SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2023

As SaaS founders are looking to scale and raise funding, it can be confusing and stressful to navigate in the uncertain market of the past few years. As companies scale, they will want to keep in mind that momentum will change over time. They found that companies with lower revenue tended to scale more quickly than mature businesses.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Software Review Operational efficiency. 226

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2023

You’ll probably have a smaller lifetime customer value and customer budget for acquisition. Find The Balance Between CAC And LTV The achievable lifetime value defines your customer acquisition cost target. Every company is different and will have varying solutions, customer acquisition costs, and lifetime value.

Scale 231

Scale Strategy Scaling Outbound Sales Team 231

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2024

Despite raising prices and selling more products, HubSpot ACV is basically flat at $11,365. Clearly, even SMBs are working to moderate spend, even as vendors increase pricing. So price increases don’t always automatically lead to an ACV / ARPU bump. #4. And a few other interesting learnings: #6. GRR is more consistent.

Scale 245

Scale Cloud Scaling Pricing 245

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

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. If you want to go really big, you want ones with economies of scale.

Engineering 250

Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 250

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2022

So we’ve got all the amazing sessions from 2022 SaaStr Scale up on YouTube here ! “3 Lessons from Building a Marketing Engine to Grow Pipeline from Millions to Billions with Samsara’s CMO” A great session on marketing at scale, across multiple products — with ton of great Q&A at the end. #2.

Scale 185

Scale Scaling Engineering Acquisition 185

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. . SMBs usually prioritize simplicity, ease of use, transparent pricing, and support. DigitalOcean has done that and grown beyond $150M in revenue in Q3 2022.

Scale 202

Scale Scaling Revenue Enterprise 202

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Applying data and science to scaling has become easier because of the shift that’s happened in the software industry over the past 15 years, from outside sales to inside sales. A data-driven framework for scaling. Mark’s latest ebook, The Science of Scaling , outlines a precise framework for success. Next comes go-to-market fit.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 26, 2022

Acquisition. Price Increases. Acquisitions increased revenue 33%. New bookings added 10% ; price increases 5%. These acquisitions tend to be small (around $5m) & the company operates most businesses with a team of 30-40 people across 5 operating segments by theme. New Bookings. Contraction. -3%. Net Growth.

Software Review 266

Software Review Investment Software Acquisition 266

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 16, 2023

On the other hand, enough uncertainty permeates the market to depress prices. Public software companies’ share prices have fallen 10% on average in the last 30 days dotted with positive notes like the stabilization cloud growth rates for Microsoft & Google. First, acquisitions.

Startup 180

Startup Scale Strategy Forecasting 180

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2024

It’s a common dream for founders to hope their startup be acquired one day, but what is a company, like Google, really looking for in their acquisitions? First, there are three types of acquisition deals: Talent — To get the expertise on your team and more firepower. Focus on companies with strong M&A functions.

Software Review 226

Software Review Technical Review Acquisition Scale 226

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

The prices would be lower today for the latter two I suspect. ARR was the Median acquisition price in a “take private deal” Interestingly, it’s not all that different post-Boom and pre-Boom, as you can see above. What did he find? You might be worth less ?

AWS 251

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 251

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 11, 2022

Raise, Sell, Merge, or Scale? So far this year, only 42 companies have priced IPO offerings. 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. billion in 2020 to $55.9

Scale 97

Scale Scaling Technical Review Venture Capital 97

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

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 265

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 265

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2023

Self-serve products can and should be quite profitable at scale. Most of the website / presence growth came from price increases, which saw limited churn as a result. Churn was modest from their price increase, leading to material growth. Large mark-down for its $400m acquisition of Tock in 2021. 68% From Ecommerce.

Scale 231

Scale SMB Churn Pricing 231

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 19, 2018

Price ($M). Year of Acquisition. If we compare this acquisition on other dimensions, we see that Mulesoft is the second fastest growing at the time of acquisition, next to SuccessFactors in 2011. For acquirers of software companies, one thing seems to matter: growth at scale. Transaction. TTM Rev ($M). Growth Rate.

Acquisition 187

Acquisition Marketing Enterprise Revenue 187

Baremetrics

AUGUST 8, 2021

For most SaaS businesses, customer acquisition is one of the most challenging stages of growth. For most, the easiest ways to increase customer acquisition rates are to offer a freemium model or price your product on the lower end of the spectrum. Ensures You Attract the Right Customers When Should You Increase Your Pricing?

Pricing 111

Pricing SaaS Scale Churn 111

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Plus, the price tag on those more established businesses often run into the billions. 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?

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Payment Methods Acquisition Development Team Review 144

User Pilot

JULY 4, 2023

Read on to discover how to cross the chasm and scale your technology company. Getting the right positioning, messaging, key features, and pricing is vital before entering the mainstream market. Use different acquisition channels like SEO and content, paid media, and webinars to attract new customers.

Scale 82

Scale Scaling Technical Review SaaS 82

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. Speak to other founders.

Acquisition 105

Acquisition Startup Technical Review Scale 105

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Free user acquisition. Stage 3: Prove scalable quality user acquisition. It’s time to reduce the customer acquisition cost by experimenting with content marketing and virality. As a result, your growth team gets limited to user acquisition. Mistake #2: Scaling sales team disproportionately to growth funnel.

Technical Review 246

Technical Review Technical Advisors Scale Compensation 246

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. Contract processes, packaging, and pricing might change.

Scale 225

Scale Sales Hiring Revenue Marketplace as a Service 225

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2022

A scale-up with incredible numbers can always IPO, at any time. M&A (acquisitions) is way, way down. First, many potential acquirers own stock prices are way down. Which makes acquisitions sometimes more expensive in terms of dilution, if not cash per se. More on that here. The IPO market is mostly frozen.

Marketing 265

Marketing Scale Acquisition Pricing 265

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 fairly standard SMB price point. But I thought I’d take a deeper look at one example, Weave.

SaaS Payments 244

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods Payments 244

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

MARCH 29, 2023

and transitioned into SaaS later and through acquisitions, and then into a broad platform for fundraising and educational management. $100 If you don’t expand your TAM enough, growth can stall at scale. This is the goal of everyone at scale is to hit 30%+ margins, including Salesforce. #3. Like Blackbaud. Billion.

Education 185

Education Scaling Acquisition Pricing 185

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2019

If your price point is say $20k+ or higher, even just a couple of good leads can easily be ROI positive. Yes, we’d all love 100% viral acquisition. The post What are some things you can do early on to make scaling SaaS easier? Because real, live buyers are there. Lots of them. Keep a Free edition if it’s still a good product.

Scale 198

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SaaS 198

Chaotic Flow

JULY 21, 2015

In my own SaaS experience, be it scaling a sales and marketing team, consulting for SaaS startups or bootstrapping my agile marketing SaaS, Markodojo , I find myself returning to a common theme that always cuts through the complexity: SaaS customer alignment. The Cloudy Nature of SaaS Pricing. SaaS pricing isn’t that hard to do.

Acquisition 133

Acquisition Scale SaaS Pricing 133

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2022

Leaders like ZoomInfo and Paycom that combine strong growth with strong profits have seen their stock prices stay relatively high, often at 15x ARR still. That’s Freemium at scale. Embedded fintech often has a price. #3. But user acquisition marketing isn’t being touched. But the impact hasn’t been even. Wix is one.

Payments 225

Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods SaaS Payments 225

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2022

By moving from Freemium to “Contact Me” only (albeit with transparent pricing), sales went way, way up. 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.

Scale 296

Scale Sales Engineering Acquisition 296

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

Pothole #2 – Increasing Pricing Rate Without a Sustainable Moat. Raising prices might seem like a quick win to grow your revenue, but it’s critical to bear in mind the effect increased prices will have on your sales cycle, close rates, and disruption risk. Sell it to your market for half the price.

Sales Hiring 193

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 193

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 31, 2023

Fast forward to today : open source has become a go-to market strategy for many software startups because it presents a powerful antidote to monotonically increasing acquisition costs. Companies a transition from one pricing model to another : Open source marketing strategy achieves penetration early on.

Business Model 178

Business Model Business Scale Sales Funnel 178

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 13, 2014

The startup acquisition market is poised to have its best year in nearly a decade. I’ve observed four: The total number of startup acquisitions has remained relatively constant over the past 14 years. But, the amount of large, disclosed startup acquisitions has decreased by about 25% in the past 14 years.

Acquisition 113

Acquisition Trends Startup Marketing 113

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 250

Cloud Payments Software Review Payment Solutions 250

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2023

It “stiffened” our backbone when it came to acquisition interest and kept us focused on building a company our grandkids would be proud of. We’re dealing with a lot of drama from that today, with founders who made millions or more before really getting to scale — and are now half-checked out. No one would. It’s just getting good.

Scale 199

Scale Pricing Acquisition Scaling 199

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2022

When asked about the acquisition, Perret commented, “People asked if we had an acquisition strategy. We have a product strategy and a company strategy, and it happens that this acquisition was a fantastic fit there.”. Building the Platform, Scaling the Business, and Fostering Financial Inclusion. We definitely don’t.

Banking 242

Banking Scale Acquisition Interviewing 242

Chart Mogul

APRIL 15, 2021

Keeping your pace of growth while going through an acquisition is difficult. Acquisition by Sage. It has given him the opportunity to scale the team and double down on building the best product. We asked Kaspars to tell us the story of how ChartMogul helps his team grow SageHR pre- and post-acquisition. What is Sage HR?

Acquisition 83

Acquisition Data Scale Banking 83