SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. At the time, they were less than a billion or two in revenue, and now, they just crossed over a $30B revenue run rate. For Google Workspace, they invested in expanding and building Google Meet and the rest of the workspace during 2020.

Cloud 228

Cloud Scale AWS AI 228

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Subscribe now Cloud Giants Report Q3 ‘23 Not a great signal for software this week from the Cloud Giants (AWS, Azure and Google Cloud)…After Q2 (3 months ago), the tone from the Cloud Giants around optimizations was largely: optimizations have started to ease, and net new workloads have picked up. That is not new.”

Cost optimization & reporting 152

Cost optimization & reporting Cloud Azure AWS 152

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

It looks at the YoY dollar change in quarterly revenue from the hyperscalers (just looking at Azure / AWS because the data goes back further) going back a few years. If we break this down and look at Azure and AWS independently (graphs below), you’ll see how the AWS “swings” were a lot more volatile.

Cloud 177

Cloud Software Azure AWS 177

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Canva: – Almost $2B ARR – Growing 40%+ – Profitable And … 4,000 employees That's about $500k in revenue per employee That's where software really makes money — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  ?? 4,000 Employees, So About $500,000 in Revenue Per Employee That’s very efficient.

AWS 244

AWS B2C AI Scaling 244

Clouded Judgement

MAY 10, 2024

And no one raised full year guide >2% The median “beat” (Q1 revenue over Q1 consensus estimates) was 1.5%, which is the lowest it’s been in the last 4 years Overall, it’s been a TOUGH quarter for software companies. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.7x

Cloud 161

Cloud Software GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure 161

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 20, 2023

Hyperscaler Preview Next week Amazon, Microsoft and Google report earnings and we’ll see Q3 data for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Office 365 Copilot, for example, doesn’t go live until November and we most likely won’t see meaningful revenue from it until next year. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.7x

Cloud 161

Cloud Azure AWS Software Review 161

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2022

So follow AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. And it is stressful, especially if you invested at those peaks or as founders raised money at relatively high valuations and multiples. Let’s look a whole level up to the real canaries-in-the-coalmine: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. If they stumble, we’re in for a rough patch.

Cloud 238

Cloud Azure AWS Engineering 238

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 4, 2023

” These are two quotes about AWS on the Amazon earnings call. AWS grew 16% in Q1, but called out growth in April (first month of Q2) was 11%. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure Cost optimization & reporting AWS 130

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

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Hyperscalers Report Quarterly Earnings This week we saw AWS (Amazon), GCP (Google) and Azure (Microsoft) report earnings. Overall, it wasn’t pretty… AWS grew 28% when expectations were 30-31%. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Cost optimization & reporting 130

Baremetrics

OCTOBER 31, 2021

If you want to scale, you need to make the investment of time and money and make sure your infrastructure suits your size of business. A lot of our workload was getting moved to AWS, and wouldn’t you know it: they want you to move compute to them so they have migration services to match. Plan for higher Cost of Revenue.

AWS 115

AWS DevOps as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review 115

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 6, 2023

Cloud Downgrades This week UBS came out with a couple research reports citing concerns in AWS / Azure growth. This brings me back to AWS / Azure downgrades. This was the worst tone that we’ve heard in years from large AWS/Azure partners, a group that usually expresses different shades of optimism about AWS/Azure growth.”

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Underperforming Technical Team 130

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

” From AWS (paraphrased): They said they expect the reaccleration they saw in Q4 to continue into 2024 2024 Estimate Updates One important metric I’m tracking this quarter is the change in 2024 estimates pre / post earnings. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.4x

Cloud 161

Cloud AWS Metrics Subscription 161

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 21, 2023

Next week we get all 3 hyperscalers reporting (AWS from Amazon, Azure from Microsoft, and GCP from Google). On AWS, in their Q4 earnings call they said AWS was growing “mid teens” in January (down from 20% in Q4). Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 130

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

” We saw some green shoots in AWS and a few other consumption names, and overall sentiment seemed more positive. Q2 benefited from an “easy comp” (since Q1 was so light), so we’ll see how this trend continues (or doesn’t) in Q3 Moving on to Q2 YoY revenue growth. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.2x

Cloud 169

Cloud Software Review AWS Trends 169

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2022

You need an efficient way to keep your customers successful, reduce churn, drive adoption, and increase net revenue retention. Secureframe allows companies to get compliant within weeks, rather than months and monitors 100+ services, including AWS, GCP, and Azure.

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 182

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure AWS Enterprise readiness 182

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

Or of my investments, ones like Algolia and Salesloft, that yes, in theory, were playing in larger markets, but in practice, their entry points were quite narrow. It was just a little while ago that Salesforce was doing $1 billion in ARR revenue. Worth investing 7+ years of your life in. Like Shopify and Okta, to pick two.

Scale 197

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 197

Clouded Judgement

JULY 28, 2023

AI = Data + Compute I’ll continue beating this drum, but we got two great quotes from Azure and AWS this week. ” Then at AWS Summit they called out “Your data is your differentiator when it comes to Generative AI.” AWS reports next week. However, revenue growth didn’t bottom until Q3 ‘09.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 130

Clouded Judgement

NOVEMBER 10, 2023

Hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP as companies look for cloud GPUs who aren’t building out their own data centers) Infra (Data layer, orchestration, monitoring, ops, etc) Durable Applications We’ve clearly well underway of the first 3 layers monetizing. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 183

Cloud Artificial Intelligence AI GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 183

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 9, 2023

Expansion revenue is still declining (we see this in falling net retention rates), but gross retention remains strong. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue. New customer growth seems to be picking up.

Trends 130

Trends Cloud Azure AWS 130

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

Back then, folks all over Twitter were making fun of Sequoia for investing $20m+ in an iOS app that never launched and failed. Which I guess it was — $41,000,000 to build an iOS app with no revenue that no one ever used. Now, to a small fund, or a new VC, I’d think a $14m loss would just be awful. Going Big.

Venture Capital 200

Venture Capital AWS Enterprise Investment 200

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2024

Amit Pande is CMO and EVP of Strategy at Aviso AI, a leading revenue intelligence platform. Previously, Amit led marketing efforts at startups like Tact AI (1st AI Assistant for Sales backed by AWS, Microsoft, and Salesforce), HP Inc (next-gen computing) and Spire AI (Human Capital SaaS).

AWS 79

AWS AI Advertising Finance 79

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

AWS growth seems to be re-accelerating, and qualitative feedback from a number of companies in Q2 (especially those with July quarter ends) suggested new customer bookings conversations were picking up. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.0x Top 5 Median: 14.7x Bucketed by Growth.

Software Review 130

Software Review Cloud Software AWS 130

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

And it’s one of the three large cloud vendors that we all know: Microsoft, AWS, and Google. AWS’s marketplace has seen 1.5 But also it’s allowed us to get much closer to our provider, I mean, we host and run 100% on AWS, but pull data from everywhere. It was pretty easy to drive that from our side.

Scale 189

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 189

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Does it cost so, so much to host a few million lines of code on AWS? Ultimately, almost everyone in B2B SaaS, down the road, ends up getting 80%+ of their leads through their brand, through word-of-mouth, through second-order revenue, etc. Don’t wait to invest in customer success and account management. So is SaaS cursed?

Scale 279

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 279

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

What’s evolved over the years and is driven by hyper-scalers like Google Azure, AWS, Twilio, and Stripe is the consumption-based model. That way, they know what growth to expect and what incremental uplift they’re getting from having sales involved so they can continue to make better investments. This is MongoDB’s approach.

Compensation 164

Compensation Sales Azure AWS 164

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 3, 2023

In the short term, enjoy the ride as the chase continues 😊 Kind of related to all of this - we now have seen the Q4’s from AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Generative AI 130

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 11, 2023

While the overall median revenue multiple of the software universe is ~6x (which is ~25% below the long term average of ~8x), high growth software is currently trading at a premium to it’s long term average (9.4x The hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) are seeing some uptick, but this is largely from selling compute (ie cloud GPUs).

Cloud 130

Cloud Trends Azure GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 130

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 31, 2023

The majority of COGS (revenue less COGS = gross profit) fall in hosting costs (ie AWS), and some customer support. If they don’t want to pay double the price, then Notion has a decision to make - do they sell the Notion AI SKU at a price that dilutes gross margins if it ends up generating more revenue? Top 5 Median: 11.4x

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

This is why we’re seeing more and more SaaS companies—Datadog, Twilio, AWS, Snowflake, and Stripe, to name a few—find success with product led growth paired with usage-based pricing. Though it was pioneered in the infrastructure layer (think: AWS and Azure), it’s becoming increasingly popular for API-based products and application software.

Scale 98

Scale Pricing Scaling AWS 98

Stax

APRIL 18, 2024

Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Software-as-a-Service Providers (SaaS) operate within the same market, thus creating a push-and-pull revenue dynamic. How companies price and distribute their solutions affects everything from revenue streams and customer interaction to product development and delivery methods.

Outsourcing Services 88

Outsourcing Services SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Methods 88

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Investing in things that enable us to move faster and leaner for the long term. Our engineers also write a lot of Ruby code, which knits together a lot of AWS, infrastructure, platform and SaaS technologies that form the core of Intercom’s backend infrastructure. Best in class public companies (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Apple).

Software Review 224

Software Review Outsourcing Services Software Outsourced Development 224

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Updating the data engineering stack streamlined data processing; reducing the time and effort invested in manual data handling. Most notably, we integrated with Segment, which was selected by our revenue operations (RevOps) team as our customer data platform (CDP).

Engineering 52

Engineering K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) Data AWS 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

I’m talking about product-led growth as an investment strategy, but really my background is 10 years of operating experience in the product-led growth world. Now I’m investing in that. I say investment strategy, but really it’s like how do you build a company that’s focused on product-led growth?

Investment 100

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Software Review 100

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 16, 2023

Our hosting costs include service providers like AWS, Cloudflare, MongoDb, Twitter, etc. percent of our total revenue and 83 percent of our fees. of our total revenue and 17 percent of our fees. We also plan to continue to invest in paid marketing. Another area we anticipate we will continue to invest in is AI.

Merchant Services 81

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Features Payments 81

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 30, 2024

Then I went into banking, specifically investment banking in the early ’90s. What areas in both technology investing as well as distribution or sales do we really need a bolster to really take the company to the next level? I think we were doing something like $3 billion of revenue a year in software sales.

Payment Solutions 78

Payment Solutions Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments 78

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Benefits of using Expense Categories in SaaS The main expense categories for any SaaS company are: Cost of Revenue Research & Development Sales & Marketing General & Admin These four categories are the standard for describing costs and expenses of any SaaS company from Salesforce to Zoom to your startup.

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90