . – Also, remember that these sites are external to your SaaS agreement, which I suggest is a good thing. In the SaaS world, a customer is unlikely to buy you service if they don’t trust you! Carve that in virtual stone.

SaaS 52

SaaS Education Cloud Communication 52

ReSci

MARCH 10, 2015

The post Highlights from Bronto Summit 2015 appeared first on ReSci. Our sales team went out to meet all fellow Brontos, soak up some rays, and listen to awesome keynotes. They've come back enviably tan and excited to share what they learned.

Sales 40

Sales 40

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2020

In 2015, Microsoft wanted to help accelerate its SaaS / Cloud strategy and made a bunch of bets. But the reality is, it’s 0.1% of Microsoft’s market cap. For a Really Big Tech Company, any acquisition of less than about $1b is somewhere between an experiment and a bet. Sometimes, a very big experiment. But an experiment.

Azure 281

Azure Cloud Acquisition Strategy 281

CloseSaaS

SEPTEMBER 27, 2015

For Business of Software 2015 (BoS 15) Boston, I recently had the honor of speaking there and giving a sales workshop.

Software 52

Software Business Sales SaaS 52

SaaStr

JUNE 30, 2023

From 2011 to 2015, the only part of the mobile market that was making money was mobile gaming, but tricking children into buying fish food wasn’t a sustainable business. Braze didn’t find a true product-market fit until around 2014-2015. It’s to give you the opportunity to already be building for the market while it’s still developing.”

Scale 200

Scale Mobile Venture Capital Scaling 200

ReSci

JULY 24, 2015

We're excited to be attending Client Summit 2015 from July 29-31 in Las Vegas in a few days. The post Our Top Picks for Experian Client Summit 2015 appeared first on ReSci. This year's Summit focuses on the latest technology, trends, data and analytics, which is right up our alley.

Trends 40

Trends Technology Data Marketing 40

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2022

Rare – only happened twice since 2015 (the other month being April 2020). Last month, more employees were laid off from startups on @cartainc platform than left their jobs by choice. But Jan is usually a strong hiring month – fingers crossed that's true. cc: @nmasc_ @alex pic.twitter.com/jqlvniO0bX.

Startup 206

Startup Cloud Data Metrics 206

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2020

And until about 2015 or so, it was hard to raise your own fund. Because as soon as market dynamics changed, 500+ small VC funds were raised since 2015! …. If you have a strong track record, it’s pretty easy to raise a fund the last few years. Because the LPs (folks that invest in VC funds) want to put their money into winners.

Investment 196

Investment Branding Management Marketing 196

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2021

Salesforce Growth: 2021 $20.8B Guidance 2020 $17.1B 2014 $4.1B. Thank you Ohana! — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) August 25, 2020. If you haven’t done a SaaS start-up before, it’s different. The reasons are many, but I think they can almost all be summed up in one key factor: SaaS compounds.

SaaS 314

SaaS Travel Churn Revenue 314

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

Box in 2015 was the first IPO from the SaaS 2.0 version of BigMachines) for $360m in 2015 to Salesforce ! The second SaaStr post ever, way back in late 2012, was “ Everybody Lies: SaaS Revenues in the Inc. 5000 “ It was a fun one, analyzing the only public source of data on just how much ARR a lot of SaaS companies had.

SaaS 270

SaaS Technical Review Scaling Software Review 270

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 19, 2023

This surge could parallel the personal computer’s doubling of the US labor productivity rate from 2005-2015 when computers penetrated most business operations which correlates to Moore’s Law according to a research report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Artificial Intelligence 176

Artificial Intelligence AI Search Government Banking 176

SaaStr

DECEMBER 6, 2022

At the first SaaStr Annual ever in 2015, Stewart was kind enough to be our final speaker, sharing the stage with David Sacks. Stewart Butterfield announced this week he’s handing the reins over now to Lidiane Jones at Salesforce. It’s the end of one era and the beginning of another. The only one I didn’t know.

Entrepreneurship 222

Entrepreneurship SaaS Travel Acquisition 222