SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

.” The SaaS Market Has Turned a Corner According to Brian, who sees the market through multiple lenses as HubSpot’s Chairman and through his role at Sequoia Growth and Propeller VC, the SaaS downturn that dominated 2022-2023 ended recently. “It felt like we came out of the recession in Q3 of 2024,” Brian noted.

AI

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2025

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.

B2B

SaaStr

JULY 26, 2025

Crisis: HubSpot’s Retention Wake-Up Call (2014) When Sequoia’s Pat Grady considered investing in HubSpot’s Series A, he saw a company with serious retention problems. For any SaaS leader wrestling with NRR optimization, especially in the SMB/mid-market, HubSpot’s experience offers invaluable lessons.

Retention

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

at the height of 2022 to 6.7. It’s now falling to 150 because 81% percent of the dollars invested in venture capital at the height of the boom came from non-traditional venture capital firms which are all very likely to leave investing. Here’s what they found. #1: US venture funding went from 8 to 300 over 15 years.

Venture Capital

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2025

The Investment Story Syllable has raised $103M total funding, including a $40M Series C led by TCV, with backing from Oak HC/FT, Section32, and Verily. Recognized as CB Insights’ most promising startup in healthcare for 2022, picked as a leader from a pool of 7,000 companies. Who Should Evaluate Syllable.ai

Payment Solutions

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2024

Others will have to accept much lower returns, at least for folks that invested in 2020-early 2022. It’s just time. OneStream was arguably one of these, and PE made a big gain on the IPO. Genesys may be the first of a flood of these PE-backed SaaS IPOs in 2025. It just filed to IPO.

AI

Tom Tunguz

JULY 1, 2025

While Figma is investing heavily in AI, the technology lowers the barrier for new entrants. multiple to estimate forward revenue yields an estimated IPO valuation of approximately $21B 2 - a premium to the $20B Adobe offered for the company in 2022. Adobe’s blended bottoms-up & sales-led model yields a more typical 0.39.

Compensation

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2025

Referrals are Chime’s largest acquisition driver since 2022 , helping bring sales & marketing spend down to 26% of revenue in Q1 2025, from 42% in 2022. And a good comp for Ramp, Brex, and others. 5 Interesting Leanings: #1. Word-of-Mouth is Their #1 Source of New Customers.

Outsourcing Services

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2025

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

Software Review

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2025

The key is concentrated investment in differentiation, not diversification. Data-Driven Learning #4: The $1B Adobe Breakup Fee = 122% Revenue Growth Accelerant The Financial Impact: Adobe breakup fee: $1 billion (2023) R&D increase: 4.5x ” Companies achieving 60%+ Rule of 40 scores trade at 2-3x premium multiples.

B2B

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2025

From 2020-2022, the top 20 deals were just 6%-8% of all VC capital. Massive investments, at massive valuations, into the biggest leaders of AI. In 2024, 31% of all VC capital went into just 20 deals. Now there’s a lot going on here and part of the rush in 2024 and 2025 is that more capital is coming into VC again.

Venture Capital

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2025

The Market Maturation Curve Is Real Every category goes through this: Land Grab Phase (2018-2021): Winner-take-most dynamics, explosive growth Penetration Phase (2022-2024): Market saturation begins, competition intensifies Optimization Phase (2025+): Efficiency over growth, profitability matters We’re now firmly in Phase 3.

B2B

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2025

This includes even the fastest growing start-ups I’ve invested in , not just ones that are trying to manage the burn or manage slower growth. You can’t cut your way to growth, and many SaaS buyers already cut back plenty of vendors in 2022-2024. I thought we’d be kind of through this. They feel like they have to.

Technical Review

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2025

” The Timing : Founded in early 2019, Series A in May 2020 (two months after pandemic lockdowns), $100M ARR by March 2022. ” 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.

Payment Services

SaaStr

JUNE 20, 2025

The Infrastructure Bypass Midmarket software companies are caught in a “pressure cooker” with fast-moving AI startups developing applications far more rapidly than traditional software companies on one side, and tech giants investing billions in proprietary AI tools on the other. Palantir was ready.

AI Search

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2025

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.

AI

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2025

The 3 plans you need to make as a founder: The C10 Plan, The C60 Plan, and the C90 Plan: pic.twitter.com/JSPcjbfzpt — Jason SaaStr 2025 is May 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) October 4, 2022 Youre essentially building three layers of planning to balance ambition, realism, and risk management.

Sales Hiring

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2025

Build it into your core value prop or risk being eliminated before you even get to pitch The Opportunity : 4 out of 5 buyers report positive ROI on AI investments, and they’re willing to pay 20-30% premiums for proven AI value 2. Those still optimizing for 2022 playbooks will struggle to even get into consideration sets.

AI Search

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

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.

Technical Review

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2025

Thanks @daleksandersen pic.twitter.com/Niqf9JsYCx — Brian Halligan (@bhalligan) April 27, 2022 Heres how Id break it down: Start Small with a Pilot Program Begin with a handful of partnersideally 5-10that operate in adjacent ecosystems. Be patient, invest in the right relationships, and build a program thats designed to scale over time.

Scale

SaaStr

JUNE 30, 2025

revenue, ~$1B total funding 2021: $34M revenue, ~$3B total funding 2022: $200M revenue, ~$3B total funding 2023: $2.2B Phase 2: The Inflection Point (2022-2023) Funding Strategy : Scale infrastructure ahead of demand Revenue Strategy : Freemium land grab with ChatGPT This is where the magic happened. ChatGPT launches in November 2022.

AI

SaaStr

JULY 6, 2025

Gross contributed his expertise in early-stage investing and startup acceleration from his tenure at Y Combinator, where he helped identify and nurture some of the accelerator’s most successful companies. This strategic focus proved prescient as the fund launched just as the generative AI boom was beginning to reshape entire industries.

Venture Capital

BetterCloud

DECEMBER 16, 2024

In fact, the 2022 G2 Software Buyer Behavior Report , said that 56% of North American organizations actually prefer using a credit card to buy SaaS. The organization loses twice employees arent maximizing productivity and theres no return on investment for those long-forgotten apps.

Artificial Intelligence

Valuize Consulting

NOVEMBER 25, 2024

However, to fully unlock its potential, companies must go beyond qualitative insights and bring data into the decision-making process within Customer Success ranks and investments. They help answer key questions: Why is this Customer Success investment being prioritized? What is the business case for the initiative?

Payment Services

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2025

Invest in capabilities that seem over-engineered today but might be essential tomorrow. Zoom went from relatively modest pre-pandemic growth to explosive 400%+ revenue increases in 2020-2021, then crashed back to single-digit growth by 2022. s : Build platforms, not features. Growth has since fallen to single digits. a loss in 2023).

AI

Clouded Judgement

JULY 18, 2025

That’s what makes investing so fun today - it’s trying to spot them! Turns out, 5-10 years post the “cloud launch “was the golden era of cloud investing. This is for information purposes and should not be construed as an investment recommendation. Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

Cloud

How To Buy Saas

JUNE 18, 2025

Governments and companies now invest billions: the U.S. This surging investment spans AI chips, cloud platforms, and smart software. billion in private AI investment in the U.S. private AI investment reached $125.3 Government invests £2 B in AI infrastructure as part of EU collaboration. poured $109.1 In 2025, U.S.

AI

BetterCloud

MAY 23, 2025

The average number of SaaS apps have declined by 18% from 2022 to 2024 State of SaaS 2025 1. Define clear criteria for evaluating and selecting future technology investments, emphasizing integration capabilities, security standards, and vendor reliability. Consider the long-term scalability and flexibility of potential platforms.

Technical Review

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2025

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.

Underperforming Technical Team

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2025

These B2B founders didn’t just build great companies—they engineered some of the most lucrative long-term investments in modern history. After Shopify’s 10-for-1 split in 2022, what looked like strong returns became absolutely extraordinary. 10,000 invested at IPO would be worth $570,478 today.

B2B

SaaStr

JUNE 9, 2025

Then ChatGPT happens in November 2022, and by January 2023, you make a decision that would reshape your entire company. The companies seeing 80% resolution rates versus 40% have invested in comprehensive documentation and knowledge bases. Invest in Platform Thinkin g Point solutions will struggle in an AI world. The setup time?

AI Search

Stax

MARCH 17, 2025

They also invest in their client’s success and help them thrive. Nielsen Behavioral Panel of USA with 29K SMB monthly average desktop purchase transactions, from 13K consumers between April 2022-March 2023. The best ISVs go beyond simply providing merchant services. Webinar registration 1.

Merchant Services

SaaStr

AUGUST 1, 2025

Kristina Shen is Managing Partner and Co-founder of Chemistry, a $350M early-stage fund investing in seed and Series A companies. Previously a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, Christina led ServiceTitan’s Series A investment and has been tracking the company’s remarkable journey for nearly a decade.

Scale

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2025

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. UBS acquisition in 2022, choosing to remain independent.

Scale

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2025

This post distilled her key findings into actionable takeaways, covering everything from AI adoption curves to investment patterns that will shape the next wave of SaaS innovation. Great dashboards remain the primary way enterprise customers perceive and demonstrate value from their SaaS investments. Read the full post → 2.

Scale

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2025

It’s not like B2B from 2005-2022. You’d invest deeply in an app. Yes, the players with the most training data and investment—your OpenAIs, your Anthropics—have a higher bar for disruption. And we’re all in a mode where we are willing to invest more time (and money) in new vendors. But am I loyal ?

AI