SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2024

We’ve had so many great times with Rippling execs over the years, from CEO Parker Conrad joining us for the first SaaStr Annual waaay back in 2015 (!), Join Team Rippling and 10,000+ of The Best in SaaS and Cloud at SaaStr Annual 2025!! to helping kick off SaaStr Europa 2023.

Cloud 297

Cloud SaaS 297

SaaStr

JUNE 9, 2020

That’s down from 50%+ in December 2015. It’s just … The Rest of the Cloud has really grown up. Shopify has become a vibrant ecosystem. Twilio has become an enabler. Zoom and Slack have become forces of nature. Salesforce still stands above. It’s just, there are more giants now. Salesforce is still huge.

Cloud 337

Cloud Enterprise SaaS Software 337

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2021

But then, growth became insane, rocketing from $1M in 2015 to $600M in 2021! UiPath is hyper-enterprise ($1m+ customers) and really on-prem software for the Cloud. More on that here. Maybe the real point is that these 3 different software companies are so different. Squarespace is self-service and SMB focused.

Construction 342

Construction SMB Mobile Cloud 342

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2022

It’s not slowing down Salesforce, Snowflake, or almost any other SaaS or Cloud leader. Blame “the economy” too much, and you’re doing yourself a disservice. 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.

Sales Hiring 347

Sales Hiring Acquisition Cloud Enterprise 347

SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2021

While there are always bumps, I’d give it a 10/10, for first time since #001 in 2015. We’re waiting on the survey details, but despite all the odds, it looks like it will be our highest NPS event since the first Annual in 2015. So that’s a wrap on SaaStr Annual 2021, #007. THANK YOU to everyone that made it out!!

Cloud 321

Cloud Startup 321

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2021

and as Cloud continues to scale: Many of the best in SaaS are accelerating even at massive scale. Zscaler , a quiet giant in Cloud security, also accelerated to 60% growth at $700m ARR! Cloud is just on fire. They did it the hard way, with SMBs. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) May 6, 2021. Growth at $500m ARR is 51%.

Cloud 306

Cloud Scaling SaaS Revenue 306

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2020

And yes, no one could have predicted the run we’ve seen in Cloud in the past few years. 2015 IPO at $1.27B. These are the Best of TImes in Cloud and SaaS. . — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) December 7, 2020. Sometimes, it makes sense to sell your company. Or pack it in. Or move on to the next thing. 100x from IPO.

SaaS 289

SaaS SMB Cloud Revenue 289

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 24, 2022

In 2015, Dremio started in our offices. Last year, the company introduced Dremio Cloud - a fully managed, data lakehouse. 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.

Data 278

Data Cloud Engineering Management 278

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2020

One thing is the same: SaaStr Annual is the largest global gathering of SaaS and Cloud founders in the world. But if you want to meet with, interact with, share with, and sell to 5,000+ SaaS and Cloud CEOs (out of 15,000 attendees), SaaStr Annual is the place. And how has that changed over the years? A lot more to do here.

Cloud 281

Cloud Engineering Trends SaaS 281

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

Aaron Levie was kind enough to come to our first SaaStr Annual in 2015, just a week after their IPO. In many ways, they “won” the Cloud enterprise content management segment. Box has been an important part of SaaStr almost since the beginning. Box is a great case study to follow. Now we’ll see how they expand it. ….

Scale 312

Scale compliance Enterprise Scaling 312

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

Founded : 2015. It is a cloud-based platform that offers the services of Asia’s top AI assistant for hotel staff – Gaia. It provides smart hardware self-development and cloud service. Mobingi integrates server deployment, scaling and application lifecycle automation through its cloud solution. Founded : 2015.

SaaS Payments 225

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Merchant Services Payment Methods 225

SaaStr

OCTOBER 14, 2021

It was exciting at YC 2015 Demo Day. Most customers still deploy GitLab to their own private or hybrid Cloud. So GitLab is one of those ones that sort of … always was doing well. It was exciting as it scaled to be a more “enterprise” Github at first. And GitLab closed their first $1m customer in 2019.

Outsourced Development 67

Outsourced Development Software Development Innovation Cloud 67

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2020

We’ve recently checked in with a bunch of our Cloud and SaaS favorites as they cross $1B in ARR: 5 Interesting Learnings from Zendesk. But we’ve seen many SaaS and Cloud leaders manage to maintain consistent net retention at $1B+ ARR. So this 5 Interesting Learnings post is a bit bittersweet. As It Crosses $1B in ARR.

SMB 299

SMB Enterprise Cloud Retention 299

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2021

The IPOs sure are a-flyin’ these days in SaaS and Cloud. 2015 customer account size has grown 4.3x WalkMe’s early-ish customers from 2015 had grown 4.3x One of the latest was WalkMe, a tool so many leaders use to help make navigating websites easier and reduce user friction. in size over 6 years.

Scale 304

Scale Cloud Revenue SaaS 304

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2022

In 2015, SaaS cloud-based content management tool Box went public. We restructured all of our messaging around our Content Cloud to create a simplified go-to-market message that says what it does, and does what it says. At Box, we’ve found a lot of success in getting customers to adopt new features within Content Cloud.

Scale 306

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 306

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 19, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. ” If we look historically at the period from 2015-2020 (ignoring 2021 IPOs) the rough medians were ~$200m ARR (minimum was $100m ARR), 50% YoY growth, and >120% net retention. Subscribe now Share Clouded Judgement Leave a comment

Cloud 184

Cloud Scale Compensation Metrics 184

SaaStr

APRIL 29, 2021

Shopify’s first quarter revenue: Q1 2021: $989 million Q1 2020: $470 million Q1 2019: $321 million Q1 2018: $214 million Q1 2017: $127 million Q1 2016: $73 million Q1 2015: $37 million Q1 2014: $19 million Q1 2013: $9 million. Cloud and ecommerce may end soon, but it hasn’t ended yet. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1.

Merchant Services 316

Merchant Services Payment Methods SaaS Payments Payments 316

SaaStock

JANUARY 25, 2019

Since its launch in 2015, it has attracted more than 4,500 retailers who use it as their central marketplace. Founded : 2015. Founded : 2015. The Mexico-based SaaS startup offers simple cloud-based software for handling employee payments, benefits, and data. Founded : 2015. Funding to Date : $26.2M Founded : 2012.

SaaS Payments 257

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payments 257

Clouded Judgement

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. I looked at the period of 2015 - 2020 (right up until Covid, so excluding the Covid bubble) and picked out all of the cloud software companies that at one point in time were trading at >10x NTM revenue. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 130

Cloud Pricing Investment Revenue 130

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 25, 2020

In 2015, we partnered with two young founders to build Dremio. If you keep data in cloud data lake stores, and need a system to make that data accessible to analysis tools at interactive speed - without moving it - you’re looking for Dremio. We shared a vision for a new way of working with data. That’s Dremio.

Engineering 260

Engineering Data Azure Data Analysis 260

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

This led to our first meet-ups in 2013 and 2014, the first SaaStr Annual in 2015 , the industry’s leading podcast in 2016, the first SaaS founder coworking space in 2017, and SaaStr Pro , the first learning management system for SaaS founders in 2018. 2015 The First SaaStr Annual: Escape Velocity. It was a hit! Back together again!

Scale 312

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 312

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2023

It’s a time when SaaS and Cloud spend are also at record highs , and many Cloud leaders are still growing at strong rates … yet many startups have stopped growing at all. You can see here multiples are touching the lows of early 2016 and are even lower than 2015 and those early days of SaaS. And really worst of all is multiples.

New CTO 306

New CTO CTO Banking Cloud 306

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. The chart below shows the median NTM FCF margins of the software index going back to 2015. Subscribe now Share Clouded Judgement Leave a comment Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Are Software Companies Over or Undervalued?

Software Review 190

Software Review Cloud Software Revenue 190

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 30, 2022

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. The below chart shows the difference in the top quartile multiple vs bottom quartile multiple going back to 2015 (ie how much bigger the top quartile multiple is than bottom quartile). Subscribe now Share Clouded Judgement Leave a comment

Cloud 130

Cloud Payment Features Subscription Pricing 130

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2022

Rare – only happened twice since 2015 (the other month being April 2020). But with Cloud still growing overall, I thought the overall pain would be real but more muted than it looked on Twitter and the tech press. Last month, more employees were laid off from startups on @cartainc platform than left their jobs by choice.

Startup 275

Startup Cloud Data Metrics 275

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2021

A lot of what has made SaaStr Annual great since 2015. The final slots will be prioritzed for less represented speakers from leading Cloud companies. It is the #1 place to meet Cloud and SaaS VCs. The first major B2B tech event since … well … since Feb 2020 is here! The 7th SaaStr Annual!! What can we expect?

Cloud 305

Cloud B2B SaaS Pricing 305

SaaStr

AUGUST 18, 2024

Flexibility The second word of the word cloud was flexibility. In 2015, Beefree was established in the U.S., Beefree asks people to use an open Slack channel instead of a private message or email unless it’s confidential. Almost everyone was in the office when Growens started about 10 years ago. If you weren’t, you were the exception.

Retention 317

Retention Scale Company Culture Leadership 317

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

Founded in 2015, Klue addresses a part of the corporate world that has seen little innovation. The main value prop is treating competitive intel as a living cloud document,” said Murray. Craft Ventures led the round and there was participation from HWVP, OMERS Ventures, Rhino Ventures, and BDC Ventures.

Consulting 279

Consulting Interviewing AI Innovation 279

Clouded Judgement

JULY 21, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Let’s look at Salesforce - they may be in maturity mode in their core CRM business, but they also have marketing, commerce and data cloud products that are not in maturity mode. Follow along to stay up to date! ” Quite the claim!

Cloud 130

Cloud Software Sales Hiring Scale 130

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2022

State of the Cloud 2021 with Bessemer Venture Partners. #22. A real classic from the first SaaStr Annual in 2015! #24. The Things Nobody Tells You About An $8B Acquisition with Ryan Smith from Qualtrics. #21. How the Best Outbound Sales Teams Are Managed with ServiceNow, Box, and Mark Roberge. #23.

VP of Engineering 278

VP of Engineering Scale Outbound Sales Team SMB 278

Clouded Judgement

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. But this median is close to as low as it’s gotten since 2015. Subscribe now Share Clouded Judgement Leave a comment Follow along to stay up to date! Already we’ve seen huge earnings move.

Software Review 167

Software Review Cloud Software Azure 167

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, came to SaaStr’s first big community event in 2015, one week after Box’s IPO. “Do Almost all Cloud and SaaS leaders have become profitable. How SaaS Is Fairing in the Macro Economy It’s crazy how much more efficient the leaders in SaaS and Cloud have gotten in one year. Lemkin asked him.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Headcount Finance Technical Review 278

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2021

SaaStr Annual is the largest community gathering for Cloud and SaaS professionals in the world! A lot of what has made SaaStr Annual great since 2015. The final slots will be prioritzed for less represented speakers from leading Cloud companies. It is the #1 place to meet Cloud and SaaS VCs. Sep 27-29 in SF Bay Area.

Cloud 241

Cloud SaaS Pricing Communication 241

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 23, 2018

from 2015 to 2017, a compound annual growth rate of 35%. This decrease is driven by user policy changes that affect users who have been inactive for a year or more, and a shift to operating their own data centers instead of using cloud providers. Dropbox has grown from 0 to 500 million users over that time period.

Scale 215

Scale Acquisition Cloud Revenue 215

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. Just six years later, the results were completely upside-down: In 2014, 87% of all buyers with a deployment preference preferred Cloud solutions.

SaaS 173

SaaS Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Construction 173

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2023

When Ariel started in 2015, he and his co-founder came to SaaStr as early-stage founders and found hope and some direction for their startup. Ariel and his co-founder had and sold a startup early that was an integration platform in the Cloud. So, how can the people in SaaS and Cloud help with the horrific situation happening in Israel?

Payment Solutions 288

Payment Solutions Payments Travel Scale 288

IT World

FEBRUARY 19, 2020

SAP is now hosting IBM’s latest Power Systems servers in its own data centers, as part of its HANA Enterprise Cloud managed offering. That could interest a lot of CIOs: SAP has offered its software on the Power platform since 2005, and ported HANA to the Power architecture in 2015. Comparison shopping? Comparison shopping?

Systems Review 90

Systems Review Cloud Software Review Enterprise 90