SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2023

How much optionality do you give up when you raise venture capital? There aren’t as many $100m+ acquisitions as you might think. There just are so, so few acquisitions at $500m+ out there in SaaS to deliver that basic 3x or more. So a lot of founders and VC talk about “optionality”, and it’s an interesting topic.

Venture Capital 174

Venture Capital Acquisition Pricing Investment 174

SaaStr

DECEMBER 24, 2022

The downstream effects on venture capital and more are still to come. And yet … acquisitions still had a pretty darn good year. And with Thoma Bravo alone raising $32B more in December, there will be plenty more big acquisitions to come. Last year, it seemed like everyone at $100m+ ARR could IPO. At least, not.

Venture Capital 261

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Acquisition 261

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2023

Navigating Corporate Venture Capital: Strategic Benefits for Early-Stage Founders with Erin Yang, VP and Chief Technologist Workday Savannah Greene, Principle @ Workday #2: How Expensify Grew to 10M Users Through Word of Mouth Joanie Wang, Director of Marketing and Brand #3. The Most Popular 2023 Annual Braindates So Far: #1.

Venture Capital 198

Venture Capital Acquisition AI Innovation 198

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

In the ever-evolving landscape of SaaS, Venture Capital, Bootstrapping, and Valuations – understanding market trends and investment patterns is critical. billion cash acquisition deal in December 2021. Another noteworthy transaction was Adobe’s acquisition of Marketo for $4.75

Venture Capital 195

Venture Capital Scale Technical Review Software Review 195

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

A few examples: Mailchimp was bootstrapped to $1,000,000,000 in ARR Qualtrics was bootstrapped to a $6B acquisition Atlassian was bootstrapped all the way to … today $30B+ Veeva is very enterprise but only spent ~$3m in true venture capital. It’s hard but it can be done. Close to bootstrapped.

Scale 204

Scale Venture Capital Startup Marketing 204

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 21, 2021

If things continue as they are, the venture capital ecosystem will mimic the stock market, which marks companies to market every minute. At the same time, venture capital fundraising sets records each year. Next, the Special Purpose Acquisition Company boom. Just kidding. Valuations and round sizes have ballooned.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Innovation Startup Acquisition 274

Predictable Revenue

JULY 8, 2021

Kyle Lacy CMO at Lessonly talks about lessons learned while working at a venture capital firm, during an IPO, and through an acquisition by one of the largest software companies in the world to drive revenue. The post Who BDRs report to & where growth comes from at Lessonly appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Venture Capital 191

Venture Capital Acquisition Revenue Software 191

Tom Tunguz

MAY 24, 2020

Over the last ten years, California based startups consistently raise about 35% of the venture capital in the US by round count. That figure hasn’t changed despite the massive increases in total venture funding from about $10B to $100B in that time frame. In dollar terms, California’s share is a bit higher at 40%.

Venture Capital 261

Venture Capital Entrepreneurship Startup Acquisition 261

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2020

The two latest $1b+ acquisitions weren’t quite as glamorous as they seem: Uber acquires Postmates for $2.6b. Or almost a billion+ acquisition. The 10x Rule: What Raising $1 of Venture Capital Really Means. But there’s a quiet cautionary tale to just think about. Amazon acquires Zoox for $1b.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Acquisition Cloud Pricing 299

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2021

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. In “just” a $200m VC fund. Multiple unicorns, in fact. At least, any VC working at a fund of any material size.

Venture Capital 354

Venture Capital Business Model Acquisition Investment 354

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

10B+ acquisitions followed, and then … $20B for Figma. A Figma every few years, combined with a Datadog or two every year, will keep innovation (and venture capital) flowing. Then again when Qualtrics was bought for $6B, which seemed like a high water mark. Except it wasn’t. $10B+ SaaS got hard again in 2022. It really did.

Venture Capital 247

Venture Capital Innovation Acquisition Cloud 247

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

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. That’s an expensive mistake if you make the wrong investment.

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Payment Methods Acquisition Development Team Review 144

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2021

Tokens are the paid customer acquisition channel of web3. By analyzing how web3 companies invest tokens, we can calculate the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) for a crypto company. Typical enterprise software companies spend approximately 7-15% of their enterprise value on customer acquisition. L1 Web3 companies spend 29-95%.

Venture Capital 238

Venture Capital Blockchain Acquisition Benchmarks 238

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 16, 2020

Ideally, the management team should raise more capital to move to the upper right quadrant of the matrix. Venture capital, debt, or negotiating better cash collections (multi-year prepay) are all viable strategies to position the business to press its advantage. Plenty of cash and tepid demand (bottom right). Full speed ahead.

Strategy 290

Strategy Startup Venture Capital Acquisition 290

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2022

There are a lot of myths around venture capital. A $20B acquisition … 10 years later. Dear SaaStr: Will a VC Agree To Wait 5-10 Years For a Very Profitable Exit? One of the top ones is that VCs will push you to sell early, or something similar. VCs are paid to wait. They waited for Figma. The payoff?

Venture Capital 223

Venture Capital Investment Acquisition Sales 223

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2022

The number of global venture capital (VC) investments dipped in 2022, thanks to ongoing geopolitical tensions, turbulence in global capital markets, supply chain issues, and increasing interest rates. Venture capital firms pumped a lot of money into the economy during the pandemic, buying countless software companies.

Venture Capital 189

Venture Capital Marketing Startup Construction 189

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

There may be times, maybe even many times, in the earlier days when you look at VCs and Venture Capital and think — that’s the easy way. There is very little of this in a venture capital firm. You have to pay back all the money you take in first, before any profits are taken on IPOs and acquisitions.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital Investment Acquisition Strategy 309

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 22, 2024

Max’s 2024 predictions, from topics like remote work to the mergers and acquisitions. 09:34) Acceleration of mergers and acquisitions. (13:02) 20:34) The flight to quality in Venture Capital. 09:34) Acceleration of mergers and acquisitions. (13:02) 20:34) The flight to quality in Venture Capital.

Venture Capital 81

Venture Capital Technical Review AI Acquisition 81

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 12, 2024

Every type of investor was broadly operating in a “risk on” mindset given the ZIRP environment, and the venture capital ecosystem was no exception. An acquisition at $200m can be life changing for founders, or it can be worth nothing if they raised $250m at $1B valuation back in 2021. This all shifted in 2021.

Cloud 284

Cloud Venture Capital Acquisition Metrics 284

SaaStr

OCTOBER 19, 2022

You consider seed expansion, tier expansion, or venture capital funding to make it all possible. The two tricks to scaling a startup or a small business are: Keep your customer acquisition cost (CAC) low. Customer acquisition is important, but customer happiness is vital. But the reality is much more difficult.

Scale 254

Scale Venture Capital SaaS Acquisition 254

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

First, If you need to raise more venture capital, and aren’t doing incredibly well, a VC not being supportive can be a gating item to getting further funding. But a real acquisition, to buy the company —you need almost everyone’s support. This can be a big deal. Depending on the scenario. At least, almost always, most usually.

Banking 349

Banking Venture Capital Finance Investment 349

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Well, it is a category of investors in private (or private-to-be) companies and startups that is larger than venture capital (at least, larger than the traditional, pre-Softbank categories of venture capital). What exactly is Private Equity? In about 2012 or so, Private Equity entered SaaS in force.

Venture Capital 323

Venture Capital SaaS Startup Pricing 323

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2020

Equality and Unicorns in 2020: Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures and Jason Lemkin of SaaStr. We’re going to do something a little different here, and both catch up on the state of Equality in Venture Capital and Cloud, and also revisit Aileen’s classic pieces in TechCrunch that kicked off the age of the Unicorn.

Trends 206

Trends Venture Capital Scale PayPal 206

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 16, 2020

Ideally, the management team should raise more capital to move to the upper right quadrant of the matrix. Venture capital, debt, or negotiating better cash collections (multi-year prepay) are all viable strategies to position the business to press its advantage. Plenty of cash and tepid demand (bottom right). Full speed ahead.

Strategy 173

Strategy Startup Venture Capital Acquisition 173

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

And it’s not like a lot of these acquisitions failed or anything. In fact, most of the products on the list above have substantially grown post-acquisition. Throw some more sales resources on it, and it can accelerate post-acquisition. Coupa and Tradeshift keep growing. Maybe even faster. The list is endless.

Venture Capital 139

Venture Capital Acquisition Finance Enterprise 139

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 18, 2015

In terms of exits, including both acquisition and IPO, GPL licensed projects dominate, having generated more than $6 billion in liquidity, compared to $2B for Apache projects. In fact, the three largest open source acquisitions , Sourcefire ($2.4B), Novell ($2.1B), MySQL ($1.0B) were all GPL licensed projects.

Venture Capital 108

Venture Capital Software Review Acquisition Startup 108

SaaStr

APRIL 11, 2023

Silicon Valley Bank specialized in venture capital-backed startups, primarily in tech. Understandably, the collapse of a venture bank where companies could lose billions of dollars was staggering. Hardware companies use venture debt for inventory to avoid tapping into equity. In March of this year, the U.S.

Banking 190

Banking Sales Hiring Venture Capital Communication 190

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2019

A bit more here: The 10x Rule: What Raising $1 of Venture Capital Really Means (the 2018 Edition) | SaaStr. That means they may veto an acquisition of < $300m. By contrast, if your last round was merely at $10m post, almost any acquisition may meet the basic test for approval from your investors.

Startup 180

Startup Venture Capital Acquisition Investment 180

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

I argue that standard saas metrics make it possible for founders to scale using debt capital (production capital thats cheaper) instead of solely relying on venture capital (financial capital thats more expensive). . 2004 Salesforce IPO Brought Financial Capital to SaaS Founders.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Banking 211

Baremetrics

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

What is the difference between Equity Financing, Loans, and Venture Capital Funding? Venture Capital Funding When should you be thinking about Equity Financing? What is the difference between Equity Financing, Loans, and Venture Capital Funding? Table of Contents. What is Equity Financing in SaaS?

Finance 98

Finance Venture Capital SaaS Payments Payments 98

SaaStock

JANUARY 30, 2019

It is a venture capital firm based in Brazil and Silicon Valley. Its partners boast diverse venture experience and have previously invested in more than 70 companies. Stage: Early Stage Venture, Seed. Kaszek Ventures. Kaszek Ventures is among the biggest venture capital firms in Latin America.

Venture Capital 155

Venture Capital SaaS Healthcare Finance 155

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 22, 2017

Second, the customer acquisition playbook is well known. Third, the costs of customer acquisition have risen. Response rates are declining, depressing conversion rates, and raising the cost of customer acquisition. The surge of venture capital in the last five years worsens this predicament.

Scale 186

Scale SaaS Venture Capital Machine Learning 186

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 11, 2022

So what should you do if you’re strapped for cash and have your sights set on venture capital? In this case, you may not be prepared to take on a round of venture capital. Option 3: Mergers and acquisitions. The following questions will help you determine whether or not you’re ready to dive into the VC pool.

Scale 97

Scale Scaling Technical Review Venture Capital 97

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2019

The Ultimate Guide to Scaling, Sales & Raising Capital (i.e., How Would a Person Start a Venture Capital Fund? Getting field marketing right is hard, but it’s also the #1 channel for customer acquisition and pipeline influence in SaaS. The Age of the $1 Billion+ SaaS Acquisition Has Just Begun.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Acquisition 168

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2019

In this session, Anna and Sameer will highlight SendGrid’s journey from growth stage through acquisition and why focusing on people and culture is mission critical to success as a company goes through the scaling process. I’m Sameer Dholakia, CEO of now Twilio SendGrid as of Friday after our completed acquisition.

Scale 128

Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 128

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 2, 2023

I was working at a Venture Capital firm and was feeling the itch to create something new on my own. After some time in Venture Capital, I took the knowledge I built around market research and started applying it to my personal life. I hit 1,000 subscribers in 12 days and spent $0 on customer acquisition costs.

Business 89

Business Venture Capital Technical Review Trends 89

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 5, 2024

We have some rapid acquisition authorities. Sharon: Another thing you talked about is just this tremendous amount of private investment venture capital going into defense. But one of the concerns from those companies and from those investors is that it’s not being matched yet by acquisition dollars.

Acquisition 76

Acquisition Innovation Generative AI Artificial Intelligence 76