SaaStr

MAY 23, 2025

Market Timing: Sometimes the best companies are built during inflection points (mobile subscriptions, AI boom, app store policy changes). Platform Strategy: Don’t just solve one problembecome the platform where developers solve all related problems. The Bottom Line From a $1.5M

Payments 281

Payments Payment Solutions Underperforming Technical Team Payment Methods 281

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2025

AI Support / Agent leader Moveworks at $100m+ ARR sells to ServiceNow for $2.85 Its ServiceNows largest acquisition ever. Still, somewhat a crazy world where you can see your B2B AI company for $2.8 So the headline is incredibly impressive. Billion, a 20x-25x ARR exit and a huge, huge price in absolute terms. A huge exit.

AI 184

AI Acquisition SaaS B2B 184

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2025

A self-reinforcing flywheel where successful customers: Get promoted Tell their network Become champions Drive organic growth 3.

Technical Review 263

Technical Review Payment Solutions Scale Payment Services 263

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2025

Each module connects to the same Smart CRM database, creating a seamless ecosystem powered by AI. In fact, neither are seeing any slowdown in their net new customer acquisition rate. The Road Ahead For both HubSpot and Monday.com, the 250,000 customer milestone is just another marker on their growth journey. Whats your excuse again?

SMB 273

SMB Scale Education Innovation 273

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2025

Kobe Conrad, Head of Growth at Rupa Health and Onleet, took the stage at SaaStr Annual to break down the five growth channels that transformed Rupa Health from a $20M seed-stage startup into a platform with hundreds of millions in equity and a 4,000% increase in user acquisition over three and a half years.

Scale 228

Scale AI Search Sales Hiring Acquisition 228

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2024

This year, it’s all about AI, which is why Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer, calls it the Cloud AI Era. Four portfolio companies join Sameer to talk about three trends of the Cloud AI Era. With Jasper’s acquisition of ClipDrop, they can build a catalog of trails across the U.S. You can access the report here.

Cloud 167

Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence Healthcare 167

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2025

AI Disruption Anxiety : Companies are hesitating to invest in traditional SaaS solutions while waiting to see how AI will reshape their operations. Why buy a traditional CRM when AI-native alternatives might emerge? AI Budgets Are Where the Growth Is : Are You Really Tapping Into Them? We knew that.

Cloud 210

Cloud Software Marketing SaaS 210

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 23, 2023

This growth is fueled by AI workloads. ” “Higher-than-expected AI consumption contributed to revenue growth in Azure.” “In Azure, we expect revenue growth to be 26% to 27% in constant currency with an increasing contribution from AI. Google, on the other hand, declined after having plateaued last quarter.

AI Search 312

AI Search AI Cloud Azure 312

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2023

And it reminded me of a stretch when over 6 months or so, I met with a series of entrepreneurs that turned down pretty attractive acquisition offers, relatively early in their lifecycle: SaaS Co. #1 ARR, You Can Get Offers of $25m or if you are in a hot space (maybe generative AI today), sometimes even $100m. Vaguely. But Not Really.

Acquisition 361

Acquisition Venture Capital Scale Generative AI 361

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2025

First IPO in 1999 First acquisition for $5.3 AI Creates New Strategic Value Informatica wasn’t just acquired for their current business – they were acquired for their role in making AI workable at enterprise scale. IPO private IPO acquisition is becoming a common path. Focus on AI-readiness.

Acquisition 146

Acquisition Government AI Enterprise readiness 146

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

It’s dropped “Video” from its name as it has gone communications and AI-first: $4.7B Contact Center and Workvio (Employee Engagement) Products Are Growth Levers Today CEO Eric Yuan is the GM of the Contact Center business himself, and their Workivo acquisition of 2 years ago has worked well.

SMB 274

SMB Churn Enterprise Acquisition 274

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Just a quick reminder: Payback Period = Cost of Customer Acquisition/Gross Margin The gross margin is the revenue per customer minus the costs to provide the service. Move to usage-based pricing : AI software might be priced like databases, charging for compute. The ratio of AI price to base price ranges from 0.32

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 15, 2024

Discussed in this Episode: The power of community-led growth in driving customer acquisition and revenue. Predictions for the future of go-to-market, including the rise of micro-businesses and AI. 27:34) Identifying potential acquirers and navigating the acquisition process. (33:00) The post GTM 117: From 0 to Acquisition in 3.5

Acquisition 111

Acquisition Sales Hiring ChatGPT AI 111

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 8, 2025

The Wiz acquisition and the overall growth rates of security companies as a durable budget within software spending has propelled security more broadly. AI companies on average raise a little bit more, but the delta is not yet statistically significant - even though AI companies broadly do raise a premium.

Investment 191

Investment Venture Capital Cybersecurity AI 191

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

So if Salesforce invests a few billion in AI startups, and those values at least don’t go down — there’s essentially no cost to Salesforce. A $1B acquisition sounds like a lot, and it is. So no BigCo wants to overpay for acquisitions or corporate VC investments. At least, not unless the value declines.

Acquisition 299

Acquisition Investment Headcount Banking 299

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. Resolve 68% of Support Issues with Automation and AI Chime achieved 68% of support interactions resolved without human intervention, directly impacting their path to profitability.

Outsourcing Services 206

Outsourcing Services Scale Banking Customer Lifetime Value 206

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Efficient Growth : Word-of-mouth in tight-knit industries reduces customer acquisition costs. AI Integration : Vertical-specific AI solutions are becoming a key differentiator, requiring deep industry knowledge to implement effectively.

Construction 251

Construction Scale SaaS Travel 251

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

So if Salesforce invests a few billion in AI startups, and those values at least don’t go down — there’s essentially no cost to Salesforce. A $1B acquisition sounds like a lot, and it is. So no BigCo wants to overpay for acquisitions or corporate VC investments. At least, not unless the value declines.

Acquisition 260

Acquisition Investment Headcount Banking 260

SaaStr

JUNE 9, 2025

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. Learning #4: Data + AI = Premium Multiples Rubrik’s 206% returns reflect the market’s appetite for companies sitting at the intersection of data management and AI enablement.

B2B 184

B2B Marketing Scale Benchmarks 184

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Perhaps most importantly, Salesforce has leaned deeply into AI … and while the usage is impressive, so far it hasn’t materially changed growth. The Big Acquisitions Are Doing Well. Salesforce May Be Hiring 1,000+ Reps To Sell AI, But Overall Sales & Marketing Spend is down From 32% of revenue a year ago to 30% today.

Sales Hiring 200

Sales Hiring Scale Azure Cloud 200

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2024

Earlier this month, Gong’s CEO and Co-Founder Amit Bendov sat down with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin at SaaStr Europa 2024 to talk about all things AI and the lessons learned while scaling to billions. Back in 2015, Google AI beat the world chess champion easily. AI was starting to diagnose diseases better than doctors.

Scale 306

Scale AI Sales Underperforming Technical Team 306

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2025

Marketing : Your VP of Marketing should be building out a team, including content marketing, paid acquisition, and events. AI can’t do it all. If youre targeting SMBs, you might also need a growth hacker to optimize funnels. This is also when you might need a dedicated Head of Support if youre seeing a high volume of tickets.

Sales Hiring 247

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Scale 247

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2023

AI adoption has grown exponentially over the past year and it has likely doubled from its more than 2.5x At SaaStr Annual , IBM’s VP of Software and Technology Raj Datta and Director of Startups Kylie Rutherford shared how AI is changing the game for companies of all sizes. How to scale AI across your business.

AI 299

AI Technology Scale Startup 299

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Unparalleled Networking Opportunities SaaStr Annual brings together thousands of SaaS, Cloud and AI executives, founders, VCs, and industry leaders under one roof across our 40+ acre campus, May 13-15 in SF Bay! Investor Connections and Funding Opportunities — And $5m AI VC Pitch Stage!! And the VCs that want to fund them!

Sales Recruiting 193

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 193

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 17, 2024

Feeling that AI FOMO? Thats why HG Insights created The Next Generation of Sales AI report to calm the FOMO and help you bring AI to your GTM teams. It includes a breakdown of the Sales AI landscape, adoption of GenAI and Sales software across buyer groups. Plus, an analysis of the top 75 trending sales AI tools.

Scale 99

Scale Engineering Acquisition Scaling 99

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 20, 2024

Will AI sofware companies operate with better or worse profitability than a classic SaaS company? Initially, I thought worse since the expense of serving AI as a product is signficantly higher. AI SaaS may be much more profitable than the -10% average net income margins of the current crop of public businesses. Deflationary.

AI Search 231

AI Search AI Scale SaaS 231

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 25, 2023

In addition, Microsoft & Snowflake announced a deeper AI go-to-market partnership with Snowflake. It’s unclear how the Databricks acquisition might change that relationship. Snowflake’s partnership with Nvidia positions Snowflake’s cloud as a broader infrastructure platform.

Artificial Intelligence 240

Artificial Intelligence AI AWS Cloud 240

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

Focus on showing clear evidence of growth + efficiency, segment-specific excellence, and one truly scalable acquisition channel. Most importantly, make sure your historic trajectory supports your future projections.

Data 146

Data Acquisition AI Finance 146

Tom Tunguz

MAY 11, 2023

What is the distribution advantage AI confers to startups? Novel content creation techniques used the right way might enable a new form of inbound lead acquisition. AI enables ABM-at-scale. The first time a user visits a site AI asks “What do you want to accomplish today?”

AI Search 217

AI Search AI Scale Cloud 217

Sales Hacker

MAY 9, 2025

In 2023, we saw a surge of SaaS brands adding anything AI-powered or AI-driven into their website headlines. The optics were that if AI wasnt integral to your roadmap and marketing, you were losing relevance. Many venture capital firms shifted their investments almost entirely into AI startups.

AI Search 85

AI Search AI Scale SaaS 85

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

And come see so many more great convos like this at 2025 SaaStr Annual + AI Summit on May 13-15 in SF Bay , including the CEOs and CXOs at vertical SaaS leaders ServiceTitan, Clio, MangoMint, Owner and so many more! Their mission: increase safety, efficiency, and sustainability for the industries that power 40% of global GDP.

Scale 260

Scale Transportation Scaling SMB 260

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Adding complementary products or services can double your revenue potential without requiring new customer acquisition And a few more interesting learnings: 6. Rolling Our AI Products, But Still Early ServiceTitans AI capabilities, like Dispatch Pro and Marketing Pro, are designed to automate tasks, drive insights, and increase customer ROI.

Payments 144

Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 144

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2024

We went pretty deep on: The real role of AI in marketing today Does everyone just want to be a strategist now? Will AI let ICs do more, with fewer managers? AI-powered tools can automate many tasks, flattening organizational structures and allowing individual contributors to accomplish more with the help of AI agents.

Sales Hiring 301

Sales Hiring Startup Marketing Technical Review 301

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

Account executive to SDR ratios, sales cycle lengths, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, customer lifetime values, net dollar retention. These were my take aways : Selling AI is being discovered because the technology is new. Fight the empty box problem with great concrete templates that demonstrate how to use AI.

Software 304

Software Sales Hiring Customer Lifetime Value Scale 304

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2022

Let’s take a look at 3 B2B acquisitions from a few years back as an example. Let’s first start with the $35m acquisition of TokBox after 11 years and the $220m acquisition of SpringCM after 13 years. talking about “tuck-in” acquisitions that can attach to existing revenue streams.

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital Acquisition Pricing Cloud 363

User Pilot

MARCH 30, 2025

But is your mobile user acquisition strategy strong enough? There are many ways to approach each, so lets go over nine of the most effective strategies for mobile user acquisition: 1. Integrate product-led growth in your acquisition strategy I said earlier that you shouldnt rely on your product alone to attract mobile users.

Acquisition 65

Acquisition Mobile Software Review Social Media 65

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 12, 2025

In 2021 the total number of US software & AI seeds jumped from 2900 to 4300 - a 49% jump. AI is another component : pre-AI and post-AI companies, which are roughly demarcated by the launch of GPT 3.5 Retooling products with AI takes time. The Seed Surge of 2021 will lead to a raft of acquihires. in late 2022.

AI 130

AI Acquisition Trends Software 130