Clouded Judgement

MARCH 28, 2025

Fast forward to the launch of AWS and the public cloud. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue. Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! So why try and compete now? Top 5 Median: 18.3x

Cloud 299

Cloud AI Scale Scaling 299

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 6, 2023

There are 4 questions a startup should ask themselves about building a startup that uses generative AI. There are 4 questions startups should ask themselves about building with generative AI. Startups have negative time to launch in many markets with Adobe, Microsoft, & Salesforce launching Gen AI enabled software in weeks.

Generative AI 228

Generative AI AI GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Startup 228

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. I t’s been a wild growth experience, and Google Cloud is considered the fourth or fifth-largest Enterprise company in the world. What they’re seeing with GenAI and Google Cloud is an opportunity to grab share from AWS.

Cloud 309

Cloud Scale AWS AI 309

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 28, 2020

Cloud is more expensive for larger enterprises. If you’ve used the AWS IAM (identity access management) console, you realize how complex access control has become. Assume this happens at some scale in the enterprise. Imagine an enterprise now has several, maybe a dozen applications deployed this way.

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 223

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) Cloud Enterprise Data 223

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2021

Linux is the #1 internet client, makes up 100% of the supercomputer market, and is second to Windows when it comes to enterprise software platforms. We’d rent a car, get on the road, and go to all kinds of startups and give talks on Apache Spark to build up a community around it. We’re currently in the age of the public cloud.

Enterprise 246

Enterprise AI SaaS AWS 246

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 25, 2022

We have truly global ambitions to bring our mission of making internet business personal to the biggest enterprise customers across the world. This is the third post in a series exploring the ways Intercom has scaled key functions to support the needs of enterprise customers. We’re growing alongside our customers. Can Intercom do that?

Scaling 252

Scaling AWS Software Review Technical Review 252

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Datadog, ZoomInfo, Atlassian, AWS: Epic Growth — But Some Real Headwinds For The First Time. Gartner: SaaS Spend In the Enterprise Will Grow 17% to $195 Billion in 2023. 5 Interesting Learnings from Duolingo at $360,000,000 in ARR.

Sales Recruiting 290

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 290

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

By building a strong business tech stack for your startup – covering everything from incorporation to growing long-lasting customer relationships – you can not only win back time and establish best practices, but create a solid foundation for your business to grow. Ready to take your startup to the next level?

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So in Enterprise, they have around 2,000 companies spending $100k or more per year and dozens of companies spending over a million per year. So in Enterprise, they have around 2,000 companies spending $100k or more per year and dozens of companies spending over a million per year.

New CTO 311

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 311

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

AWS can’t support 20 partners equally. When partnering with big folks like Drata does with AWS, you have to bring business to them. Drata was one of three companies mentioned on stage by AWS’ Head of Partnerships because they did the most transactions on the marketplace than any other company. That’s a high value for AWS.

AWS 279

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 279

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

So for the audience, cloud giants are turbocharging startup sales, and the predominant reason for this is because they’re fundamentally changing IT budgets at the customers that we’re all selling to. And it’s one of the three large cloud vendors that we all know: Microsoft, AWS, and Google. Jabari Norton. Crowdstrike.

Scale 259

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 259

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2024

At SaaStr AI Day , Mike Tamir, Head of AI at Shopify, and Rudina Seseri, founder and Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures, level-set about where we are in the cycle for Enterprises adopting AI and the critical work being done at Shopify to leverage AI and solve real problems. The future of Enterprise is “Ambient AI.”

AI Search 287

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 287

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

Snowflake announced earnings yesterday, echoing the strength within software companies more broadly & underscoring the shift in enterprise buyer behavior to normal after three quarters of extensive cost cuts. ” For startups operating within data, which tops buyers’ lists , this news further signals a stronger market in 2024.

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 187

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure Data Startup 187

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 25, 2023

For startups building LLM-based applications & infrastructure, this alters the calculus of selecting a cloud. Five years ago, many startups defaulted to AWS for the generous credits, broad catalog, & rapid pace of innovation. Cloud infrastructure players are picking teams within the infrastructure layer.

Artificial Intelligence 240

Artificial Intelligence AI AWS Cloud 240

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 11, 2024

Coming out of that, every company from the largest enterprise to the smallest startup started thinking very critically about cost optimizations. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue. So why was it stronger than normal last year? Cloudflare is up 17%.

Cloud 167

Cloud Cost optimization & reporting GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Review 167

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

TJ Nahigian, co-founder and Managing Partner of Base10 Partners, and Luci Fonseca, Partner, deep dive into the current GenAI landscape, incumbents vs. startups, and the six questions founders should ask themselves to drive value from GenAI. Startup platforms are OpenAI, Hugging Face, and Cohere. How are they doing this?

Generative AI 293

Generative AI Outsourcing Services AI Software Review 293

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2024

Lesson #1: Maximize the Blurred Lines Between Consumer, Prosumer, and Enterprise There are a lot of differences between consumer and B2B audiences, as you can see in this chart, but the lines are blurring more and more. B2B is finding more consumers and prosumers paying, and B2C is finding Enterprise and business use cases.

Subscription 301

Subscription Payment Features B2B Mobile 301

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2023

Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks. Sell To Customers How They Want To Be Sold To When Lenta first started building AWS in Australia, they were crude in how they thought about customers. Of course, we all know how that turned out.

Scale 258

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 258

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Software startups are rising to meet the need. The Pendulum Swings to Small Data : Modern Mac laptops have the same computational power as the AWS servers Snowflake used to launch the company. Instrumentation and Governance Enable Many New Use Cases : Today’s data leaders are struggling.

Artificial Intelligence 228

Artificial Intelligence Trends Data Software Review 228

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

I’m an investor in maybe 30 SaaS startups. Does it cost so, so much to host a few million lines of code on AWS? Go more enterprise. I’m doing a lot of this financial planning now. And one thing I can tell you is I see a lot of different plans for next year even at fairly similar ARRs. So is SaaS cursed? Get better.

Scale 293

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 293

Chargify

AUGUST 17, 2020

However, with the introduction of Events-Based Billing by Chargify, this event-based billing model is now available to small and medium-sized businesses, giving them the ability to offer the same pricing models and bill customers just as precisely as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or the popular voice and messaging platform Twilio.

AWS 98

AWS Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 98

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 3, 2014

Startups benefit from a booming public market for three reasons. The chart above shows the relationship between beating earnings and Enterprise Value to Trailing-Twelve Month Revenue Multiple (EV/TTM Rev). And the recent increase in multiples implies there is no deflationary pressure on startup valuations from the public markets.

Startup 100

Startup Trends AWS Marketing 100

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

Cockroach Labs’ CEO Spencer Kimball shares hard-won lessons from scaling from $0 to $5B and his time as an angel investor for more than 80 different startups. And his answer, like many answers in startups, is it depends. What Matters Most When Raising In Early Rounds? How hot is the space, and what is the product category?

Scale 243

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 243

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 28, 2023

AWS (Amazon), Azure (Microsoft), and Google Cloud (Google) all reported this week. Then AWS appeared to add fuel to that hope before giving us a huge rug pull. After all, they had a lot of AI tailwinds, and benefited tremendously from consolidation (without a headwind of a larger base of smaller startups, like AWS).

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS AI Search 130

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

There are rules in starting an enterprise software company. One is, lots of folks that have been through the startup cycle, you have this extrapolation from a single data point problem, which is, “OK, we have this story. They’re going to figure out that enterprise is the actual way to go, and it’ll be OK.”

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 24, 2019

Mike has been in and around startups for the better part of three decades: as a consultant, as a co-founder and now as the Managing Director of Salesforce Incubator, which propels new startups into the marketplace. He joined me for a chat that ranged from the role of AI to how they choose startups to incubate. Short on time?

Scale 151

Scale Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Technical Review 151

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Currently, there are 3 primary options available to implement AI in a company: Cloud or LLM providers: Large cloud providers, like AWS, Google, or Microsoft, all provide services to implement generative AI in a secure way in the cloud. They typically specialize in a specific business function or area. See more top GTM jobs here.

Artificial Intelligence 120

Artificial Intelligence AI Generative AI Blockchain 120

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 9, 2023

They did call out sequential growth in Confluent Cloud every quarter this year which was a big positive Still seeing elongated deal cycles and less expansion revenue The Bad AWS: Headwinds Getting Worse Their quarter ended in March, but on the earnings call they called out weakening growth in April. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.7x

Trends 130

Trends Cloud Azure AWS 130

How To Buy Saas

MAY 21, 2025

Whether youre a startup , an SMB , or a global enterprise , the right ATS can streamline your recruitment process, save time, and help attract top talent in a competitive market. Lever Best ATS + CRM for Scaling Enterprises Pricing: Key Features: 10. What ATS is best for small businesses or startups?

Systems Review 52

Systems Review Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review 52

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 16, 2022

This is why our customers – from small startups to massive, complex enterprises – put their trust in us. This is the second in a content series diving into Intercom’s investments in supporting enterprises. Here’s how we do it. Availability is embedded our culture. We manage risk and respond instantly when things go wrong.

Software Review 118

Software Review Technical Review Management Systems Review 118

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

It has a portion of its revenue that’s very sensitive to the economy and a lot of startups in the customer base, good and bad, right? We’re seeing pockets of strength and then we’re seeing pockets of startups that overnight not only are struggling but might even want to immediately stop their spend, right?

Merchant Services 251

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 251

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Unlike when selling into SMB businesses that kind of can go from a demo, to a conversion, to a close in a matter of days, enterprise sales is a lot more complicated and it’s hard to navigate through. So everything you do at a startup you’re treating it like an experiment, right? Let’s cover the agenda. Thanks Allie.

Underperforming Technical Team 213

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SMB Enterprise 213

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 1, 2024

For instance, a product priced with enterprise companies as the target market will likely feel too expensive for small businesses. Canva effectively uses the per-user pricing model for its Pro and Enterprise plans. Amazon AWS is one of the best SaaS pricing examples with this model. Amazon pricing example.

Pricing 104

Pricing Strategy SaaS Scale 104

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). This begs the question: how much room is left for emerging startups? The median growth rate of startups with $1-2.5M Now it’s table stakes.

Scale 70

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 70

Full Session

DECEMBER 30, 2024

Whether you’re a startup or an enterprise, by the end of this article, you’ll have enough information to select the best platform for your business. Adobe Target: Enterprise-level A/B testing and optimization platform with automated personalization and multivariate testing features. Book a Demo 2.

Payment Methods 52

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments SaaS Payments 52

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 31, 2023

The majority of COGS (revenue less COGS = gross profit) fall in hosting costs (ie AWS), and some customer support. Startups and younger companies don’t have this luxury. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.1x

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

User Pilot

MARCH 5, 2025

Scalability and security Built to scale with your business, with enterprise-grade security measures to protect your data. The platform also offers enterprise-grade security to protect customer data. Scalability and security The platform is scalable and provides enterprise-level security. Zendesk pricing.

Software Review 52

Software Review Engagement Software Scale 52