Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., 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. Is Software Rebounding?

Cloud 177

Cloud Software Azure AWS 177

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

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 205

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 205

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Here’s an overview of the series: Part 1: How to Categorize Expenses in a SaaS Startup v2.0 Donut charts – while often frowned upon – are handy for quickly introducing your company’s expense breakdown. Use area charts for more detail.

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2024

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). 35:57) Advice for startups entering a market with established incumbents. (43:00)

AWS 79

AWS AI Advertising Finance 79

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Innovative startups. The first army are innovative startups. Understand the potential consequences of outsourcing to young startups. Young startups go out of business regularly and their security and reliability is often worse than more mature companies. Best in class Late-stage Startups (e.g. Mid-stage startups.

Software Review 224

Software Review Outsourcing Services Software Outsourced Development 224

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? Don’t wait to invest in customer success and account management. I’m doing a lot of this financial planning now. Some are barely burning any cash. So is SaaS cursed? But break away. Get better.

Scale 289

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 289

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 30, 2024

I had my own startup, but then really it was the internet that changed everything. And so when Amazon called me and they’re like, “Hey you want to come with us and do you want to actually start the mobile services, backend business within AWS?” And then I started selling. ” I jumped to the opportunity.

Development 106

Development Technical Review AI AWS 106

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.

Trends 130

Trends Cloud Azure AWS 130

Chart Mogul

MARCH 2, 2021

Further reading: How to Prepare Your Startup for Acquisition. It might be awful. It’s tempting to rush into your next startup when you miss the feeling of running a company. In other words, they trusted you to grow their money, to give them a return worthy of their investment and mentorship. You’re hot stuff.

Startup 52

Startup Acquisition SaaS Scale 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

I thought it might be helpful to assemble a checklist of 22 reasons I almost immediately pass on investing in start-ups that are still interesting. This one you can’t really control, but I only want to invest in founders that can build a management team. This is sort of awful. Others bet on traction. They never catch up.

Sales Recruiting 341

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 341

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 3, 2014

Startups benefit from a booming public market for three reasons. As a consequence of higher stock prices, stock increases in value and cash becomes easier to raise and relatively less expensive, both of which entice tech publics to acquire startups, extending the current vibrant M&A market.

Startup 100

Startup Trends AWS Marketing 100

Chart Mogul

MARCH 2, 2021

Further reading: How to Prepare Your Startup for Acquisition. It might be awful. It’s tempting to rush into your next startup when you miss the feeling of running a company. In other words, they trusted you to grow their money, to give them a return worthy of their investment and mentorship. You’re hot stuff.

Startup 52

Startup Acquisition SaaS Scale 52

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 16, 2022

To achieve our mission of making internet business personal and scaling to support larger and larger customers, we have been continually, thoughtfully, and carefully investing in our people, systems, and processes to maintain Intercom’s high standards of availability. Without rock solid availability, nothing else matters.

Software Review 118

Software Review Technical Review Management Systems Review 118

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

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

I started at Amazon before they had Amazon Web Services (AWS) so I was lucky enough to see AWS born out of the guts of all of the great operations work done for the amazon.com retail website. You can think of them beginning from very base infrastructural technologies, and in our case we’re betting exclusively on AWS as a cloud vendor.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

Stax

APRIL 18, 2024

Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Salesforce AppExchange). SaaS companies can invest in robust support infrastructure (e.g., Scalability and integration capabilities ISV solutions may require additional infrastructure investments to support scalability. They require manual upgrades to handle increased demand.

Outsourcing Services 88

Outsourcing Services SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Methods 88

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. The gross margin profile dictates how much you can spend on operating expenses to ultimately generate free cash flow.

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 12, 2022

Liam: Was it challenging to get to this point with Mode in the startup journey? Every startup is going to be a challenge, and Mode is no different. ” Again, it was a video platform, so maybe they had to invest in different content. Liam: For startups out there, how can data be used to drive growth? Benn: For sure.

Data 151

Data Airlines AWS Underperforming Technical Team 151

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 31, 2019

The wave of SaaS companies that built themselves on the likes of AWS and Azure have reinforced the pre-eminence of cloud computing. Here, we trace some of the biggest trends and stories in technology over the past decade, and try to find a narrative to make sense of it all. .

Payment Solutions 259

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Software SaaS Payments 259

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Before I joined the venture capital industry many years ago, I was a software developer, and I worked for a startup around the 2000 time period. Retail was mentioned twice, that’s it, and AWS was mentioned 78 times, so it’s probably not surprising that they’re doing this. I think it’s a really staggering stat.

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Starting a new company is always hard and most SaaS startups never get to $1-2 million in ARR. Whether starting an Internet startup has really become 10x cheaper depends on how exactly you phrase the question and is debatable. Let me rephrase that. Every founder who accomplishes this deserves a huge amount of respect.

Scale 192

Scale Scaling SaaS AWS 192

Blulogix

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Scalability Startups and enterprises alike can scale their technology usage in alignment with their specific needs. Here are some notable examples: Cloud Computing Major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer pay-as-you-go pricing, enabling businesses to access computing resources based on their actual usage.

Technology 52

Technology Pricing Payment Features Subscription 52

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 13, 2018

But as the college-dorm-room startup matures, there’s a fascinating twist to be found in the way it applies its new mission to Workplace, a B2B startup within the (former) startup. You really have to think of Workplace as a SaaS startup within Facebook. When Workplace became a real thing at Facebook, I was in London.

Scale 151

Scale Marketplace as a Service Mobile Sales Hiring 151

Frontegg

OCTOBER 14, 2020

Before AWS, engineering teams had to scale their own infrastructure. Spanning early-stage startups and hyper-growth unicorns, Frontegg is already integrated within the production environment of numerous customers and is looking to expand its North American customer base in the upcoming quarters.

DevOps as a Service 52

DevOps as a Service K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) Innovation New CTO 52

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

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 2, 2020

In some cases it can create the tipping point that not only helps a startup overcome big marketing challenges, but can even steal action away from big-name incumbents. She points to full investment from the founders as a critical part of the company’s DevRel success. Done right, DevRel can deliver an almost unassailable advantage.

Marketing 54

Marketing AWS Scale Development 54

Chart Mogul

JUNE 23, 2022

SaaS startup growth has taken a hit as well as we noted. This is a perfect time to invest in your user base & core product offering because playing to your strengths will pay off. You might be hard-pressed by your AWS bill but you’re not going to start replacing the engine to lighten the load mid-flight.

SaaS 52

SaaS DevOps as a Service Marketplace as a Service Forecasting 52

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2024

If it is a small startup, it may just be a single GPU, or it’s bigger with a cluster of GPUs where you need infrastructure management. Historically, Cloud platforms like AWS and Azure help with the sporadic needs of renting a GPU for a few hours for training vs. long-term use, which would cost thousands of dollars. They’ll need GPUs.

AI Search 222

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 222

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

This function can be outsourced in the early days of a startup, but it is usually brought in-house after Series B. In 2014, storage had historically been Dropbox’s most significant cost driver, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on AWS. Invest in next-gen finance tooling. Encourage bias towards action.

Scale 175

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 175

Neil Patel

JANUARY 8, 2021

Or perhaps you know how it works but don’t have the budget or urgency to invest in one. Amazon AWS is a similar product that provides access to its free tier products for 12 months. SiteGround , one of the leading providers of top-notch shared hosting technology, is giving away its StartUp Plan for free to teachers.

Payment Methods 141

Payment Methods Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 141

Audacix

AUGUST 4, 2019

In years gone the "freemium" model was the favoured one of marketing SaaS platforms that were trying to attract new startup or SME customers. million, which is money that would otherwise have been invested in growth projects. Look them up.

Cybersecurity 53

Cybersecurity SaaS Outsourced Development AWS 53

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. To “soften the beach,” you need to expend as little energy and investment as possible while learning as much as possible. Invest in and put that into the market to start softening the beach.

Scale 202

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 202

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2019

Efficiency, you sort of draw a frontier as to where you want to go and you tweak the amount of investments you do via events, via sole prospecting, via SDR, via demand generation, via ABM or whatever so that the tool set that you used to continue to keep that pipeline stoked, you have to dial it over time.

Scale 145

Scale Sales Hiring Construction Education 145

Tom Tunguz

JULY 7, 2022

Pop any venture firm’s website into the wayback machine , peruse the bios from the late 90s, and you’ll see statements like “I invest in Internet companies.” At some point, startups tinker enough with the new technology to discover the applications customers value most. ” Or Web2.0 But not anymore.

AWS 237

AWS Government Innovation Cloud 237

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

And then I’ve watched, since she made this comment to me about 13 months ago, then I’ve watched with some startups I’ve worked with, where the first marketing hire comes in, and I asked them what their top five priorities are, and then I asked the CEO. And notice that I said investments, not cost or spend.

Sales Hiring 213

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 213

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

As a founder, you can use this 84 cents to pay salaries, office rent, dividends, or invest in R&D. Related read: Freemium vs. Free Trial: How to Know Which One to Pick for Your SaaS Startup. For example, 84% GM means that for every dollar of product sold, a business keeps 84 cents.

Scale 52

Scale Payment Methods Payment Services Systems Review 52