SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So we don’t know quite as much about Canva as we do SaaS companies that have IPO’d. Growing Almost 50% as Approaches $2B in ARR The exact growth rate is based on an The Information report from a few weeks ago, and it seems about right looking at their published metrics. But the very, very best in SaaS?

AWS 247

AWS B2C Scaling AI 247

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

MAY 10, 2024

All 3 (AWS, Azure, GCP) saw positive reacceleration Quarterly Reports Summary Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples Top 10 Weekly Share Price Movement Update on Multiples SaaS businesses are generally valued on a multiple of their revenue - in most cases the projected revenue for the next 12 months.

Cloud 161

Cloud Software GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure 161

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%. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Top 5 Median: 16.1x

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure Cost optimization & reporting AWS 130

CloudGeometry

MARCH 22, 2022

When developing a SaaS product plan, it’s important to recognize two foundational principles. First, SaaS is a business strategy, not a technology strategy. Second, there is no one-size-fits-all SaaS architecture (the second principle is a corollary of the first).

DevOps as a Service 130

DevOps as a Service Software Delivery Well Architected Framework 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 20, 2023

Hyperscaler Preview Next week Amazon, Microsoft and Google report earnings and we’ll see Q3 data for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Even a DCF is riddled with long term assumptions.

Cloud 161

Cloud Azure AWS Software Review 161

ChurnZero

MARCH 31, 2022

Did you catch our Customer Success and SaaS metrics crash-course webinar with leading SaaS expert Dave Kellogg, of Dave Kellogg Consulting ? We’d like to extend a huge thanks to Dave for his expert insights below, which will help you choose and use Customer Success and SaaS metrics in a more nuanced and purposeful way.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Metrics Technical Review Scale 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. SaaS companies deliver software applications over the internet on a subscription basis, simplifying access and management for users. What are SaaS companies?

Outsourcing Services 88

Outsourcing Services SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Methods 88

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

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 216

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 216

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%. Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Cost optimization & reporting 130

CloudGeometry

MARCH 3, 2022

When developing a SaaS product plan, it’s important to recognize two foundational principles. First, SaaS is a business strategy, not a technology strategy. Second, there is no one-size-fits-all SaaS architecture (the second principle is a corollary of the first). This is known as a unit metric. More on that below.

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) SaaS Cloud 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 promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 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. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years.

Cloud 161

Cloud AWS Metrics Subscription 161

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. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years.

Cloud 169

Cloud Software Review AWS Trends 169

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

Subscribe now ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) vs ERR (Experimental Runrate Revenue) ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is one of the most popular SaaS (Non-GAAP) metrics. However, it’s also one of the most loosely used metrics, and is frequently misused. And the predictability into the future gives investors comfort.

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

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. Yet they would still renew for Year 2.

AWS 261

AWS Churn Enterprise Engagement 261

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. ” Data is more important than ever! So what did we learn?

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 130

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

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. Here’s an overview of the series: Part 1: How to Categorize Expenses in a SaaS Startup v2.0 This is a v2.0 New Gross Margins?

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

ChurnZero

JUNE 24, 2022

What does this mean for B2B SaaS businesses? In our webinar, 2022 SaaS retention benchmarks , SaaS Capital Manager Director Rob Belcher shares the results from their 11th annual B2B SaaS benchmarking survey. It’s the largest survey of private SaaS companies in the world with over 1,500 responses.

Benchmarks 98

Benchmarks Retention Software Review Technical Review 98

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. I created this subset to show companies where FCF is a relevant valuation metric.

Cloud 183

Cloud Artificial Intelligence AI GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 183

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. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.0x

Software Review 130

Software Review Cloud Software AWS 130

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2021

There’s a metric the very top founders track quitely, but ruthlessly, that I find other founders either don’t track, or sort of hide from. DigitalOcean is growing more slowly than its mega competitors Azure, AWS, etc. That’s % of marketshare. And importantly, if it’s growing, or shrinking. Why does it matter?

Azure 204

Azure Headcount AWS Education 204

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). And it’s better than that, these days.

Scale 199

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 199

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2019

Goodness : We forget about the OS in the Cloud, but we all need to still deal with things like Windows 7 IRL: One perspective on the Top 25 VCs in SaaS now: Pretty Funny. Clippy was AI before AI: China is a whole different world for SaaS. Alibaba is their AWS (or becoming it): The Cloud is better. It is even cheaper.

Cloud 141

Cloud AWS AI Acquisition 141

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 million subscriptions transacted and Google’s marketplace has seen 3X growth in SaaS sales. Like I said, we run 100% of our platform on AWS, so the fit was great.

Scale 193

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 193

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Dive Brief: Usage-based pricing has grown 32% this year and now 45% of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies use it all or in part, up from 34%, an OpenView survey shows. The survey is based on responses from 600 SaaS companies. It has tended to be used most in infrastructure platforms, like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.

Subscription 52

Subscription Payment Features Pricing SaaS 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Moving from a traditional SaaS to a pure consumption model was a challenging but fun transition for MongoDB. Then, we moved to a more customer-friendly model with SaaS and subscription-based pricing. There are still some complexities around SaaS-based approaches. At a recent Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m,

Compensation 164

Compensation Sales Azure AWS 164

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

But if you can’t tell me the future (in your market) at least 3 years out … then it’s hard for me to believe in SaaS you’ll ever build a unicorn. So I always have to pass here, no matter how good the metrics look today. “Quarterly MRR”, 100% Gross Margins, and Other Crazy Metrics.

Sales Recruiting 336

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 336

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. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Top 5 Median: 14.5x

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Generative AI 130

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

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 11, 2023

The hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) are seeing some uptick, but this is largely from selling compute (ie cloud GPUs). Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. However, it’s not showing up in the data yet.

Cloud 130

Cloud Trends Azure GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 130

ProfitWell

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

The SaaS industry is growing fast, but if you want to be one of the companies contributing to that trend, you'll need to know the secrets of successful SaaS businesses. In this post, we'll lay out a SaaS growth blueprint. In this post, we'll lay out a SaaS growth blueprint. SaaS growth is looking strong.

SaaS Payments 66

SaaS Payments Trends Merchant Services Payments 66

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

So there are a lot of rough and arm chair metrics for fundraising in SaaS in terms of valuations. For years, the standard was “about 10x” Top tier SaaS companies would tend to raise at around 10x ARR, with ones with slightly lower growth often raising at 5x. Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds.

Venture Capital 56

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 56

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 31, 2023

The majority of COGS (revenue less COGS = gross profit) fall in hosting costs (ie AWS), and some customer support. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework.

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130