Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2019

I didn’t calculate this figure in 2017. More money enables startups to achieve greater milestones before raising the next round. (note I’m switching from median to average here). In 4 years, we’ve seen a 4x increase in the median MRR of a Series A SaaS company. That’s quite a growth rate.

Benchmarks 262

Benchmarks Startup SaaS Data Analysis 262

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

From startup to $500M CARR, Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth at Braze, shares how Braze scaled a growth and customer success team. As an early startup team, you’re doing every job under the sun. We get lazy writing job descriptions, and taking shortcuts is a luxury most startups don’t have. But that was it.

Scale 296

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 296

SaaStr

AUGUST 1, 2022

If as a VC you invested at $10m pre initially, and say it’s 2021 and that same startup is doing a 100x round at a $300m valuation, this early VC fund can pick and choose whether to invest more or not. For example, SaaStr Fund I from 2017 has now deployed $61m of its $68m. Older funds run out of reserves. Just ask. No one asks.

Venture Capital 336

Venture Capital Startup Investment Pricing 336

Tom Tunguz

MAY 21, 2023

The rest of the top quartile has remained depressed, suppressing the cohort to 2017 levels, just as they were last year. But rally hasn’t convincingly beaten the black line representing the 2017 median. These top five stocks explain the most recent earnings upward in the chart above.

Software Review 302

Software Review Startup SaaS Pricing 302

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 27, 2016

As the year is coming to an end I’d like to share a few thoughts on what we’ll be looking for in the SaaS world in 2017. Related posts (from this blog): Why (most) SaaS startups should aim for negative MRR churn How fast is fast enough? Will it be a SaaS solution with voice as the primary form of input?

SaaS 183

SaaS Artificial Intelligence AI User Experience 183

SaaStock

MARCH 26, 2019

We had a closer look at who the young upstarts of Latin America are in search of the most exciting Latin American SaaS startups. With them in mind, we have created our Startup Program , tailored especially for SaaS startups. Here are the most exciting Latin American SaaS startups that we cannot wait to meet in less than a month.

Startup 210

Startup Artificial Intelligence SaaS Construction 210

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. What happened to these figures during Covid? We can examine the sales efficiency of public software companies to get a sense.

Sales Hiring 317

Sales Hiring Sales Startup Acquisition 317

Tom Tunguz

JULY 15, 2017

The article pointed to the seeming collapse in the amount of venture capital raised by San Francisco startups relative to other regions. If we compare San Francisco to the Valley by round, Series Bs and Series Ds have increased markedly in the valley in 2017. Now it’s the Valley startups’ turn to raise.

Investment 204

Investment Startup Venture Capital Trends 204

Tom Tunguz

JULY 22, 2018

But in 2017, the Series A median surpassed the 2009 Series B median. The truth is - in today’s market - the median startup is doing that already. In 2009, the median post Series C startup counted $20.8M In 2018, a post-Series B startup would have received $26.7M The dashed blue line is the median series A from 2009.

Startup 201

Startup Finance Marketing Investment 201

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2021

The biggest change is that growth investors, the folks that invest at $10m+ ARR, are often now looking for SaaS startups to be tripling at this stage — not doubling. The post Is It Now “Triple, Triple, Triple, Double, Double, Double” — T3D3 — For Top Tier SaaS Startups? Or at least growing 150% or so.

Startup 265

Startup SaaS Cloud Pricing 265

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

At Saastr, Jason and I discussed the role of private equity in SaaS on stage as a potential acquisition path for SaaS startups. Private equity hasn’t been a common exit route for venture backed startups in the past. Said another way, PE firms are spending as much buying SaaS startups as corporate acquirers.

Startup 202

Startup SaaS Acquisition Pricing 202

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2022

A funny thing happened along the way to Sand Hill Road in the last decade : startups stopped talking about how much runway a Series A would buy them. In 2010, the median software Series A startup raised $3.2m & employed 15 people at about $150k average cost. Today, the public markets value companies like it’s 2017.

Headcount 325

Headcount Venture Capital Finance Startup 325

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2022

So if things are slowing down at your startup, be honest about the root cause. Blame “the economy” too much, and you’re doing yourself a disservice. 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.

Sales Hiring 347

Sales Hiring Acquisition Cloud Enterprise 347

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2024

The Rebrand That Changed Everything 2017’s pivot from dapulse to monday.com wasn’t just a name change. Product-Led Growth Before It Was Cool While others were building massive sales teams, Zinman pushed for a product that would sell itself. The result? ARR growth?

Scale 256

Scale SaaS Company Culture Leadership 256

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2020

(Note: I wrote a version of this in 2017 when times were good. As a startup, there are few things more important than Being Present: Your customers need to believe. Startups are a journey. If you’ve never run a hot startup, or worked at a hot startup, you may not get this. So here’s the 2020+ version). __.

Sales Hiring 351

Sales Hiring Startup Investment Revenue 351

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

While the data ends here, here’s what I can tell you I am seeing in growth rounds today: Very few growth rounds are happening at all When the do happen, they are for capital efficient startups growing > 50% at scale And … the peak valuation is about 15x. For the best ones.

Venture Capital 67

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 67

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

The point is that SaaS multiples are still higher than where they were from 2010-2017. Draw a straight line and assume multiples gradually expand at the same rate as they were growing from 2017-2019. The Bear Case: Multiples are still elevated compared to the pre-2018 period. It just went nuts during Peak Covid. A related post here.

SaaS 348

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 348

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

During Office Hours with Lee Kirkpatrick , Lee recalled managing a startup through a downturn. Starting in 2017 when the data is richer, the PLG companies increased R&D spend from 27.5% The business cut R&D spend to conserve cash. I wondered if a similar pattern existed in the public software markets.

Software 302

Software Trends Revenue Startup 302

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

Up until say 2017–2018 or so, in SaaS, there was a rough rule: a relatively small amount of secondary liquidity ($1m-$2m) would be offered by growth investors in top VC rounds once a startup crossed $10m ARR or so. The demand to buy founders’ shares at all but a handful of super-hot startups has waned.

Startup 59

Startup Investment SaaS Revenue 59

Scytale

MARCH 12, 2025

As the UKs tech startup ecosystem continues to thrive, visionary founders are driving innovation across various industries, shaping the future of technology , finance , healthcare , and beyond. In this article, we highlight the top 10 tech startup founders in the UK for 2025 (who you should be following if you arent already!),

Startup 59

Startup Scale Cybersecurity AI Search 59

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 29, 2016

Starting in 2017, revenue recognition for SaaS companies will change, and SaaS startups will have more flexibility in the way they record revenue than in the past. Public companies must transition to these new regulations starting in 2017. Private companies have the option to migrate to these new standards in 2017.

SaaS 100

SaaS Consulting Benchmarks Startup 100

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2017

In 2017, there will be a lot of comparison between the prices public bound companies fetch at IPO compared to the last round private valuations as the public window opens. Given all that change, which early round will be the hardest to raise for founders in 2017? Let’s take a look at the Crunchbase data for US startups.

Finance 100

Finance Startup Investment Pricing 100

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 19, 2017

This trend started in 2014 and has continued through the first quarter of 2017. Though quite rare in 2010, startups have raised more than 750 second seed rounds in each of the last three years. This data shows that they are broadly accepted as a common way to finance an early stage startup. It’s quite nearly always 2.

Marketing 100

Marketing Finance Startup Trends 100

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

rates them on 3-Year Growth – a slightly strange metric for start-ups at all different stages), for SaaS and SaaS-ish startups: [note, the higher they are on the list, the faster they are growing on a % basis YoY]. #7 Where it Went: $45m revenue in 2017 and reported $100m+ in 2021, but acquired for modest sum in 2021. 557 SEOmoz.

SaaS 290

SaaS Technical Review Software Review Scaling 290

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2021

And it has been since 2017 or so! There are 1000s of startups any BigCo can and does partner with. But what about 25% of a smaller, but fast-growing startup where the integration is even tighter? Salesforce’s biggest source of new revenue isn’t CRM or even support. It’s partners and platform. as a partner.

Payments 306

Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services Startup 306

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

The Return to the Startup Game. In 2017, Bansal sold his unicorn company AppDynamics to Cisco for $4 billion. Says Bansal, “You should be doing what you enjoy…I realized I really enjoyed the journey of building a startup.” Easier With Second Startup: Fundraising, Managing the Board, Predicting the Future.

Sales Recruiting 280

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 280

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 18, 2018

After all the hype and ICO-mania in 2017, the flurry of startups attempting to solve every startup with a distributed ledger and the collapse of currencies in 2018, one startup emerges in 2019 with the next killer use case; Bitcoin being the first. Volumes relative to 2017 didn’t change materially, though.

Blockchain 209

Blockchain Technical Review Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 209

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2020

Jeff says he’s realized startups are either “product constrained or distribution constrained “ Make your investments accordingly. Finally, the session we did with Jeff at the 2017 SaaStr Annual right after Twilio’s IPO was incredible. If your customers love your product now, hire reps.

CTO Hire 355

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Airlines 355

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 10, 2018

More than 30% of the initial coin offerings (ICO) in 2017 target developers and businesspeople with their products. B2B crypto companies raised about $400M of ICO dollars in 2017. In contrast, blockchain startups are exploring inter-company applications, processes that involve two or more companies. The numbers are still small.

Blockchain 189

Blockchain Marketplace as a Service SaaS Payment Features 189

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2023

Watch her session from Annual 2017, and if you aren’t inspired, you are doing it wrong: #3. He was still working at a struggling startup in downtown San Mateo, which I think ultimately sold for just $10m and maybe was down to 2 employees at that point. Even in a class of unicorns. His prior start-up also made no money.

Startup 288

Startup SaaS Investment 288

SaaStr

DECEMBER 9, 2021

Everyone once in a while a startup just plain executes from Day 1. After 18 months building, things just took off when they launched, going from $0 in 2017 to an incredible $500m in ARR in 2021, in just 5 years. It doesn’t happen often, and it’s never quite as linear as it looks. That’s jaw-dropping. Wow Samsara !!

Transportation 299

Transportation Scale SMB Revenue 299

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 10, 2018

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

Innovation 187

Innovation Blockchain Finance Marketing 187

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2024

Prior to Creandum, Peter started his career at Lazada (South East Asia’s leading e-commerce player) and Paymill (payment startup). After some time in b2b marketing at Google and a few years at Bain & Company’s PE taskforce, Peter joined Creandum and the venture side in 2017.

Payments 284

Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions Scale 284

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2019

With thousands of new startups emerging everyday and the average turnover rate for business applications trending at 39% annually, the SaaS industry couldn’t be more competitive. A 2017 U.S. When a startup is in its infancy, a founder may not be able to forecast exactly where the business will be in a year’s time.

SaaS Payments 235

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 235

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

He was also Coordinator and Trainer of startup sales at Gama Academy, the first sales training program for Brazilian startups. In 2017, he co-founded B2B Stack, a software review marketplace that boosts the buying process of B2B tech in Brazil. He’s been running SaaSholic, a blog where he writes about startups and SaaS.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Scale Entrepreneurship Sales Hiring 207

SaaStock

MARCH 8, 2019

Because, as she says, building a startup is simply much more fun. She has been around the globe, working in startups and digital agencies in Brazil, Germany, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong. Diane is also passionate about everything startup, digital transformation in our lives, and psychology. The reason? Diny Gomes. Lisa Zhang.

VP of Engineering 264

VP of Engineering CTO Coach Venture Capital SaaS 264

SaaStr

DECEMBER 6, 2022

Brex is a company that provides credit cards for startups, and Alloy provides financing for small businesses. Both Brex and Alloy have been mutual customers of one another since 2017 and in this session, they shared their lessons learned on balancing production innovation with regulation while mitigating risks.

Scale 278

Scale Scaling compliance Forecasting 278