SaaStr

JULY 26, 2025

Jonathan Vassel, CRO at Toast helped scale the company from $20M ARR in 2017 to $1.7B+ ARR in Q1 2025 and a stunning $25B market cap.  Their field reps own high-density areas (think downtown San Francisco), while inside reps cover less dense markets (suburbs of Kansas City). This creates a sustainable competitive moat.

SMB 130

SMB Scale Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments 130

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 12, 2024

  I quickly burned out when I tried starting a YouTube channel in 2017. First and foremost, this video allowed me to hit the threshold of being monetized on YouTube with ads (meaning I literally get paid to market my business).  It helped me understand the different ways YouTube could benefit my business, ad revenue included.

AI Search 96

AI Search Technical Review Consulting Social Media 96

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2025

The market has fundamentally shifted. [link] — Akshay Krishnaswamy (@hyperindexed) May 5, 2025 The Pre-AI Stigma Is Real If you founded your SaaS company before 2023, you’re wearing the “pre-AI” label whether you like it or not. VCs especially are obsessed with AI-native startups.

AI Search 184

AI Search AI ChatGPT Innovation 184

Totango

OCTOBER 14, 2024

Go-to-market teams need to prioritize customer ROI as the driver of decision-making, metrics tracking, and relationship management. Account executives can’t sell like it’s 2017 anymore. So, what’s a go-to-market (GTM) team to do? A dated focus For years, getting to “product-market fit” was the holy grail. said Edward.

Scale 71

Scale Marketing Finance Outsourced Development 71

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

The Buffer blog is one of our most valuable assets for our Marketing team, bringing in hundreds of thousands of pageviews each month. The original Buffer Marketing team started posting to the blog as far back as 2013, a very different time for content on the Internet. 

AI Search 107

AI Search Social Media Systems Review Technical Review 107

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2025

The days of relationship-only selling are over in AI-adjacent markets. At SaaStr, we’ve seen everything from scaling revenue to product-market fit. When marketing managers can ask natural language questions of customer data without SQL, consumption explodes geometrically. “They wanted to build their own database. .”

AI 269

AI DevOps as a Service Scale Outsourced Development 269

How To Buy Saas

MAY 26, 2025

Introduced in the seminal 2017 paper “ Attention Is All You Need ” by Google researchers, the transformer architecture has become the dominant paradigm in AI models. SaaS tools now integrate LLMs to help users compose emails, brainstorm blog posts, tweak marketing copy, or even write academic papers.

Artificial Intelligence 64

Artificial Intelligence Data Software Review SaaS 64

Chart Mogul

DECEMBER 18, 2024

In some ways I prefer this new normal in SaaS, product innovation is king, hard work and making customers happy is rewarded, and there are just less distortions in the market. Check out the 2023 , 2022 , 2021 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2017 , and 2016 posts. I do however miss the growth rates of the ZIRP era.

Technical Review 52

Technical Review Benchmarks Innovation Payment Features 52

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 7, 2025

And I think if you look at the Australian market, they are early adopter exactly as the U.S. That’s going to work because your market is not so big. And would you suggest, let’s say I’m an early stage leader listening to this, should I dip my toes into the Australian market?

Outsourcing Services 115

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development AWS 115

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2025

Every meeting creates multiple potential new users because: Meeting notes are valuable to all attendees Sharing is a core part of the workflow Each share exposes new potential users to the product New users bring it to their own meetings This created a viral coefficient that drove growth with minimal marketing spend.

Scale 238

Scale AI Artificial Intelligence SaaS 238

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2025

The Numbers Don’t Lie: A Tale of Two Eras The Golden Age (2017-2018): When VCs Were Heroes Looking at 2017 funds—the darlings of the previous cycle: 81% returned capital after 5+ years Median IRR of 11.5% (that’s actually good!) They’re holding positions for 15+ years, praying for a market recovery.

Venture Capital 272

Venture Capital Technical Review AI Compensation 272

Sales Hacker

MAY 13, 2025

which was acquired by Oracle in April 2017. Discussed in this Episode: Why marketers must now structure content not for humans, but for machines. 18:00 Practical data strategies for local businesses and SaaS marketers. 22:00 Why structured data is the foundation of AI-first marketing. in July 2007. At Yahoo!,

AI Search 72

AI Search AI ChatGPT Software Review 72

TrackStreet

JULY 2, 2025

Since its relaunch in 2017, Amazon has offered brand owners better tools to control how their products are represented and sold. One of the most common causes of Buy Box suppression is inconsistent pricing, especially when unauthorized sellers list your products below market value. Leverage Amazon Brand Registry 2.0

Branding 40

Branding Scale Marketplace as a Service Pricing 40

Neil Patel

JUNE 9, 2025

Here’s a short timeline that puts AI Mode in context: May 2017: CEO Sundar Pichai announces the launch of a dedicated AI division called Google AI at I/O, the company’s annual developer conference. Brands will take a more omnichannel approach to marketing: I call this “search everywhere.”

AI Search 60

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT 60

Neil Patel

JULY 19, 2025

Mobile devices have generated over 50% of all website traffic since 2017, so use a mobile-first approach during your redesign process to appeal to the largest percentage of users. Since 2017, mobile devices have generated over half of website traffic. Bad Mobile Experience Is your site the opposite of mobile-friendly?

Underperforming Technical Team 46

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Scale Mobile 46

Buffer Resources

NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Whether you are a seasoned social media marketer, a marketer looking to venture into  social media  marketing, or a business owner who wants to leverage the enormous power of social, it’s helpful to know about the most popular social media platforms out there right now. Does it fit your brand image? Facebook 3.65

Social Media 125

Social Media Payments Branding Payment Methods 125

Neil Patel

JULY 22, 2025

What was once a cheeky social media trick has become a high-stakes play for many modern social media marketers. That post was a signal to marketers that being culturally responsive could pay huge engagement dividends. Smart marketers go further, though. And like it or not, audiences can tell.

Branding 63

Branding Social Media AI Search ChatGPT 63

Buffer Resources

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

Conferences have been on my mind a lot lately—specifically, the ones that bring together the brightest marketers and creators in the industry. After sharing the list with my Marketing team, one thought echoed across the board: "Our readers would probably love this, too."

Social Media 110

Social Media Marketing Innovation Venture Capital 110

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2017

When I analyzed the SaaS fundraising market in 2016 , three trends emerged. Comparing 2017 averages to seven year highs, we observe Series A, Series B, and Series Seed round sizes are effectively at their all-time highs, ignoring some minor differences. Meanwhile, round sizes swelled. billion from $4.2

Venture Capital 201

Venture Capital SaaS Trends Startup 201

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 26, 2017

In 2010, classic SaaS was booming, the benefits of a subscription model were finally becoming clear to the public markets and the mass-market. Which of these markets are growing the fastest for investment dollars?

Startup 255

Startup Software Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 255

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

After the correction earlier this year, public valuation multiples had reset to those of 2017. That’s not a bear market multiple. Not too long before the public market correction, high-growth startups routinely commanded 100x ARR multiples. That year, Cisco acquired AppDynamics for 17x trailing revenue.

Startup 355

Startup Acquisition Pricing Revenue 355

Tom Tunguz

MAY 9, 2022

How much further can the market decline? I went through my archives and found this post from 2017 that showed that the most expensive stock at the time was Veeva at 11.7x If the valuation environment mirrors 2017, CloudFlare’s multiple would halve again. In 2017, the average company traded at 5.4x

Trends 306

Trends Software Marketing Data 306

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2020

Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon have made the headlines for a while for crossing $1 trillion in market cap each. That’s $1 Trillion in market cap from the SaaS leaders. The Top 10 SaaS companies have 70% of the market cap and value. A $2 billion market cap is amazing. A $2 billion market cap is amazing.

SaaS 363

SaaS SMB Cloud Enterprise 363

Tom Tunguz

MAY 21, 2023

The bond market has priced in a roughly 1% to 1.25% cut in the next 24 months. Two peculiar elements characterize this market surge: Most of these companies have reported weak earnings & projected weak outlooks for the next quarter. Only the top 5 or so stocks by growth rate have won expanded multiples from the market.

Software Review 296

Software Review Startup SaaS Pricing 296

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 18, 2020

The private markets project the ARR a year from now. The public markets project revenue for the next 12 months. In 2017 and 2018, the median high-growth private company raised at a higher forward ARR multiple than in the public markets. This is a critical shift.

Software Review 363

Software Review Finance Enterprise Acquisition 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2024

The Numbers That Matter: $10B+ Market Cap 180,000+ Customers 152% Net Dollar Retention (2023) 7x Growth in First 24 Months After IPO 1,000+ Employees Across 8 Global Offices What Did Zinman Do Differently? The Rebrand That Changed Everything 2017’s pivot from dapulse to monday.com wasn’t just a name change. The result?

Scale 252

Scale SaaS Company Culture Leadership 252

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2022

Public software median inflation rate rests at 5% annually, including shares for new employees, retention grants for current employees and primary stock sales in the public market to raise cash. The distribution is quite wide: Apple deflates shares 3% annually while while Bill grows share count by about 20%. Trailing 2 Year Inflation Rate.

Startup 316

Startup Sales Hiring Government Outsourced Development 316

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

So the public markets are in tumult. This is just starting to roll through the private markets and is going to make a bumpy rest of the year. Revenue multiples are how much VCs, investors, and ultimately, an IPO and public markets will value each dollar of revenue. And indeed there is today! A Covid Hangover in SaaS stocks.’

SaaS 348

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 348

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 10, 2018

In December 2017, the amount raised in ICOs nearly equaled the amount raised by Series A investments globally. The ICO market today bears many similarities to the dotcom era. About a third of the ICOs in 2017 raised some form of institutional capital before ICO. Startups can raise hundreds of millions of dollars on an idea.

Innovation 187

Innovation Blockchain Finance Marketing 187

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2022

Today, the public markets value companies like it’s 2017. If the Series A market follows suit, the median series A will fall to $7.8m, which means a 28 person company will have 17 months’ of runway - effectively identical to 2010 runway. Fewer person hours means less marketing, sales pitches, & bookings.

Headcount 321

Headcount Venture Capital Finance Startup 321

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

By prioritizing sales & marketing, the company successfully lengthened runway to increase revenue, which eased the subsequent fundraising. I wondered if a similar pattern existed in the public software markets. Starting in 2017 when the data is richer, the PLG companies increased R&D spend from 27.5%

Software 296

Software Trends Revenue Startup 296

Tom Tunguz

JULY 22, 2018

When I watch this toy, I’m reminded of the current state of the fundraising market. Long-term trends in the start of fundraising market have been consistent over the last 10 years. But in 2017, the Series A median surpassed the 2009 Series B median. In today’s market, raise the median amount.

Startup 197

Startup Finance Marketing Investment 197

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 29, 2022

In 2017, SaaS companies reported their cost of customer acquisition had increased by 65% in the previous five year period. During the first half of Covid, sales & marketing teams iterated to improve sales efficiency. Teams hired & spent aggressively, given the capital markets insatiable appetite for growth.

Sales Hiring 312

Sales Hiring Sales Startup Acquisition 312

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

If a SaaS business hopes to win over the SMB market successfully, it will need a precise GTM approach. Boterri’s company Accel invested in PayFit in 2017 and again in 2021. But your sales needs when selling to small and medium-sized businesses differ from an enterprise-level market.

SMB 244

SMB Sales Hiring Scale B2C 244

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Marketo IPO’s in 2013 at $700m market cap. Today, $128B market cap. 2016: IPO at $1.15B market cap. Worth $2B by 2017. 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. Vista buys Marketo for $1.8B

SaaS 283

SaaS SMB Cloud Revenue 283

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

Room at the bottom in marketing automation, with them presumably hitting eight figures this year. 264 Janrain A $28B Market Cap today at $1B+ in ARR. Where it Went: A $7B market cap and IPO. Boy, there is just so much money in marketing. Marketing, marketing, marketing. billion market cap. .

SaaS 284

SaaS Technical Review Software Review Scaling 284

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 12, 2018

Known as the Martech 5000 — nicknamed after the 5,000 companies that were competing in the global marketing technology space in 2017, it’s said to be the most frequently shared slide of all time. – lie beyond the realms of this article but one thing is clear: this market is HUGE. What is a marketing technology stack?

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Technology Scale Marketing 223