SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2021

2021 Annual. We’re less than 60 days out to 2021 SaaStrAnnual.com ! We’ll bring together the top Cloud executives, VCs and more together Sep 27-29 in Silicon Valley. We work hard to make tickets as inexpensive as possible for an event of this scale and type. But many others cannot. See you in September!!

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2021

The Wall Street Journal had a great summary of IPOs in 2021 and before. Much as Unicorn creation more than doubled in 2021, so did IPOs: There’s a lot you can read into this: * First, it’s good IPOs grew as quickly as Unicorns were minted , more or less. So it’s good to see this growth in IPOs in 2021.

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Cloud Engineering Pricing SaaS 265

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2021

We’re gearing up now for the 2021 edition of SaaStr Enterprise May 26-27!! 2020 brought the CEOs and CXOs of Box, PagerDuty, Twilio, Coupa, Salesforce Digital, Adobe, VMWare and more together for a deep dive on selling, marketing, and scaling into the enterprise. 2021 will be just as awesome! CEO Elastic. CEO Elastic.

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Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 19, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Subscribe now The Bar For Going Public There’s a lot of talk recently about “are IPO markets open” or “what scale do I need to get public.” Subscribe now Share Clouded Judgement Leave a comment

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Cloud Scale Compensation Metrics 177

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2021

We’ve used various bits of the BVP Nasdaq Index and metrics since they launched a few years ago to highlight trends in SaaS and Cloud. This week even after a pullback, public SaaS and Cloud companies are up an eve 1000% (!) SaaS and Cloud are up +1000% since 2013. since 2013. But does it even matter?

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Cloud SaaS Trends Metrics 303

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2021

But like “Cloud” and “SaaS”, its definitely has evolved. But as Shopify scaled, its revenue as a percent of commerce on its sites — “Merchant Solutions” — began to eclipse its recurring SaaS revenues. In 2021+, Yes. Doesn’t ARR stand for Annual Recurring Revenue? Call it ARR.

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Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 359

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2024

So it’s been a long IPO drought since HashiCorp was the last IPO of the Boom Times in December 2021. They’re still transitioning from onprem / appliciance model to cloud, which makes some of the metrics a touch confusing. New Customers Still Growing 22% at Scale. Since then, we’ve had just one — Klaviyo.

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Scale Pricing Scaling Cloud 230

SaaStr

MARCH 21, 2021

“3 Reasons You Need Support Ops to Scale and How to Really Build It with Stripe and Assembled” Assembled brought this session together for SaaStr Build 2021 with the Head of Support Ops at Stripe. What’s Support Ops, you ask? Find out here! #3. Catch up here!! #5.

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

They’re at almost $500m in ARR, with 1,850 customers, now growing a modest but steady 19% and they have gotten pretty efficient, like most other public SaaS and Cloud leaders. nCino has flipped the switch like many other public SaaS and Cloud companies and gotten to positive operating margins (and cash flow) in just 1 year.

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SaaStr

MAY 17, 2021

SaaStr Enterprise is a flagship SaaStr digital event on May 26 + 27 where the top executives and leaders driving innovation in the Cloud share their playbooks on scaling your business to market and sell to the enterprise. 500 CXOs exploring emerging trends and cloud innovation. 1000 CEOs ($20m+ ARR) CEOs and investors.

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SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2024

The New Normal: 700 Employees at $200,000,000 in ARR Many SaaS and Cloud leaders are already there — especially the highest performers, from Cloudflare to Canva to ServiceNow. In fact, almost every SaaS leader at scale is hitting $300,000 in Revenue Per Employee at the pre-IPO phase. The rest are marching there. 2x as efficient.

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SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2023

They typically give them just enough to see if it will work, and the startup grows and scales to the next stage. Folks that raised in the Go-Go Times of 2021 in many cases have been able to stretch their cash through 2023. SaaS and Cloud growth overall will remain strong. VC finance is designed to fund 18-24 months of runway.

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SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

So times are tougher for some, but for the most part, not in leaders in Cloud security. 100k+ Customers Are Key To Growth at Scale. But the big ones are growing fast faster by revenue at scale. In 2021, it’s non-GAAP operating margins was -1%. Cloudflare really scales into some big deals! Billion in ARR.

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Clouded Judgement

APRIL 5, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. They’ve shown they can hit escape velocity, at scale, with profitability. My point of this post is simply to point out some of the challenges that arise from a hype round at an “at scale” valuation.

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SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

We just launched the entire SaaStr Annual 2021 Agenda !! 3 days, more than 100+ sessions and 300 expert speakers, who will be sharing their best practices to help you scale faster, build smarter, and close more customers. Why Intent is the New Lead: 2021 State of Marketing Technology with Marqeta’s CMO Vidya Peters.

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Scale AWS B2C SaaS 254

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2024

So Elastic is the somewhat under-the-radar SaaS and Cloud leader that still almost everyone, at least for search. NRR Remains Solid at 110%, But Down From 130% in 2021 NRR remains healthy, but down materially from the Go Go Days of 2021, when at $700m ARR, Elastic had 130% NRR. That’s a solid +60% logo growth at scale.

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SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

And that means, as crazy as it sounds right now, a potential for an IRL (“In Real Life”) SaaStr Annual in 2021. Right now we are quietly planning for a SaaStr Annual 2021 in the Bay Area in Q3. It likely would cost $500,000 or more at our scale, but that’s OK. What’s our plan? Will it happen?

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SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 16, 2021

The overwhelming participation by both Founders and Investors at the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2021 exemplifies this. Blue Cloud Ventures. Now as a GP it’s the perfect opportunity to meet SaaS and Cloud founders. The post Only A Few More Days To Sign Up For Meet-A-VC at SaaStr Annual 2021! Advaita Capital .

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2023

And broader Cloud players had great years too, from MongoDB to Cloudflare to Azure, if not quite as crazy as at the peak of 2021. And Gartner still predicts overall Cloud spend will grow to record rates in 2024. But at some point, perhaps, Cloud spend will be so saturated, it just has to slow.

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SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

The #1 trend is that apart from the huge run-up in SaaS multiples starting in 2019, and a nice bump in 2021 … public SaaS companies have been trading at about 10x forward revenue. The case that Cloud and SaaS multiples, and 100x ARR rounds in venture, just got ahead of themselves. Yet we see trends. Do they deserve more today?

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Cloud Trends Revenue SaaS 240

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 21, 2023

Q3 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. Commentary from the cloud providers seems to be that the major macro headwinds around optimizations and new deal scrutiny have started to abate. There is some normal seasonality here (excluding the 2021 period). ” 3 months later, what happened to those green shoots?

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Cloud Software Benchmarks Retention 177

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

So in the era of 2021, the time of 1,000 unicorns, it seemed like everyone and anyone someday, just might be a decacorn someday. Sometimes, growth slowed a bit from the crazy pace of 2021. So, a subset of SaaS and Cloud leaders have gone on a public market run lately. But SaaS and Cloud keep growing. Not everyone.

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SaaS Cloud Scale Engineering 205

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

So is it possible to be too efficient in SaaS and Cloud? ARPU was up +28% from 2022 over 2021, and another 6% the past 12 months on top of that. But at scale, even the slightly less long version of the tail is where the money is. Even small cloud customers worked to bring down their spend in 2023. #5. Churn Stable.

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SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

With too many examples from SaaStr Annual 2021 to call out specifically, here are 2 “Cloud talks plus decks” that I can imagine the Self-Taught Founder relying upon: David Sacks On SaaS Org Charts. Example Referenceable Slide + Full Deck : Mark Roberge On The Science of Scaling. Full Session YouTube.

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Scale Cloud Forecasting Pricing 311

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2023

So it’s tougher out there for many of us, but many Cloud and SaaS leaders are still growing at epic rates, even if not quite at the torrid rates of 2021. We’ve seen the same thing at most Cloud and SaaS leaders, especially those that sell to SME (Small, Medium, and Enterprise / Larger customers).

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Headcount Sales Hiring Scale Cloud 288

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2021

— Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) May 6, 2021. and as Cloud continues to scale: Many of the best in SaaS are accelerating even at massive scale. That’s massive acceleration at scale. Zscaler , a quiet giant in Cloud security, also accelerated to 60% growth at $700m ARR! Cloud is just on fire.

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Cloud Scaling SaaS Revenue 278

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

From HubSpot to Snowflake to Asana to Monday to Gitlab to Cloudflare, the best in SaaS and Cloud aren’t just growing faster than ever. They are often accelerating at scale. Even if valuations aren’t what they were in the crazy times of 2021. But for the most part, there is no slowdown in the leaders of SaaS.

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SaaStr

MAY 6, 2024

And that’s fairly constant for the past decade, outside of the 2021 bubble. After all, there are so many more SaaS and Cloud leaders worth $1B+ that there wer a decade ago. My biggest take-away: there are barely more than 50 acquisitions of $50,000,000 or more, at least disclosed one, in software of U.S.-based By dollars, yes.

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Acquisition Software Review Software Cloud 227

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Amplitude is a quiet Cloud leader that you might not have heard of — unless you are building software. They were founded in 2011 and IPO’d ten years later in 2021 at $150,000,000 in ARR, growing 57%, and have rocketed to a $7B+ valuation. From 41% in 2020 to 51% in 2021! They’re growing even faster at scale.

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SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2021

Wow there was a lot going on at SaaStr last week with SaaStrBuild.com 2021 and more! “Demo-Driven Revenue Acceleration: 3 Ways to Use Product to Engage and Scale with Demostack” This session on how to really do demos proved pretty popular. #3. Do a deep dive into the data, trends and more in Cloud in 2021.

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Cloud CTO Scale Venture Capital 139

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

Q2 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. This was consistent in 2020 and 2021. As you can see from the data below most cloud businesses beat the consensus estimates for Q2 Source: company filings and Pitchbook consensus estimates Historically, the median beat of consensus estimates is closer to ~4%.

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Cloud Software Benchmarks Retention 169

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2023

And I’ve even been bullish the past 18 months, even with the headwinds some have seen: Sure growth is down at top Cloud leaders, but it’s still strong in absolute terms The best SaaS and Cloud startups that solve real, big problems are still exploding The U.S. Just nothing like 2021. But this low? To a 8x-10x world.

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Cloud Trends Scale SaaS 226

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2021

We all know times are good in SaaS and Cloud — but just how good? Is it all the big public cloud vendors and a handful of outliers? — Jamin Ball (@jaminball) August 5, 2021. It really is almost everyone at SaaS that is at scale and has a winning brand. Really impressive, accelerating, Datadog quarter.

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SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

If you’re selling cloud infrastructure, for the most part, growth may be down a smidge but is still strong, e.g., MongoDB. Growth in public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Snowflake, etc.) Growth in public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Snowflake, etc.) But it’s not that simple.

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Merchant Services Azure Software AWS 267

SaaStr

DECEMBER 24, 2021

As 2021 winds down, we wanted to give a BIG Thank You to everyone in the SaaStr community. 2021 was a huge year for us, a big rebound after SaaStr Annual 2020 was the first major tech event that Covid shut down in March ‘20. It took a while to dig out of that hole, but we came out much stronger. We plan to do even more here in 2022.

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SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2021

“How to Exceed $100M ARR: Lessons to Scale with Sustainability with ActiveCampaign’s COO “ ActiveCampaign announced this week it had crossed a $3B valuation! Learn how they do it at scale. #7. “The 3 Secrets to Unlocking Revenue Through Customer Trust with GuideCX” #4. Learn here how they got there. #5.

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Entertainment Cloud Acquisition Retention 275

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2022

And my old division of Adobe, Document Cloud, is growing 21% at $2.4 Document Cloud revenue was $2.38 in revenue in 2021, about $8B dropped to operating income and well over that in free cash flow. One of its oldest products and divisions, Document Cloud, is growing the fastest. Creative Cloud crossed $10B in ARR.

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