Tom Tunguz

JULY 15, 2017

The slowing of venture investment more broadly across the US serves as a backdrop to San Francisco’s particularly strong correction. Bloomberg published a post this weekend called San Francisco’s VC Boom is Over. I was curious about the drivers of these trends, so I ran my own analysis. Note, the levels still exceed 2010-2013.

Investment 187

Investment Startup Venture Capital Trends 187

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 6, 2016

About $1B has been invested in early stage SaaS startups as of November 1. The chart above shows the early-stage investment dollars by buyer within the organization. Series A investments totaled $207 million for the first nine months while series B investments touched $720 million. Series B medians were $19.0M

Artificial Intelligence 100

Artificial Intelligence Trends Marketing SaaS 100

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 29, 2015

In 2016, I believe they will enjoy a very active acquisition environment. The roughly 60 or so publicly traded software companies hold more than $380B in cash and short term investments on their balance sheets. In 2015, startups benefitted from a vibrant fund raising market.

Software 100

Software Acquisition Startup Investment 100

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2023

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? Canvas Ventures manages $835 million in AUM, currently investing out of our third, $350 million fund.

Scale 237

Scale Venture Capital AI Generative AI 237

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 25, 2016

As the overall venture market environment evolves in 2016, so too does the SaaS and Software segment. The number of Series A, B, C, and D investments in software companies stabilized at roughly 170 per quarter from mid-2013 through mid-2015, before falling 17% in Q4 2015 to a two year low.

Marketing 100

Marketing SaaS Investment Startup 100

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 14, 2016

In 2016, the question that will immediately follow, “What is your annual growth rate?” Combined, those non-traditional VCs account for about 25% of venture dollars invested last year, sapping the strength from the startup bull-market. 2015 is the end of an era, the era of startup growth at any cost.

Startup 100

Startup Metrics Transportation Marketplace as a Service 100

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 6, 2016

The startup fundraising market in 2016 has been difficult to characterize. This posts analyses US headquartered information technology companies which VC-led investment rounds, except for the $793M Series C in Magic Leap , which I excluded as an outlier. VCs invested about $2B in January and February 2016.

Marketing 100

Marketing Finance Investment Startup 100

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2022

They may be slowing down investing a bit, but they still will deploy these funds over 2 years. 2016 was tough, too. But the markets also dropped 50% at the start of 2016, and VCs panicked. It was called 2016: * Everyone panicked * Seemed like multiples would never recover * LinkedIn sold to Microsoft for 7x ARR.

SaaS 264

SaaS Enterprise Startup Investment 264

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 25, 2016

After having raised a huge investment, a startup could crown itself the winner of a category. Able to hire more people, spend more to acquire leads and close more customers by sustaining a greater burn rate, these cash-flush startups grew faster than their competitors, attracting more investment and reinforcing their capital supremacy.

Startup 100

Startup Investment Technology Strategy 100

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 216

Interviewing Investment SaaS Sales 216

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. For Google Workspace, they invested in expanding and building Google Meet and the rest of the workspace during 2020. At the time, they were less than a billion or two in revenue, and now, they just crossed over a $30B revenue run rate.

Cloud 248

Cloud Scale AWS AI 248

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2023

But importantly, it’s raised its ACV 4x since 2016. The LMS category is a large time investment, so it makes sense to try to get customers to do longer deals. #8. Docebo’s pricing is on the “corporate” side of LMS. Without that, the company would likely be a fraction of its current ARR. #3.

Scale 342

Scale Pricing Scaling Enterprise 342

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

Jennifer has been at PagerDuty since 2016, a disruptive company that took automation to the next level before AI was hot in 2024. We can take higher risks in a less regulated industry than a peer in an investment bank or healthcare business. As startup and tech leaders, we need empathy for where they’re coming from.

Generative AI 246

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2020

2013: first investment. 2016: IPO at $1.15B market cap. And yes, no one could have predicted the run we’ve seen in Cloud in the past few years. But take a look at these examples: Marketo (and Hubspot): Founded 2006. Marketo IPO’s in 2013 at $700m market cap. Vista buys Marketo for $1.8B Today, $128B market cap.

SaaS 212

SaaS SMB Cloud Revenue 212

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

Sapphire Ventures (an LP in SaaStr Fund) just put out an interesting report on how the VC funds they’ve invested in (many top ones, almost all B2B) fared after Covid. It’s mostly as you’d expect: The Black Swan Year: How 2020 Impacted Venture Investing and Performance. Power laws, indeed.

Cloud 201

Cloud Investment B2B SaaS 201

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2023

You can see here multiples are touching the lows of early 2016 and are even lower than 2015 and those early days of SaaS. Reference other great investments they’ve made, and why they are similar. And no one is in a rush today to invest. Seed is slowing down last, but it is slowing down. But hiding both doesn’t help. #3.

New CTO 261

New CTO CTO Banking Cloud 261

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Now, the lows appear to stabilize around the levels we saw in 2016. The right-hand graph shows that deal count and overall investments have fallen. PLG is about investing in product and data instead of sales and marketing. Then, we saw a correction happen with fears of a recession and rising interest rates.

Business Model 259

Business Model SaaS Payments Payments Headcount 259

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2022

From 2007 to 2016, $1.5b marked the upside case for most VC software and infrastructure investment memos. Fewer than 15 SaaS companies traded on public exchanges then. With at least 20 firms and several partners per firm chasing unicorns, upstarts faced stiff odds. 2015 Return Multiple by Round. Return Multiple at $1.5b.

Startup 217

Startup Software Investment SaaS 217

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2022

I wrote a version of this post way back in 2016. Now I work with and have invested in 35+ SaaS companies. It created a lot of discussions and was more controversial then — that NPS was a great core metric. We’ve all evolved a lot since then. We’ve gotten great at measuring both NRR and GRR. And … I love it.

Metrics 280

Metrics Churn Engineering Innovation 280

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2021

Now is the time to invest, in team and product at least. 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. Next year, you will have a $14m, or an $18m, or maybe even a $20m+ business.

SaaS 319

SaaS Travel Churn Revenue 319

Sales Hacker

MARCH 12, 2024

He previously co-founded the cloud data pipeline company Stitch (acquired by Talend in 2018) and business intelligence platform RJMetrics (acquired by Adobe by way of Magento Commerce in 2016). Prior to RJMetrics, Bob worked on the Investment Team of Insight Partners.

Cloud 96

Cloud Trends Startup Pricing 96

Clouded Judgement

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Some of these drops rival one of the worst ever software earnings reaction of Tableau in 2016! This is very reminiscent of the Tableau drop in 2016. This is for information purposes and should not be construed as an investment recommendation. Altimeter is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. JFrog was up ~20%.

Software Review 161

Software Review Cloud Software Azure 161

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 10, 2016

For all the talk about late stage rounds, megarounds and unicorns, early stage startups are benefitting disproportionately from near-record years of venture capital investment. Of the $42B invested in startups in 2015, 34% or about $14B was raised in series A and seed rounds. This money isn’t committed to startup investing.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Startup Marketing B2C 100

SaaStr

DECEMBER 9, 2020

So my first batch of venture investments hit 20x this week. The #1 investment is 55% of the returns. Reasons not to invest in Zoom: – Solo founder – us TLD – Crowded space – Low ARPU – Entering bottom market – Isn't it a commodity? . But they aren't. Learnings: 1. So Top 3 = 79%.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Investment 278

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2020

On the one hand, to any of this that have been doing this for a while, there are a ton of new funds in market (1,000+ new funds since 2016!) We’ve had 2 records years in a row of VC investment: But … but look what’s happened in tech and the Cloud: Explosion! and the exiting funds have raised vastly more capital than before.

Venture Capital 144

Venture Capital Business Cloud Investment 144

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

This set of metrics that Salesforce began to standardize enabled other providers of Financial Capital to more quickly analyze new SaaS companies and invest. . In 2016, Digital Ocean opened a $130m credit facility with Keybanc. . It’s no longer viable for financial capital to invest in the next CRM or sales automation tool.

Venture Capital 224

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 224

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2017

When I analyzed the SaaS fundraising market in 2016 , three trends emerged. Across all rounds, both lines are up into the right, despite some volatility in 2016. In 2016, venture capitalists reduced their investment in staff companies by 1 ⁄ 3 , falling to $2.8 Meanwhile, round sizes swelled. billion from $4.2

Venture Capital 176

Venture Capital SaaS Trends Startup 176

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

On the investing side of life, the toughest meeting of all for me at least is probably the Right Co-Founder, Wrong CEO start-up. Finally, I wrote a version of this post way back in 2016 when I first encountered this situation. Great product, driven team, good early product-market fit, great vision. Check, check, check and check.

Sales Recruiting 243

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 243

SaaStock

MARCH 8, 2019

Before getting into the investment world, she started and sold two successful companies in edutainment, and made a prominent name in the tech field around the world. After 11 years in finances, in 2016 she became the CFO of Brinc.io, boldly entering into the tech world. Because, as she says, building a startup is simply much more fun.

VP of Engineering 264

VP of Engineering CTO Coach Venture Capital SaaS 264

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Christoph Janz, General Partner of Point Nine Capital, shares what it takes to raise capital in SaaS, overall investment activity in 2023, and how to develop a convincing AI strategy. In 2016, Janz did research and tried to answer this. The Proverbial Napkin What does it take to raise capital in SaaS in 2023?

AI 194

AI Underperforming Technical Team Cloud Strategy 194

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2023

In June of 2016, the beginnings of Loom, called OpenVid, became the number one Product Hunt that day, and the following day, they launched more videos than the day before. Everyone is invested in building momentum because, in the early days, everyone is essentially an owner. They had made it.

Startup 217

Startup Company Culture Marketing Communication 217

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

And if you didn’t invest proactively in systems like CPQ early, you create a byzantine mess that’s impossible to scale. Invest in back-office systems early. Mistake: Not investing in Digital Customer Success early The cobbler’s kids often have no shoes. And then at Pulse 2016, I decided to take another leap.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 274

SaaStock

JANUARY 30, 2019

Its partners boast diverse venture experience and have previously invested in more than 70 companies. SaaS Investments: Pipefy, HeyDoctor. Canary invests in Brazilian startups, aiming to transform the country’s startup ecosystem by filling an early stage funding gap that it has identified. Founded: 2016. Founded: 2017.

Venture Capital 155

Venture Capital SaaS Healthcare Finance 155

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2017

Late stage market dynamics are changing as hedge funds and mutual funds seek other areas to invest. In 2016, they also saw the greatest drop, 37%, to about 2500. Series As and Bs counts grew 40% from their 2010 figures before falling 20% in 2016. In 2016, the ratio is 1.22. Not a seven year low by a long stretch.

Finance 100

Finance Startup Investment Pricing 100

A Smart Bear

JANUARY 4, 2018

Of course a nice chunk is primary capital, i.e. for the company balance sheet, to invest in growth initiatives, security and quality, and advancing our existing strategic priorities through acceleration and de-risking. The majority of the funds pay back our early investors who believed in us enough to trust us with their money.

Engineering 70

Engineering Investment Revenue Technical Review 70

SaaSOptics

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

The Series A investment included new investor Duke Angel Network and existing investors Techstars Ventures and Tom Noonan, chairman of TEN Holdings, founding partner of TechOperators and former CEO of Internet Security Systems (ISS). In 2016, SaaSOptics raised $1.8 Fulcrum Equity Partners. , and will more than double its workforce.

Investment 40

Investment Software 40

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 16, 2023

Up until 2016, we had retreats twice a year. Looking ahead at our future investments When we look ahead to future years, we anticipate that employee expenses will continue to make up the majority of our Operating Costs. We also plan to continue to invest in paid marketing. We aim to have one company-wide retreat every year.

Merchant Services 75

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Features Payments 75