Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

The company spent $47m in 2019 on sales and marketing, and $52m in 2020, an increase of $3m or 6%, while growing revenues 49%. The 2020 sales efficiency is 0.54. Comparing the first half of 2021 to the first half of 2020, the company grew 57%, eight percentage points higher than the annual figures. Revenue, $M. Gross Margin.

Metrics 294

Metrics Benchmarks PayPal Enterprise 294

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2020

Well 2020 was certainly an interesting year for SaaStr. Things start off looking bleak, with SaaStr Annual 2020 the first big tech event to be postponed due to Covid. It was awesome, take a watch: We squeezed one last major digital event into 2020, the 2nd SaaStr Scale, an event focused on selling and marketing faster.

Technical Review 294

Technical Review Cloud Enterprise Engineering 294

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2024

Let’s jump right into this set of community questions focused on SaaS metrics, growth, and efficiency. What metrics should we expect in this environment? Until the second half of 2020, most companies had enough apps and weren’t looking on their own to spend more. Therefore, sales and marketing practices made no sense in 2020.

Metrics 267

Metrics Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 267

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2020

It’s still early — the 2020 SaaStrAnnual.com isn’t until March 10-11-12 in the SF Bay Area — but we can already start seeing some of the hottest VC sessions at Annual. The Next Iteration of “Software is Eating the World” 2020 with Atrium and Andreessen Horowitz. There will be almost 1,000 (!)

Trends 235

Trends Venture Capital Scale PayPal 235

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2019

Have sane quotas for 2020. Don’t carry perennial poor performers into 2020. The post How You Can Help Your Sales Team in 2020 appeared first on SaaStr. This will take some of the pressure off the sales team. Hire more folks to acquire, manage and qualify leads for your reps. Let your closers be closers.

Scale 259

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Churn 259

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 22, 2020

As it happens, 2020 has only reinforced this, by highlighting again and again the importance of strong customer relationships as the structural foundation on which solid businesses are built. Zapier’s Pam Dodrill, VP of Customer Support and Success , on balancing efficiency with another essential metric: customer outcomes.

Scale 220

Scale Scaling Customer Support Interviewing 220

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 15, 2020

This time, we will be reviewing some of the insights from Redpoint’s 2020 Go To Market Survey. We surveyed about 500 sales teams to understand which is the most popular metric for XDR teams (either SDR, sales development rep, or BDR, business development rep). Each of these metrics has their trade-offs.

Metrics 239

Metrics Marketing SaaS Development 239

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Enables natural expansion : MongoDB and Ethereum, two database companies with nearly identical revenue trajectories through 2020, both employ usage-based models that have supported their explosive growth. With this model, Twilio maintained contracted revenue at less than 50% of ARR while achieving industry-leading retention metrics.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 9, 2022

In 2020, revenue growth was the most important factor explaining a public software company’s forward multiple. Revenue growth & sales efficiency round out the top 3 with gross margin & cash flow from operations margin rounding out the 5 tested metrics. The formula has changed since then. Net income surges to 0.71

Software 364

Software Revenue Metrics Sales 364

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 7, 2020

Looking at where we are in terms of valuations, round sizes, total dollars deployed, and almost every other metric, the venture market today is at least close to if not the most ebullient venture market on record. However, you couldn't characterize the venture market as conservative today with a straight face. So, when does it change?

Marketing 276

Marketing Finance Investment Trends 276

Kellblog

JULY 29, 2021

The purpose of this post is to embed the video recording of my recent appearance on Monday Night Metrics with Ray Rike of RevOps^2 and Ben Murray , also known by the sobriquet, The SaaS CFO. Here’s the video: Thanks to Ray and Ben for having me!

Benchmarks 136

Benchmarks B2B Metrics SaaS 136

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2024

What data and metrics do you need to convince SaaS investors you’re in good shape and aligned with what they care about? These metrics are more targeted to those preparing for a Series A or B round and could make the difference between an excited-to-invest-in-you investor and a pass. What gets investors excited about this metric?

Metrics 177

Metrics Sales Hiring Retention Churn 177

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 7, 2021

More than a year after Covid washed over the software ecosystem and the tide ebbs, it’s revealing the impacts on fundamental metrics of public software companies. Sales efficiency is one of those key metrics. In contrast, sales efficiency improved throughout 2020. over the last 3 years.

Software 343

Software Sales Travel Metrics 343

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2021

Revenue growth slowed in 2020 for the average public SaaS company — but accelerated for the largest ones. An important metric we don’t look at often enough. The growth in venture in 2020 was really all in Series D+ rounds. But in 2020 there were 8 SaaS deals at $5B+ valuations. #7. ” #2.

Investment 310

Investment SMB Acquisition Cloud 310

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2020

. — Janelle Teng (@NextBigTeng) September 2, 2020. And while we had to re-imagine the Annual as an At Home event for 2020, both Byron Deeter and Elliott Robinson of BVP were gracious enough to update the State of the Cloud 2020 to include their learnings of COVID-19’s impact on the market. Conduct 360 feedback. .

Technical Review 349

Technical Review Cloud Software Review Technology 349

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2020

62% have or will change quota in 2020. A majority of revenue leaders believe the impact of COVID-19 will persist through 2020. If you are a revenue leader or a CEO, these metrics may help you get a better grasp on what happening in the market and what changes you might make to your business. About 15% will see an increase.

Sales Hiring 334

Sales Hiring Sales Forecasting Travel 334

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 18, 2021

2020 pushed sales teams to learn new sales motions selling online. During this office hours, we’ll explore: - the challenges sales teams face selling today - the management techniques and metrics modern sales teams use - what is working when selling in COVID.

Scale 348

Scale Scaling Revenue Metrics 348

SaaStr

OCTOBER 14, 2021

And 100 by 2020 and 200 by 2021. GitLab’s SaaS revenues are still just 20% of their revenues, although that’s up from 9% in 2020. This is an interesting segmentation of core metrics. While GitLab has 15,356 customers as of July 2021, it focuses its metrics on its 3,600+ ones with an ACV of $5k or more.

Outsourced Development 66

Outsourced Development Software Development Innovation Cloud 66

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 10, 2020

This retrospective analysis compares Crunchbase data from April 1, 2020 to data from October 10, 2020 across three dimensions: round counts, investment total, and median round size. Immediate data is within 12% accuracy on the three key metrics for Series A, B, & C. I was curious about how much variance exists in the data.

Venture Capital 355

Venture Capital Trends Investment Data 355

SaaStr

JANUARY 13, 2022

Wow, and down from 40% in 2020. (I I excluded some of the metrics at IPO such as Magic Number, sales efficiency, etc, as they are helpful to see but often very different than what you see at earlier stages.). Many also exclude customers with, say less than 5 seats, so the real average NRR is really lower than this.

SMB 360

SMB SaaS Retention Scale 360

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2020

In 2020, they are 40% larger, a $33M swing in round size. In 2020, Series A investors have changed their behavior at the Series B. Or it may be because the companies are more established, have more metrics to show, trade on multiples, and there’s more competition for them. Witness the red line in this Series B Mean chart.

Finance 363

Finance Investment Startup Data 363

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

So there are a lot of rough and arm chair metrics for fundraising in SaaS in terms of valuations. Average asks and multiple for the very, very SaaS companies went up 700% in the Boom from late 2020-late 2021. We’re never “going back” to how things were in late 2020 and 2021.

Venture Capital 66

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 66

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 18, 2020

But investors in private companies use a different metric, enterprise value to forward annual recurring revenue (ARR).The Starting in 2019 and continuing in 2020, the public markets value these companies with better multiples. Most high-growth software investors value public companies on enterprise value to forward revenue multiple.

Software Review 363

Software Review Finance Enterprise Acquisition 363

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2020

In this analysis, I’ve compared the metrics of the two companies at the time of IPO. Asana competes with SmartSheet, another publicly traded productivity company. Also, I’m trying a new format for these analyses that you might call a baseball card analysis, rather than a series of charts. Let me know which you prefer. SmartSheet.

Payment Solutions 363

Payment Solutions Payments Outsourced Development Payment Services 363

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2020

SaaStr and SaaStr Annual are about founders and execs first, and of the 15,000+ attendees at 2020 SaaStrAnnual, over 4,000 will actually be CEOs and founders. If you do, you’ll be able to upload a deck, your metrics, etc. VCs at 2020 SaaStr Annual. But you know what having 4,000 CEOs and founders attracts? The best VCs ??.

Cloud 190

Cloud Mobile SaaS Metrics 190

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 5, 2020

At least, that’s my key metric for startup health over the next few months. Consumer confidence is important because consumer spending is driving most of the projected growth in GDP in the US in 2020. monthly increase straightlined for the rest of 2020, that implies about a 2.4% Startup Growth Rates. With a projected 0.2%

Sales Hiring 340

Sales Hiring Construction Travel Startup 340

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 26, 2022

Uniswap generated 12x the volume per MTU in 2020. The converse may be true for Uniswap: perhaps crypto whales (retail investors with significant balances) dominated the volume in 2020, and to a lesser extent in 2021. Coinbase counts 4x the number of users as Uniswap. In 2021, the gap between the companies narrowed. in 2 years.

Benchmarks 309

Benchmarks Headcount Government Business Model 309

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Now LinkedIn isn’t a stand-alone public company anymore, so we can’t get quite as many metrics and details from them as we used to. Marketers are spending a ton since the boom kicked off in Summer 2020. A bit of a B2C metric I guess (members), but still a visceral example of making more money from your base.

B2C 328

B2C B2B Acquisition Cloud 328

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2022

So in the Boom Years of late 2020 to early 2021, a lot of best practices working with VCs fell apart. I’m going to come up with a list of things most venture-backed startups did … through about 2020. Your cash-out date is a dynamic metric. And make it as core to your investor-level metrics as your MRR is. #7.

Forecasting 57

Forecasting Finance Startup Metrics 57

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2024

Billion in ARR Is NPS a slightly subjective metric? 3,100 $100k+ Customers, Up From 973 in 2020. Still, it’s still very efficient, and far more so than 2020-2022. Either way, huge. #2. 70 NPS, Even at $2.5 But getting a 70 is still truly world class. And perhaps what it takes to go so long in such a competitive space. #3.

Software Review 300

Software Review Cybersecurity Enterprise Scale 300

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 16, 2020

And what does that imply about your plans for 2020? Which metrics suggest it’s the right time to grow the GTM teams again? Which quadrant is your company in today? Strategic triggers are essential complements to a plan, especially those around burn. First, when should the company raise capital?

Strategy 351

Strategy Startup Venture Capital Acquisition 351