Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Contract Length Many SaaS startups launch with monthly pricing which encourages customers to try the product and engenders demand. At some point, most SaaS startups switch to annual contracts for three reasons. How about a 50 person SaaS company? Veblen Goods in SaaS Veblen goods defy traditional pricing theory.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

3: Payback Periods + Quotas Have Jointly Increased The number of months required to recoup the cost of customer acquisition has increased by 12% on average, which is linear with the increase in sales cycles. The post The State of SaaS Go-to-Market with Theory Ventures General Partner Tomasz Tunguz appeared first on SaaStr.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 328

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Meet Wyatt Jenkins: From Construction Sites to Chief Product Officer If you want to understand how vertical SaaS companies scale to $1B+ in revenue while staying true to their customers, there’s no better person to learn from than Wyatt Jenkins, Chief Product Officer at Procore Technologies.

Construction 248

Construction Scale SaaS Travel 248

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2022

So two big PE $10B deals happened in SaaS this week, one agreed, the other closed. And the difference are so stark, they highlight all the changes in SaaS in just a few months: Zendesk agreed to be acquired a PE syndicate for $10.2 SaaS multiples have fallen sharply. Billion , going private. Billion closed.

Acquisition 334

Acquisition SaaS Pricing Revenue 334

Stax

JUNE 18, 2025

That’s the main premise of vertical SaaS. Unlike horizontal SaaS solutions that serve a broad range of businesses, vertical SaaS solutions are designed with deep knowledge of specific markets—making them more intuitive, efficient, and impactful. What is Vertical SaaS? Since vertical SaaS platforms are niche-focused (e.g.,

Merchant Services 167

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Services Payments 167

SaaStr

APRIL 11, 2022

So public Cloud and SaaS stocks continue to be under a lot of pressure, with many Cloud leaders trading for half of what they were trading at just a few months ago. Of combining two slower-growing SaaS / Cloud companies into one that is growing at an OK rate. Take one SaaS company at $60m ARR, growing 40%. But substantial.

Acquisition 309

Acquisition SaaS Cloud B2B 309

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2023

SaaS companies are just valued at far less than they have been in many years: It’s just all … harder. 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 Vaguely.

Acquisition 361

Acquisition Venture Capital Scale Generative AI 361

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2025

The 40% Tipping Point : With 40% of workloads now in the cloud, SaaS has hit market maturity. AI is Eating SaaS Budgets : Companies like Cursor are generating massive revenue by replacing traditional SaaS workflows entirely. The SaaS slowdown isn’t happening in isolation. This probably isn’t a temporary blip.

AI 253

AI Cloud Software Review Underperforming Technical Team 253

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2025

SaaS Capital just dropped their 14th annual survey analyzing growth rates across 1,000+ private B2B SaaS companies. Remember when everyone was throwing money at anything with “SaaS” in the name? Know where you stand relative to your actual peer group, not the entire SaaS universe.

B2B 213

B2B Data Scale Startup 213

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2025

So Circle is the latest tech IPO and it’s not really B2B or SaaS per se — it’s a fintech that issues and manages “stablecoins” Cypto that converts 1:1 to U.S. ✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) June 5, 2025 5 Interesting Learnings for B2B and SaaS Founders from Circle’s IPO: 1. The culprit?

compliance 244

compliance Marketplace as a Service B2B Healthcare 244

SaaStr

OCTOBER 19, 2024

62,526 Views: “From 2 Weeks of Runway to $1B Acquisition: The Founder Playbook with Loom’s CEO and Co-Founder” #5. 62,526 Views: “From 2 Weeks of Runway to $1B Acquisition: The Founder Playbook with Loom’s CEO and Co-Founder” #5.

Acquisition 278

Acquisition Innovation Startup Engineering 278

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2025

Billion PostgreSQL Battle for AI Agent Supremacy Brief Overview : Two data giants are making strategic moves to dominate the AI agent infrastructure market through major PostgreSQL acquisitions. This acquisition builds on previous AI investments, including the 2023 purchase of Neeva, a generative AI search startup. Databricks: The $1.25

VP of Engineering 187

VP of Engineering AI Search AI Data 187

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Dear SaaStr: We’ve Gotten a Good But Not Great Acquisition Offer. It compounds in SaaS. The post Dear SaaStr: We’ve Gotten a Good But Not Great Acquisition Offer. Should I Take It? Should you sell your startup if you get a good M&A offer? Why sell at $20m growing 80%, if in 5-6 years, you could be a unicorn?

Acquisition 294

Acquisition Startup SaaS 294

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2025

First IPO in 1999 First acquisition for $5.3 Most SaaS founders think in quarters or years. What This Means for Your B2B Company If you’re building enterprise SaaS today: Think infrastructure, not just applications. IPO private IPO acquisition is becoming a common path. Informatica acquired for $8 Billion!

Acquisition 147

Acquisition Government AI Enterprise readiness 147

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2025

So Chime is ready to IPO, and while it’s not SaaS or true B2B today, there are enough interesting lessons for us to learn from. 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. Hit Profitability to IPO Chime hit $1.67

Outsourcing Services 201

Outsourcing Services Scale Banking Customer Lifetime Value 201

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2024

Jason starts with the meta-question we’ve been asking a lot of SaaS leaders lately ( Klaviyo , ZoomInfo ) — ‘are we in a downturn?’ Going Long We’ve written before on the power of going long in SaaS. acquisition. in revenue. Are We In a Downturn? How do you do it in practicality?

SMB 300

SMB Payment Services Payments Payment Methods 300

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 15, 2024

With almost two decades of broad technology experience, he has anchored GTM teams in SaaS & Service industries including consulting, network & communications, software, e-commerce, and supply chain. Discussed in this Episode: The power of community-led growth in driving customer acquisition and revenue.

Acquisition 109

Acquisition Sales Hiring ChatGPT AI 109

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 16, 2021

We did our own SaaStr analysis a little while back and saw it took on average 10 years to get to a $1B+ acquisition in SaaS. The math on 10 years to $1B acquisition here: The post The Average SaaS IPO Takes 12 Years appeared first on SaaStr. So how long does it take to really Go Big? And an IPO? Go longer.

SaaS 361

SaaS Acquisition 361

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2025

In the latest billion+ acquisition, Xero just acquired Israeli-founded, NYC-based Melio for $2.5B The deal shows acquirers are hungry for revenue acceleration—Xero expects to more than double group revenue by 2028 with this acquisition. This B2B2B model generated 35% of revenue while dramatically reducing customer acquisition costs.

Payments 169

Payments Payment Methods SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 169

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2024

SaaS is back. NRR For Segment Product 91%, Growth 0% Twilio has looked at spinning out its Segment acquisition, but for now it’s retained the product. Growth at Twilio is re-accelerating again. And the stock is up a super impressive 51% this year! It’s not the Go-Go Days of years past, but Twilio is back.

Acquisition 269

Acquisition Scaling Retention Pricing 269

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 11, 2022

The acquisition is notable for three reasons. Third, it’s the most substantive acquisition to announce this year after Figma’s announced its sale to Adobe. This morning, Coupa announced its sale to Thoma Bravo for $6.2b. First, the premium to the public price is 31%. Second, the multiple is 8.4x NTM revenues. Revenue, $m.

Acquisition 250

Acquisition Startup Software Pricing 250

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2024

This time, on Mergers & Acquisitions. My biggest take-away: there are barely more than 50 acquisitions of $50,000,000 or more, at least disclosed one, in software of U.S.-based After all, there are so many more SaaS and Cloud leaders worth $1B+ that there wer a decade ago. based startups each year. By dollars, yes.

Acquisition 277

Acquisition Software Review Software Cloud 277

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2025

Monday.com Has Achieved Rule of 40 with Room to Spare The Rule of 40 (growth rate + profit margin should exceed 40%) is a benchmark for successful SaaS companies. Few SaaS companies manage to expand both customer counts and average revenue per customer at the same time. And a Few More Interesting Learnings: 6.

Scale 193

Scale SMB Acquisition Enterprise 193

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2025

The New Normal Top 5 SaaS Lessons from Wealthfront’s Path to IPO 1. UBS acquisition in 2022, choosing to remain independent. Application : Sometimes saying no to acquisition offers – even large ones – allows you to capture more value long-term. Public markets heavily reward profitable SaaS companies.

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161

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2025

valuation—the fastest to $100M ARR in SaaS history (12 months) Replit : $100M ARR at $1.16B valuation—10x growth in 18 months Lovable : $50M ARR by April 2025, €14.3M What This Means for B2B: The New Playbook Replit’s success signals fundamental shifts in how successful SaaS companies will be built: 1.

Software Review 200

Software Review AI Technical Review Venture Capital 200

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

The “Rule of 40” is one of the most commonly cited valuation benchmarks in SaaS for both public and private companies. The SaaS “Rule of 40” has gained popularity due to its simplicity, requiring only two common financial metrics to be added together. What Is The SaaS “Rule of 40”?

SaaS 311

SaaS Technical Review Benchmarks Azure 311

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

Let’s take a look at 3 recent transactions and valuations in SaaS around $1.5 The “growth premium” in SaaS has never been higher. A strategic acquisition like Llamasoft is worth 15x. And as we’ll see below, those prices might actually be pretty high, because acquisitions often come at a premium.

SaaS 342

SaaS Cloud Acquisition Revenue 342

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2022

Dear SaaStr: How Long Does It Take the Average SaaS Startup to “Exit”? I took a look a little while back at how long it took the average SaaS company that was sold for $1B+ to get that acquisition. years (maybe the better metric): The fastest of the bunch was Divvy’s $2b+ acquisition by Bill 5 years after funding.

Startup 324

Startup SaaS Acquisition B2B 324

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

As Checkr follows usage-based pricing, it’s a transactional business that needs to be managed differently than a typical subscription SaaS model since they only earn revenue when the customer is using the product. The SMB sales team was incentivized purely on logo acquisition rather than revenue.

Revenue 286

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 286

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2020

So as you’ve seen, acquisitions have picked up in SaaS. So many acquisitions, so many IPOs, so many public and private valuations of great SaaS companies are actually at / worth less than 10x ARR. Yes, if the acquisition is strategic, multiples are at all-time highs. valuation — on a $300m+ run rate.

SaaS 351

SaaS Acquisition Cloud Finance 351

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2024

Former Head of Revenue at BILL and HubSpot Americas leader Michelle Benfer recently joined us on a SaaStr Workshop Wednesday share her insights on one of the most critical roles in any SaaS organization: the frontline sales manager. Driving revenue through acquisition, expansion, and retention. Shaping and maintaining company culture.

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales 257

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2025

Prior to Datadog, Alex held leadership positions at several high-growth SaaS companies and has a proven track record of building marketing engines that deliver consistent, measurable growth. What started as a focused experiment became their most efficient customer acquisition channel.

Scale 236

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Marketing 236

SaaStr

JUNE 10, 2025

If you want to aim for a strategic acquisition in 5 years, staying bootstrapped or lightly capitalized is probably better. Many SMB SaaS companies with $20M ARR and decent growth get acquired for $100M+. You’re already in a good spot to compound growth steadily. If growth slows, raising again or exiting at a high multiple gets harder.

Venture Capital 170

Venture Capital SMB Acquisition Churn 170

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2021

A few metrics really stood out to me this year: Their “Cloud 100” top private Cloud and SaaS companies are now worth on average a stunning $5.2B. SaaS is scaling faster than ever. The SF Bay Area is still the HQ for the majority of public SaaS companies today. But only the best SaaS and Cloud get these multiples.

Cloud 332

Cloud Scale SaaS Acquisition 332

SaaStr

MAY 18, 2025

One of the topics we did a deep dive on was mergers & acquisitions, and it was so good I wanted to just break out that portion of the convo: Net Net: Acquisition offers are far less common than you think. Despite HubSpot’s success, Brian Halligan reveals they “didn’t get any acquisition offers” in 18 years.

Technical Review 182

Technical Review CTO Hire CTO Sales Hiring 182

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2025

Why This Matters for B2B and B2D Founders RevenueCat’s story offers several strategic insights for SaaS builders: Start with Infrastructure: The biggest B2B companies often begin by solving fundamental infrastructure problems that every company in a category faces.

Payments 274

Payments Payment Solutions Underperforming Technical Team Payment Methods 274

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2025

Its ServiceNows largest acquisition ever. AI Support / Agent leader Moveworks at $100m+ ARR sells to ServiceNow for $2.85 Billion, a 20x-25x ARR exit and a huge, huge price in absolute terms. A huge exit. But do the investors actually make any money here? And should you care? The answers are murky.

AI 179

AI Acquisition B2B SaaS 179