SaaStr

MAY 23, 2025

The numbers validated this quickly: 2018: 100 apps, $1M tracked revenue 2020: Series A at $15M 2021: 6,000+ apps, $1B+ tracked revenue, Series B at $300M valuation SaaStr Fund’s bet wasn’t just on the founders or the technologyit was on the inevitable shift toward subscription-first mobile business models.

Payments 283

Payments Payment Solutions Underperforming Technical Team Payment Methods 283

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2024

So it’s been a sloooow time in SaaS IPOs since the boom times ended in December 2021. There have been just 3 SaaS IPOs since December 2021: Klaviyo OneStream Rubrik And all were strong ones, at $500m+ ARR or so, growing ~50% or so. The clock in the end ticks on liquidity, and the most for Private Equity-backed SaaS players.

AI 315

AI Cloud SaaS Investment 315

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2025

So leading SaaS growth stage VC fund Insight Partners surveyed 100+ of its top later-stage B2B companies to see how they did marketing and demand gen and pipeline creation in particular. And we all got out of practice here in 2020-2022. What they learned: Marketing drives 48% of pipeline across B2B companies. Sales drives 33%.

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Scale Marketing B2B Scaling 294

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 25, 2020

Yesterday, we shared the Top 10 Learnings from the 2020 Redpoint GTM Survey at SaaS Office Hours. The presentation is embedded below. It contains data on go to market team structure, performance by sales function, marketing spend benchmarks, and customer success priorities.

Headcount 364

Headcount Scale Benchmarks Retention 364

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2024

So some Cloud and SaaS stocks are on fire, even now. Why is Palantir the highest valued public SaaS and Cloud stock? Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) is a Year Old But Fueling $159m in Q2 Bookings Alone To some Cloud and SaaS leaders, AI is a table-stakes addition. Up From Almost None in 2020 to 295 Today.

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Artificial Intelligence Government AI Cloud 240

SaaStr

JANUARY 15, 2025

So Cloud and SaaS have had a bit of a rollercoaster the past 4 years, from the boom times of 2020-2021, to the tougher times overall of 2023, to the AI boom of 2024+. But one thing has done well through all of it: security. We always need it, and the threats keep coming. And Cloudflare has been one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Scaling 278

Scaling Cloud AI Engineering 278

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

Ok, it’s November now and it’s time to start getting excited for the second annual SaaStrScale.com 2020. The core sessions are FREE and we have a very inexpensive workshop pass if you want to be mentored in small sessions by literally dozens of the top revenue and customer professionals in SaaS and Cloud. CEO Airtable.

Scaling 316

Scaling Cloud Revenue SaaS 316

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2020

A very curious thing has happened during this very sad and stressful time: the Era of the SaaS Decacorn has firmly arrived.? — Amit Karp (@amitkarp) May 15, 2020. When I started as a SaaS CEO, there was only one SaaS unicorn: Salesforce. Should SaaS and Cloud deserve these all-time high multiples?

SaaS 364

SaaS Cloud Investment Marketing 364

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2025

So competition is so visceral in most of SaaS, and especially in start-ups, where every lead is often precious. The other day I was catching up with a founder of a SaaS leader at $2B+ ARR and talked about the space in general, and mentioned an adjacent competitor at $80m ARR, growing quickly. Especially every bigger one.

SaaS 274

SaaS 274

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2024

Selling to developers and technical audiences requires a different approach than traditional B2B SaaS sales. While CFOs have regained some control post-2020, one thing remains clear: if you don’t have buy-in from the technical developers and engineers actually using your product, you won’t get the deal done.

Engineering 290

Engineering Development CTO Leadership 290

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2020

Q: What was the biggest news in the venture capital world in 2020? We did a deep dive with many top VCs on the topic here: SaaStr New New Venture 2020. SF remains the home to 80% of public SaaS companies , that isn’t going to change for a while. The post 2020: When You Could Raise Millions Over Zoom.

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Venture Capital Investment Startup Branding 317

SaaStr

MARCH 21, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What’s Changed in SaaS Today? Some categories in SaaS are holding up well, e.g. Cloudflare, Adobe, etc. So pseudo-SaaS products and other products with lower gross margins are commanding much lower valuations. So many of the things we learned from mid-2020 to early 2022 … just don’t apply anymore.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital SaaS Startup Marketing 347

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2022

Enterprise software spending globally was $529B in 2020, per Gartner. So these are rocky times in the public markets for SaaS. And yet … and yet … so many SaaS companies continue to grow faster than ever. That’s just jaw-dropping acceleration in enterprise spend for SaaS and business software.

SaaS 71

SaaS Enterprise Software Data 71

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 12, 2021

Till 2020, the growth rates of the private market valuations and the public valuation multiples paralleled each other at the highest level. This chart shows the median and the 75th percentile of enterprise value/forward revenue multiple for the basket of public stocks which were public at that moment in time. Correction Year.

SaaS 361

SaaS Cloud Enterprise Software 361

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2025

It’s the #1 Private Equity firm for B2B and SaaS companies and it surveyed 501 Cloud and SaaS buyers. of GDP in 2020 to 4.0% No one has a true crystal ball when it comes to Cloud spend in the coming years, but the leaders have a lot of data. Thoma Bravo is one of them. AI driving software from 2.0% in 2030 would be huge.

AI 199

AI Software Cloud B2B 199

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

So things got a bit broken with SaaS sales exec comp in the run-up up until 2020 … and then it got really broken in the crazy times of late 2020 and 2021. SaaS companies and fintechs and pseudo-SaaS companies could end up paying out more than the entire year’s margin in the commission check.

Scale 345

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring Sales 345

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2021

Guidance 2020 $17.1B — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) August 25, 2020. If you haven’t done a SaaS start-up before, it’s different. The reasons are many, but I think they can almost all be summed up in one key factor: SaaS compounds. What does this mean, that SaaS compounds? Salesforce Growth: 2021 $20.8B

SaaS 331

SaaS Travel Churn Revenue 331

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

So there are a lot of rough and arm chair metrics for fundraising in SaaS in terms of valuations. For years, the standard was “about 10x” Top tier SaaS companies would tend to raise at around 10x ARR, with ones with slightly lower growth often raising at 5x. And then things just went crazy. The answer, today?

Venture Capital 67

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 67

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2022

Gartner, spending on SaaS: 2020: $120B 2021: $152B 2022: $177B 2023: $208B. They also importantly predict SaaS spend to grow to $200 Billion next year, also up almost 20%. It means another , additional $20+ Billion spent on SaaS apps next year alone. Go sell something pic.twitter.com/TLzgbuQLnW. jasonlk) May 26, 2022.

Cloud 358

Cloud B2C SaaS Enterprise 358

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

Let’s take a look at 3 recent transactions and valuations in SaaS around $1.5 The “growth premium” in SaaS has never been higher. Let’s look at the slower growth SaaS companies in the index, like Box, Zuora, Dropbox, and Domo. Iconic SaaS companies. billion, 18 years after founding, at $100m ARR.

SaaS 344

SaaS Cloud Acquisition Revenue 344

SaaStr

JANUARY 13, 2022

The late-stage VC firm Meritech put together its annual SaaS report here and it slices the data in a few interesting ways. The average SaaS company hits $225m ARR at IPO. The average SaaS company is growing 55% at IPO (at that $225m ARR). Only 33% of SaaS IPO’s in 2021 were HQ’d in the Bay Area.

SMB 360

SMB SaaS Retention Scale 360

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2020

This post is part of a series leading up to SaaS Office GTM Edition on June 24 in which we’re reviewing the results of the 2020 Redpoint GTM survey. CMOs in SaaS companies head 35% of companies in the $20-50M ARR range, 40% at $50-100M and 53% at $100M+. Today, we’re answering the question: how do teams grow as a startup scales?

Scale 363

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2021

So if you haven’t noticed, public SaaS stocks have taken a big tumble recently as the market has gotten nervous about expensive SaaS and Cloud stocks. Let’s take a look at the state of the “pandemic boom” and SaaS, and we’ll see things … are varied. growth of 2020. 2020 – $5.1B

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Trends Merchant Services SaaS Cloud 312

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2023

Not easy, but easier and easier: There was a bump in 2016, a Flash Crash in SaaS, when budgets were slashed, but it didn’t last long enough to really impact renewal cycles. SaaS markets had fully recovered later that year. Even the 2008-2009 downturn, while truly brutal, didn’t hit SaaS as hard as the rest of the economy.

SaaS 318

SaaS Churn Sales Software 318

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2022

Almost every category of SaaS exploded during the lockdown, but three saw just crazy boosts: Zoom went from $1B to $3.5B In fact, all 3 were clear in their public announcements that the Covid boost was already over by the end of 2020: Is the Covid Boost in Cloud and SaaS Already Over? Still the Best of Times in SaaS and Cloud.

SaaS 334

SaaS Cloud B2B Enterprise 334

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2025

[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. When I talk to founders who launched in 2020 or 2021, I hear the same anxiety: “Are we already legacy?

AI Search 183

AI Search AI ChatGPT Innovation 183

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 6, 2021

— Clint Reid (@clintverse) September 3, 2020. Bootstrapping in SaaS it isn’t that hard, per se. THEN, after $10m, bootstrapped SaaS companies seem to basically scale at the same rate as their venture-backed peers. Again, the #1 more important thing to understand in SaaS is you can totally do it without external funding.

Sales Hiring 361

Sales Hiring Venture Capital Scale SaaS 361

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2022

SaaS investor Logan Bartlett put together a good summary of the tumult in the SaaS public markets here. While SaaS multiples may have gotten too high, the best SaaS companies are growing faster than ever. While SaaS multiples may have gotten too high, the best SaaS companies are growing faster than ever.

SaaS 289

SaaS Cloud Revenue Marketing 289

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2020

— Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 2, 2020. There should be a lot more billion+ acquisitions in Cloud and SaaS, if only because there are more decacorns to buy them. Note: the above list isn’t perfect, and I took out public SaaS companies that were acquired. Stay with it [link]. But it gives you a sense).

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Acquisition SaaS Cloud Startup 326

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2020

these are the Best of Times for SaaS VCs. Two related reasons: First, the stock market for public SaaS and Cloud companies is at an all-time high. Second, in many categories of SaaS, usage is way way up since March 15. — Aaron Levie (@levie) April 1, 2020. The post Why Covid-19 Has Been Great for SaaS VCs.

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Airlines SaaS Travel Cloud 344

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

What started as a simple WordPress blog in 2012 has now become the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. And SaaStr Europa brings 2,500+ SaaS execs, founders, and VCs together to Europe every summer. We were the first major SaaS event back in the SF Bay Area. SaaStr is turning 10!

Scale 312

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 312

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 7, 2024

So one of SaaStr Fund’s latest investments is Mangomint, a vertical SaaS platform for spas and salons. There are multiple vendors in different segments, including Mindbody which IPO’d a SaaS generation ago and then taken private in a $2B Vista acquisition. And why is Vertical SaaS thriving today? Pretty cool!

SaaS Payments 317

SaaS Payments Payments Payment Methods SMB 317

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2020

— Aaron Levie (@levie) September 11, 2020. It seems like everyone wants to be a SaaS founder these days. Start their own SaaS company. There are three things I ask folks who want to start their own SaaS company: 1. That just doesn’t happen in paid SaaS apps. >> It’s time. I get it.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting SaaS Interviewing Consulting 363

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

So one thing that has exploded in SaaS in the past decade is the role of Private Equity buying both public SaaS companies (to take them private, “fix” some metrics, and IPO or sell them again), and generally later-stage private SaaS companies. They are generally looking for good but not great deals.

AWS 321

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 321

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

Many SaaS and Cloud leaders are down more than 50% from their all-time highs. A Covid Hangover in SaaS stocks.’ The top SaaS and Cloud leaders are even accelerating at $1B in ARR, for goodness sakes!! The point is that SaaS multiples are still higher than where they were from 2010-2017.

SaaS 348

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 348

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

— Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 17, 2020. One of the tough things in SaaS, a downside of the fact that it compounds , is that you’re always running on the Habitral. ” Because this is your first pre-success in SaaS. The post If You Have 10 {Unaffiliated} Customers in SaaS — You Have Something.

SaaS 334

SaaS Churn Engineering Sales 334

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

There are a few things that are clear: The “Old” San Francisco, in particular of 2015-2020 in SaaS, is never coming back. Never again will SaaS companies have floor after floor full of AEs and SDRs in downtown San Francisco. That’s a first since March 2020. But It Is Having a Renaissance in SaaS.

SaaS 278

SaaS Engineering Data 278