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But that was down from the original target of $20 Billion, the size of their 2022 fund (raised at the peak in 2021). But that liquidity mainly came from pre-2021 deals. But there have only been 4 B2B / SaaS IPOs since 2021, and M&A is way down. Billion To Invest in More B2B Companies appeared first on SaaStr.
It’s 2021 but all over again, and different But in SaaS overall, the growth playbook hasn’t totally worked out on the last 4 SaaS IPOs. But overall, the growth investments weren’t big wins. 2021 prices were certainly inflated in many cases from valuations today. It’s natural. In AI, it’s insane.
When SaaStr Fund made the first investment in RevenueCat back in 2018, nobody could have predicted that this “simple API for managing in-app subscriptions” would become the infrastructure powering 33% of all mobile subscription apps and reach a $500M valuation in 2025. The Bottom Line From a $1.5M
An analysis of their investment patterns since 2020 doesn’t just reveal the accelerator’s strategy—it provides a map to the entire startup ecosystem’s next chapter. Crypto/web3 remains around 5% of investments. The 2022 spike followed the Coinbase IPO in 2021.
3 Came from the Investment Bank They Hired. In my experience, hiring an investment bank to help you in any acquisition > $100m or so is critical. In 2021, they moved to a PE mindset. They got several offers in 2021, then a pause in 2022, and the offers came back in 2023. It was a total reboot.
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. Others will have to accept much lower returns, at least for folks that invested in 2020-early 2022.
based start-ups just in 2021! And while the Wiz deal hasn’t closed yet, seeing a record M&A deal price fuels more VC investment. Now 37 is way up but it isn’t a record. Per Crunchbase, there were a stunning 211 (!) billion+ exits for U.S.-based So good times are back.
The survey reveals we’re returning to “pre-pandemic levels”, we’re normalizing after the artificial highs of 2021-2022. The takeaway: Stop chasing the unsustainable growth rates of 2021-2022. But here’s what most people are missing: This isn’t necessarily bad news.
The 2021 and 2022 cohorts maintain 31% and 22% CAGRs respectively, showing sustainable expansion patterns across multiple vintage years. The 2020 cohort achieved a 46% compound annual growth rate from initial purchase through March 2025—meaning customers don’t just stick around, they consistently expand their usage year after year.
3 Everyone got so efficient and at least non-GAAP profitable the past 2 years that they have room to hire and invest more. Not a magical time like 2021. See Salesforce, Asana, etc. All getting a boost even though its early for AI. But better.
Moveworks raised $200m of its $315m in VC Capital in 2021 at a $2.1 Billion valuation Add in dilution since 2021, carve-outs on the deal, etc. And the reality is, the last round was raised at a very high valuation in 2021. But do the investors actually make any money here? And should you care? The answers are murky. Its tough.
This early investment in regulatory compliance has become their key differentiator against Tether and newer entrants. While competitors focus on features, investing early in SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP, or industry-specific certifications can become your strongest competitive advantage. Circle trading at $85 up from $31 IPO price.
About Ethan Kurzweil Ethan is the founder of Chemistry VC, a focused early-stage venture firm that writes $3-30M checks with an average of $10-12M for Series A investments. Prior to founding Chemistry, Ethan spent 16 years at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he led investments in successful companies like PagerDuty, Intercom, and SendGrid.
Their first viral moment came in 2021 with a Highway 101 billboard before SaaStr that simply said: “Compliance that doesn’t SOC 2 much.” They invested heavily in podcast marketing with attribution pixels showing significant ROI. When they finally raised their $50M Series A from Sequoia in 2021, it was on their terms.
GTMfund’s 3 Areas of Focus for Investing Thanksgiving weekend is always a period of reflection and gratitude. Reflection across go-to-market trends, but also on the investment front (not to mention community !). A common misconception is that the name is representative of the type of software we invest in.
It’s the emergence of a new category that’s attracting billions in investment and fundamentally disrupting the $500B+ software development market. For seven years, growth was painfully slow: 2016-2021 : Minimal revenue, limited funding first years 2022 : $1M ARR (after 6 years!) 2023 : $2.4M
” Investing for growth has been pretty flat year over year for SMBs, which means there is money there, but they’re holding onto it. How to Make an Acquired Second Act Work In 2021, BILL completed its acquisition of Divvy , a Leader in Spend Management for SMBs. So I call this the wait-and-see economy.”
Also remarkably stable when you zoom out past the 2021-2022 bubble. The fundamentals of venture investing haven’t changed as much as the headlines suggest. Round sizes otherwise? A 1-2% dilution improvement is noise compared to building a company that can raise at higher valuations.
The 2021 fintech hype is mostly overpublic markets now reward fundamentals. Marketing Efficiency Improves With Product-Market Fit – Early Investment Pays Off Sales & marketing spend was ~$380 million in 2024, but efficiency has improvedmeasured by ARPU growth and profitability. Hit Profitability to IPO Chime hit $1.67
New data from Carta analyzing 17,896 primary priced rounds from Q1 2021 to Q2 2025 shows a clear trend: lead investors are systematically taking larger portions of the rounds they lead. By taking bigger positions, VCs can exert more control and better protect their investments in volatile market conditions. round in 2021 to $2.3M
Colin joined Wiz in February 2021 when the company was near zero revenue. The result was a 5x increase over initial projections – growing from an $8M revenue target to $40M actual results – driven by a belief that market demand justified the investment.
Since its original inception in 2021, Copilot has evolved and grown to 77,000 organizations and almost 2 million users. Each leader started by sharing their unique perspective on how they approached adding AI into their SaaS products: How GitHub Built an AI Copilot to 1.8M
Run your most critical, AI-powered apps on pic.twitter.com/M6tdOd2uQV — sridhar (@RamaswmySridhar) June 2, 2025 Databricks Neon Deal value: ~$1 billion Neon has more than 18,000 customers Founded in 2021, raised $129.6 5 Interesting Learnings from Snowflake at ~$4 Billion in ARR Implications for SaaS and B2B Software 1.
This “pricing power” indicates genuine demand, not just investment bank optimism. The combination of AI excitement, economic stability, and pent-up demand from years of IPO drought has created conditions we haven’t seen since 2021. SailPoint filed at $19-21 but priced at $23.
” The Results : This single decision drove them from $50M ARR in December 2021 to $100M ARR by Q1 2022—doubling ARR in just 3 months. We test all of them with very light investment, very simple models. The Framework : Account management wasn’t just retention—it was expansion revenue.
Joselyn Goldfein , Managing Director at Zeta Venture Partners, which invests in AI and data infrastructure-focused startups from inception through seed stage And see everyone at 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!! The bar has risen significantly from the “growth at all costs” mindset of 2021-2022.
After going public in September 2020 with 47% annual growth, the company hit peak quarterly growth of 49% in early 2021. commercial revenue grew from ~$150M in Q1 2021 to $254M in Q1 2025—a 69% increase over four years, but with accelerating momentum. Then came the long slide down. s : Build platforms, not features.
revenue, ~$1B total funding 2021: $34M revenue, ~$3B total funding 2022: $200M revenue, ~$3B total funding 2023: $2.2B When it did, competitors couldn’t catch up because they hadn’t made the same investment. revenue, ~$13B total funding 2024: $3.7B revenue, ~$20B total funding 2025: $12.7B
His investment portfolio spans fintech, biotech, and deep tech, reinforcing his passion for driving progress across industries. Recognized as the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman of the Year, she continues to drive policy change and invests in impact-driven ventures as a Venture Partner at Mustard Seed Maze.
In fact, Gartners 2024 AI report advises organizations that want to use generative AI on private data to prioritize RAG investments. they know nothing beyond 2021 data in their training). Industry leaders have quickly embraced RAG as a way to build more intelligent AI applications. Outdated Knowledge Cut-off Many LLMs (like GPT-3.5,
This behavior can create a surge in purchasing activity, as organizations look to make strategic investments without losing their allocated funds. We all know 2020 and 2021 was the year of excessive software buying fueled by ZIRP. This is for information purposes and should not be construed as an investment recommendation.
Jared Kleinert , Founder and CEO of Offsite.com 2025 will be the best year for SaaS companies (and tech in general) since 2021, but it wont always feel like it. Zachary Gropper , CEO of InsightRevenue In 2025, SaaS success will hinge on investing in the buyer experience.
To set the stage, if you talk to any VC out there today, they will tell you that half of their investments which were growing at epic rates in 2021 are barely growing today. A small startup Jason invests in called MangoMint is coming up on $20M ARR with 100% growth for salon spa software. Sales is beginning to promise this.
But you better be prepared for a haircut if you raised at frothy valuations in 2021-2022. When Sequoia and Tiger invested at Chime’s $25B round, they may have negotiated terms that protect them if the IPO comes in lower — although it’s not clear from the legal docs they did in this case. Most podcasts are dull.
The trillion-dollar investment thesis : VCs are now evaluating deals based on “odds of trillion-dollar outcome” rather than traditional metrics, justifying seemingly irrational valuations (like Perplexity at $14B) for companies with even a small chance at massive outcomes. The bar has gone up.
” Companies that couldn’t go public at inflated 2021 valuations are finding realistic pricing that works for public investors. YC Valuations and the New Math of Seed Investing Y Combinator startups are now raising at $50-60 million post-money valuations with minimal revenue. Data moats are becoming AI moats.
Have we lost interest in investing in the human side of sales? For the most part, folks seem done investing in more productivity for their sales humans. In 2021, everyone bought 100 new sales and revenue apps to keep the sales engine humming, along with large investments on the human side of RevOps, Customer Success, and more.
Why It Worked : “Sticking with a pure-play digital advice offering while continuing to scale has helped Wealthfront reach profitability earlier than its peers,” according to David Goldstone, investment research manager at Condor Capital Wealth Management. Application : Don’t chase every trend.
Here’s the unvarnished truth about what’s working, what’s not, and what requires more investment than most founders realize. The Training Investment: Plan to spend at least two weeks of intensive training, just like onboarding a new hire. The Investment Required : This isn’t about deploying a chatbot.
The Valuation Gap : There’s a massive disconnect between what PE firms think their assets are worth (based on 2021 valuations) and what buyers are willing to pay today. ” They didn’t get caught up in the 2021 frenzy of paying astronomical multiples for growth stories with no clear path to profitability.
billion in investable capital. According to the podcast analysis, NFDG had deployed roughly $500 million of their fund and achieved a 4x return in just two years – generating approximately $1.5 billion in gains and $300 million in carried interest for the partners. NFDG: The $1.1B
More Than a Good Rep Its’s been true everywhere I’ve worked and at almost every investment SaaStr Fund has made. So yes, in the Boom Times of 2021, it really did seem like anyone could close. More on the math behind that in this classic SaaStr post: Why a Great Rep Can Close 9x More Than a Poor Rep, and Even 2.5x
This isn’t incompetence it’s the mathematical reality of power law investing where one 20-30% winner carries the entire portfolio. In venture capital, 20-30% of a fund typically comes from just one investment. The risk per dollar invested has increased 2-2.5x, meaning the quality bar is correspondingly higher.
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