SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

Check out this 2018 Europa session with Guillaume Princen, Head of France and Southern Europe @ Stripe, where he talks about the metrics you need to be focused on in your startup. If you don’t have the time to watch the whole session, here are the main metrics you should be mindful of. Average Revenue per Customer.

SaaS Payments 237

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 237

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. Azure : Coming into the quarter, a growth rate that would have satisfied the market would have been ~29%. All eyes shifted to the AWS report on Thursday.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS AI Search 130

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

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

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. Even a DCF is riddled with long term assumptions.

Cloud 161

Cloud Azure AWS Software Review 161

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. As you can see, just two months ago, the market predicted that that Fed Funds rate would be 3.6%

Cloud 161

Cloud AWS Metrics Subscription 161

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

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). The big question I have - everyone knows the market is tough right now. Top 5 Median: 12.9x

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 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

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

” We saw some green shoots in AWS and a few other consumption names, and overall sentiment seemed more positive. I’ve put together a number of charts below to show how metrics from this quarter compared to prior quarters. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.2x

Cloud 169

Cloud Software Review AWS Trends 169

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.” Meaning labor markets continue to be strong! AWS reports next week.

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. Top 5 Median: 14.5x

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. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against.

Trends 130

Trends Cloud Azure AWS 130

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

If you look at the market caps of these businesses, they’ve all done incredibly well this year. This last quarter announced revenue was up over 100% in the quarter, and now they’re a top five company in the world by market cap. What niche, market, or vertical can you absolutely dominate? Now, it’s 100+ times.

Generative AI 245

Generative AI Outsourcing Services AI Software Review 245

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. Is there a big Total Addressable Market? Does this market need disruption? The commercial market you choose to build and offer your customers defines you, yes.

Scale 201

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 201

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2021

It can be easy for SaaS companies to lose momentum if they haven’t quite found the perfect product-market fit. They reached $10 million ARR by year three, which was exciting, but what was missing was a true sense of product-market fit. million revenue quarter…In reality, though, we were still the founder-led sales company.”.

Sales Hiring 270

Sales Hiring Data AWS Leadership 270

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

Recently I was catching up with a good friend who used to be CEO of an enterprise-y SaaS social networking company — and the usage and engagement numbers of his business were just awful. So the buyer really doesn’t even have any success metrics going into the first renewal.

AWS 268

AWS Churn Enterprise Engagement 268

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

I have a strong, semi-proven thesis that in SaaS, market size doesn’t matter that much … at least in the traditional top-down sense. Yes, many of the big winners in SaaS entered already large markets, from CRM (Salesforce) to ERP (Workday) to Collaboration (Workday, Asana). Like Shopify and Okta, to pick two.

Scale 209

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 209

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. Even a DCF is riddled with long term assumptions. Top 5 Median: 14.7x

Software Review 130

Software Review Cloud Software AWS 130

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 3, 2023

I’ll be right sometimes, I’ll be wrong sometimes, but it’s fun to try and make sense of what’s going on in the markets together. Then we had the Fed meeting this week creating a huge move in the software market. Clearly the market tone is getting more dovish. The market was offsides.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Generative AI 130

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 11, 2023

” It’s really important that new business is still healthy, and a sign of overall market health. 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

Cloud 130

Cloud Trends Azure GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 130

CloudGeometry

MARCH 22, 2022

The recurring revenue user model of SaaS demands deep and broad attention at every step, as it empowers you to provide continued feedback on what you are selling them. SaaS business metrics are not hard to find ; we won’t analyze them in-depth here. As it turns out, SaaS operational platform metrics are also abundant.

DevOps as a Service 130

DevOps as a Service Software Delivery Well Architected Framework AWS 130

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

What Is A “Consumption” Business In the old days of software, you had a company like Oracle that popularized the perpetual license where customers own the software and vendors own the market. What’s evolved over the years and is driven by hyper-scalers like Google Azure, AWS, Twilio, and Stripe is the consumption-based model.

Compensation 164

Compensation Sales Azure AWS 164

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 Rico Mallozzi: So marketplaces are fundamentally changing, go to market motions for a lot of enterprise technology companies. Azure’s marketplace has over 4 million monthly visitors.

Scale 203

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 203

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2019

Here are a few: All the way until $600m+ ARR, the majority of Xero’s new bookings and revenue still came from Australia and New Zealand! ” So even in SMB sales in smaller markets, if you take dominant market share — you can get to $500m+ in ARR! .” This is a critical metric. subscribers.

SMB 219

SMB Customer Lifetime Value AWS Churn 219

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

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2019

It seems crazy at the moment, but simply put, the WeWork IPO was an aggressive bet that in Year 10+ of a bull run that the public markets would pay a high but perhaps justifiable price for the crazy high revenue growth of WeWork, while overlooking the losses for now. 5–10+ year leases are awful. billion last quarter.

AWS 138

AWS Pricing Revenue Metrics 138

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Rather, how you go-to-market is a significant determinant of success. Instead, how you launch them into the market is a huge factor in success. Today, we’re diving straight into the details with product marketing leaders. The greatest technology does not always win. Start early! Use timing as a forcing function. It’s showtime.

Sales Recruiting 99

Sales Recruiting Generative AI AI AWS 99

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

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Those three little letters that can stir up so much debate in the marketing and go-to-market world. What I mean by MQLs is Marketing Qualified Leads. Now, let’s take this idea and apply it to the world of marketing metrics. If revenue is the North Star metric, everything you do should drive towards that.

Metrics 91

Metrics Revenue Scale Marketing 91

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

The challenge The solution Data warehouse ETL processes How we visualize data Future plans, closing thoughts The challenge: why we needed a data engineering team ChartMogul integrates with various billing systems, normalizes and aggregates the received data, and then visualizes SaaS metrics into charts and tables.

Engineering 52

Engineering K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) Data AWS 52

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. It requires shifts in go-to-market strategy, sales compensation, financial planning, billing, and much more. Pick the right usage metric.

Scale 98

Scale Pricing Scaling AWS 98

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

The main benefits of categorizing your SaaS company’s expenses are more accurate metrics and forecasts, and getting a better understanding of your company’s overall spending. Even without any breakdowns, obviously the CEO was fully aware of the company’s increased spending in sales and marketing. This is a v2.0

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

ChurnZero

JUNE 24, 2022

With the “great resignation,” fluctuations of the public and private markets, and the omnipresent pandemic, we find ourselves continuously, and quickly, adapting to the shifting landscape. You can download the full report for net retention and gross retention benchmarks as well as retention metrics in relation to ACV, growth, size, and more.

Benchmarks 98

Benchmarks Retention Software Review Technical Review 98

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

What I’m going to do is talk a little bit about what we’ve seen over the course of the last year and then also talk about some metrics we track or we encourage our founders to track as they’re building their businesses, and then, lastly, try to go through a few predictions for the next couple of years.

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

ProfitWell

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

One of the most famous lines from Citizen Kane is, “It's no trick to make an awful lot of money, if that's all you want is to do is make a lot of money.” That’s never been truer for software businesses in particular than in the past 10-15 years, with the internet stimulating an explosion in the number of viable revenue models.

Payments 40

Payments Revenue Payment Methods SaaS Payments 40

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

To find out which of these features are most common, OpenView surveyed over 500 SaaS companies ranging from pre-revenue to $100 million in ARR. This metric represents how long it takes, in months, to pay off the costs of acquiring a given customer on a gross margin basis. These metrics are an indicator of product-market fit.

Headcount 73

Headcount SaaS Compensation Acquisition 73