SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

The freemium ones really have no acquisition costs at this point (the main lead source is mini-brand). And here, they just couldn’t safely invest. If I’d had $5m+ on the balance sheet, I would have made far, far more investments. It will destress all your investments. About $1m in cash for a $5m ARR business.

Scale 337

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Construction 337

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2021

Battery Ventures’ data says while VC investment $$$ are on fire — they aren’t going into more startups. Some guideposts to guide to at scale. #4. Private Equity did 48+ $100m acquisitions in 2020. The post Battery Ventures: VC Investments Are Way Up. A few top takeaways: #1. ” #2.

Investment 237

Investment SMB Acquisition Cloud 237

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

The software M&A (mergers and acquisitions) market saw its best year yet in 2020, and it’s on track to see another record year in 2021. VC-backed startups are buying other startups at the fastest pace in over a decade and North American startup investment totaled 155 billion this year so far.

Scale 52

Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

Or do you actually have something worth scaling?”. You’ll also need a scalable acquisition model with a proven track record, and you must solidify your unit economics. But actually, you still might not have a scalable acquisition model because you might just be growing the customers you already have.”.

Scale 205

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 205

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

Those line charts showing fast-rising user acquisition or explosive ARR have been synonymous with the industry over the past decade. And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2021

Protocol and Pitchbook partnered to do a comparison to see what’s happening in Private Equity and enterprise deals so far in 2021, and the data is a bit jaw-dropping: Just in 1H’21, PE invested $20.4B But PE has some interesting advantages for founders over an IPO or a tech acquisition: ad. in SaaS and enterprise deals.

Investment 256

Investment SaaS Acquisition Enterprise 256

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2020

The other day Coupa did its first $1B+ acquisition, of 18+ year old Llamsoft. There should be a lot more billion+ acquisitions in Cloud and SaaS, if only because there are more decacorns to buy them. It’s a bigger deal than a VC firm investing at $1B pre-money, in many ways. Adobe and Shopify are now worth $100B+.

Acquisition 258

Acquisition SaaS Cloud Startup 258

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2022

Airtable ’s CMO Archana Agrawal shares how marketers can tackle these challenges to develop solid marketing foundations for rapid customer acquisition and growth. She reveals how customer centricity, operational rigor, and data-driven strategies drove Airtable to scale and serve over 300,000 organizations, including 80% of the Fortune 100.

Engineering 223

Engineering Scaling Marketing Acquisition 223

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2021

If you can nail your target markets, an understanding of your real customers, product positioning, your customer acquisition strategy, deal motion, customer success, and your employee programs down you will be able to forge ahead. 3 Invest in people. Invest “BIG” in people. The X-Factors. Specialize and focus your execution.

Scale 194

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring SMB 194

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2022

Cliff Bockard, Senior Vice President of Revenue at DigitalOcean, joined us at SaaStr Scale to discuss how businesses can serve SMBs and still bring in large numbers of revenue. . The self-serve approach removes the barrier of talking to a sales representative for your customer—helping your business save time and ramp up customer acquisition.

Scale 197

Scale Scaling Revenue Enterprise 197

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

He’s invested in startups as a VC since 2013 and has 10x his fund. You Need A Business Model with Economies of Scale As you’re trying to reverse engineer whether your business model makes sense, you have to look at your business model. Certain business models have economies of scale, and some don’t.

Engineering 245

Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 245

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2024

ACV Basically Flat at $11,365 This is likely a “macro” impact as well in part — as well as the fact that HubSpot continues to invest in its smaller starter customers. Right now, HubSpot has the full package: strong, efficient growth at scale, along with impressive growth in new customers. GRR is more consistent.

Scale 241

Scale Cloud Scaling Pricing 241

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2024

So the other day a CEO reached out to me about advice on an acquisition. I’d actually invested in the #1 in the space, which today is at $200m+ ARR. So this CEO really wanted to buy a startup at around $10m ARR, that actually wasn’t remotely close to #1 in the space, and wasn’t growing anymore. But sometimes.

Pricing 239

Pricing Scale Startup Acquisition 239

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Native integrations are key to customer acquisition and retention in the SaaS space, but not what makes your product special so we believe these integrations should and will be built utilizing tools, not writing custom code. Check that out here. Why did you do the deal?

Scale 194

Scale B2B Investment Acquisition 194

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2022

When a business is ready to scale, a startup ought to develop an organizational roadmap. Managers of paid acquisition, organic acquisition, and marketing operations/systems report to the head of demand generation. As the company scales, the heads of demand generation and product marketing join the team.

Startup 360

Startup Acquisition Product Marketing Scaling 360

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

That’s an expensive mistake if you make the wrong investment. Micro startup acquisitions. But before we dive into that, we need to look into what micro startup acquisitions are and why you need to sit up and take notice. Micro Startup Acquisitions: What Are They, and Why Should I Care? Micro Startup Acquisition Trends.

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Payment Methods Acquisition Development Team Review 144

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

GC thinks about building out your Go-To-Market team in 3 ways: Short vs. long-term needs Product maturity Experimental vs. scale Short-term vs. long-term needs. Experimental vs. Scale. The last thing to consider when hiring on the GTM side is whether the role is more experimental or intended to help you scale.

Scale 260

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 260

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

In today’s world, there’s a clear shift in what founders, boards, and investors are all after — scalable, low-CAC (customer-acquisition cost) growth strategies. In this playbook we’ll share: Automated outbound at-scale strategies. The data above shows it’s a customer acquisition cost on average of $1.05

Scale 225

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 225

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 11, 2022

Raise, Sell, Merge, or Scale? In this article, we’ll help you determine the next best step for your business and provide guidance on whether you should raise, sell, merge, or scale your SaaS. Option 3: Mergers and acquisitions. How to Navigate the Market Downturn. Option 1: Raising capital. billion in 2020 to $55.9

Scale 97

Scale Scaling Technical Review Venture Capital 97

Chart Mogul

AUGUST 20, 2020

4x entrepreneur Andrew Gazdecki shares how you can better prepare yourself for your startup's acquisition, and make the journey a rewarding one. The better prepared you are for an acquisition, the smoother it’ll go, leaving you financially, operationally, and psychologically stronger during negotiations. Know your numbers.

Acquisition 105

Acquisition Startup Technical Review Scale 105

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

PE wants to invest in leaders, if not necessarily always #1 in a category. The startup I invested in that were acquired by PE in the 2020-2021 Boom were acquired for 8x in one case, 12x in another, and 15x in a third. Products that are as close to an annuity as possible, that are amenable to efficiency gains. What did he find?

AWS 246

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 246

User Pilot

JULY 4, 2023

Read on to discover how to cross the chasm and scale your technology company. Implement a product-led growth strategy to allow early adopters a chance to test your product without making an investment. Use different acquisition channels like SEO and content, paid media, and webinars to attract new customers.

Scale 82

Scale Scaling Technical Review SaaS 82

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

In the ever-evolving landscape of SaaS, Venture Capital, Bootstrapping, and Valuations – understanding market trends and investment patterns is critical. We’ll explain Jason’s take on the recent market fluctuations, highlighting major deals that shaped investment patterns and their effects on valuation trends.

Venture Capital 214

Venture Capital Scale Technical Review Software Review 214

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2023

So there’s a strategy exercise I like to go through with startups I’ve invested in that are past $20m-$30m ARR or so: Who would you buy with 10% of your market cap? Versus later, when you are bigger, you can do a ton of tiny acquisitions. I.e., who would give 10% of your company away to buy?

Marketing 222

Marketing Acquisition Startup Scaling 222

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 6, 2021

All of the sales and marketing dollars invested to obtain persuade the buyer to put digital ink to pdf have been recouped immediately. Contract As don’t require burning equity dollars to hire more AEs; the company reinvests customer revenue dollars to scale. Let’s take this idea time scale further out: multi-year deals.

Sales Hiring 333

Sales Hiring Scale Payments Payment Solutions 333

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2019

It’s still a great investment. Invest in your long tail. Yes, we’d all love 100% viral acquisition. The post What are some things you can do early on to make scaling SaaS easier? Viral coefficients are often low in SaaS, but that just means it takes longer. Keep a Free edition if it’s still a good product.

Scale 197

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SaaS 197

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 2023

The anticipation of a rate change drives fear of target acquisition valuations. In the last two years, M&A has totaled about $49b & it surges to above $60b driven by AI acquisitions. We also see more ARR-based web3 businesses achieving scale. The Fed cuts rates, which helps. M&A accelerates throughout the year.

AI Search 230

AI Search AI Scale Headcount 230

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2023

LIVE from SaaStr Annual 2023 Stage A Masters: What The Top Founders Do Better to Scale Even Now with Y Combinator’s Managing Director Michael Siebel 3. The Next Best in About 5 Years. 5 Interesting Learnings from Samsara At Almost $1 Billion in ARR Top Podcasts This Week: 1.

Scale 216

Scale Management SMB AI 216

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

Weave started off as a dental ERP and comms platform (including VoIP / phone), and then expanded beyond that as it scaled. It’s a tough outcome for a team that is working hard to scale well into the nine figures of ARR. A reminder growth investing isn’t a space you automatically make money at.

SaaS Payments 239

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods Payments 239

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Announcements of several blockbuster acquisitions, most notably from Adobe acquiring Figma, which was the highest valuation multiple offered in an acquisition for any software company at scale. As it scaled, they realized they needed to layer in inorganic channels of growth while keeping an eye on efficiency.

Cloud 245

Cloud Payments Software Review Payment Solutions 245

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2021

You get to make about 30 or so investments from that fund. So those 30 investments have to return $800m. So a $200m VC fund needs $5.333 billion in exits (measured by the 30 companies’ collective value when the VC can finally sell their stock post-IPO or acquisition) to hit its own investors’ expectations.

Venture Capital 361

Venture Capital Business Model Acquisition Investment 361

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 16, 2023

However, scaling a business into a seven-figure enterprise is a completely different ball game altogether. So, how could these startups scale while others struggled to find their footing? So how did I scale my PR agency to a coveted seven-figure powerhouse? To scale and truly stand out, I needed to niche down.

Scale 79

Scale Scaling Strategy Social Media 79

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2022

In 2019, they also acquired Quovo, a company that focused on investment accounts, to make it easier for consumers to manage their investments. When asked about the acquisition, Perret commented, “People asked if we had an acquisition strategy. Building the Platform, Scaling the Business, and Fostering Financial Inclusion.

Banking 238

Banking Scale Acquisition Interviewing 238

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

Selling data really works at scale, as ZoomInfo shows. Aggressively expanding its product portfolio — both organically and through acquisition. ZoomInfo was built on top of an early acquisition of a competitor, and CEO Henry Schuck has expanded far beyond its original product in cleansing sales data. Wow, ZoomInfo!

Scale 233

Scale Acquisition B2B Engineering 233

SaaSOptics

MAY 19, 2022

What Is Customer Acquisition? Customer Acquisition is the process of acquiring new customers in a business. For subscription-based SaaS businesses, your customer acquisition metrics indicate how effectively you acquire new users via sales, marketing, or a product-led approach like a free trial. More customers = more revenue.

Acquisition 59

Acquisition Scale Strategy Software Review 59

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2022

She draws from personal experience scaling a global product company to $1B and shares common mistakes. The establishment of the enablement function is vital in scaling a business. You need a sales enablement team if your company has scaled to over $10 million ARR. Expansion or retention is the new acquisition.

Scale 220

Scale Sales Hiring Revenue Marketplace as a Service 220

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2022

Adobe shut off our Free edition almost immediately after our acquisition, as they didn’t really want to deal with all the noise it created. But it’s still a reminder of how far it can scale. And almost all of us do have to drive up market to scale. Your Long Tail is an asset that lasts decades, if you invest.

Scale 292

Scale Sales Engineering Acquisition 292