There’s no question SaaS and Cloud companies scale faster than ever these days. Databricks just announced it was growing a stunning 75% at $600m+ in ARR! And Zoom just passed a $1B quarter. 50%+ growth at $100m+ ARR seems to be the new normal, and a full 25% of the Cloud 100 was growing 100%+ at $100m in ARR! More on that here:
The Top SaaS and Cloud companies are now growing 100% at $100m ARR
More here: https://t.co/rmGvzl9ikJ pic.twitter.com/ZcdF6BkMVm
— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) July 28, 2021
And yet … and yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean they started so fast.
Just a few examples:
- UiPath took 10 years to get to its first $1m in ARR in 2015. Then, it accelerated like a rocket.
- Procore is a $16B+ leader in construction software, but took a full decade to take off. 2002-2012 were slow.
- It took Squarespace 3 years just to get to $1M in ARR and 7+ years to get to the first $10M ARR. Now it’s a $6B leader.
You can get there faster today. Cloud is just so much bigger. But the early days are still all about finding true product-market fit, and that can just take time.
Just a reminder that in some ways it doesn’t even matter how long it takes you to get to that first $10m in ARR. Just so long as you grow at a decent clip thereafter.