Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Amazon on AWS : “…customers are continuing to shift their focus towards driving innovation and bringing new workloads to the cloud. Azure (excluding Azure AI) continued to decelerate, and while AWS did come in ahead of expectations, it wasn’t a blow out. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cost optimization & reporting 161

Cost optimization & reporting Cloud Azure AWS 161

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

So Okta is one of our favorite SaaS and Cloud leaders. But like many SaaS and Cloud leaders today, the bigger ones are still growing faster. AWS alone generated $175m of contract value for Okta, growing 130%. GRR / Logo Retention in Mid 90% Range. The story is super inspiring. And a few other interesting learnings: #6.

Fractional VPE 220

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 220

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. In it's truest form, ARR is used by pure SaaS business models to describe the aggregate annual value of the entire customer set. Namely, retention!!

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

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

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2021

A lot of our SaaS older times don’t quite know what to make with a lot of B2B startups these days, let alone some public SaaS companies. But like “Cloud” and “SaaS”, its definitely has evolved. But like “Cloud” and “SaaS”, its definitely has evolved. Call it ARR.

Merchant Services 359

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 359

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 52

Benchmarks Retention Software Review Technical Review 52

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%. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Tailwind of new workloads starting to overtake headwinds of optimizations.

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure Cost optimization & reporting AWS 130

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them.

Sales Hiring 193

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 193

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2022

So are we in a downturn in SaaS? And inflation is awful. But where is SaaS are we really today? Alteryx, a leading public SaaS ETL company, announced it was growing 33% at $730m in ARR! It’s just, the forces that are propelling SaaS to grow like never before haven’t changed. Certainly, segments are.

Venture Capital 289

Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scale 289

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

OCTOBER 13, 2022

We’ll see 2,500+ of the best SaaS founders, execs, and VCs June 6-7 at 2022 SaaStr Europa ! ChurnZero is the Customer Success platform and partner for growing SaaS and subscription businesses. You need an efficient way to keep your customers successful, reduce churn, drive adoption, and increase net revenue retention.

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 195

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure AWS Enterprise readiness 195

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

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. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Said another way, the 10Y today is double what it averaged from 2010 to 2020.

Cloud 161

Cloud Azure AWS Software Review 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. Partly due to larger layoffs, as well as stronger bookings And finally - net retention. Not surprising, net retention continued to fall. Even a DCF is riddled with long term assumptions.

Cloud 169

Cloud Software Review AWS Trends 169

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

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

JUNE 9, 2023

Expansion revenue is still declining (we see this in falling net retention rates), but gross retention remains strong. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. New customer growth seems to be picking up. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework.

Trends 130

Trends Cloud Azure AWS 130

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. Don’t let low churn give you comfort, unless it’s attached to high NPS and net retention. Churn is a lagging indicator.

AWS 268

AWS Churn Enterprise Engagement 268

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

ChurnZero

AUGUST 11, 2020

Did you know that 60% of SaaS companies reported a negative impact on customer retention and upsell deals due to the pandemic? Customer retention, along with new customer acquisition, has been challenging for most companies when the pandemic hit. And, as you know, a better customer experience leads to better customer retention.

Retention 97

Retention Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Software Review 97

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. In this approach, you’re paying a lot to reps for retention.

Compensation 164

Compensation Sales Azure AWS 164

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

The Angel VC

MAY 12, 2018

In last week's post I shared some thoughts about Dropbox and why, although Dropbox is unquestionably one of the most amazing SaaS companies ever built, I am a tad less confident in the company's long-term future than I am in other SaaS leaders such as Salesforce.com, Zendesk, or Shopify. 8 – Weaning off AWS Look at this.

AWS 187

AWS Scale Subscription Payment Features 187

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

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. But growing with a usage-model is not as straightforward as traditional subscription SaaS. Then they tell their boss what to buy.

Scale 98

Scale Pricing Scaling AWS 98

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 11, 2023

The good news is gross retention (ie churn) stayed constant. The hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) are seeing some uptick, but this is largely from selling compute (ie cloud GPUs). The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. However, it’s not showing up in the data yet.

Cloud 130

Cloud Trends Azure GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 130

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.

Software Review 130

Software Review Cloud Software AWS 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. Model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc as companies start building out AI).

Cloud 183

Cloud Artificial Intelligence AI GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 183

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

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

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

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Generative AI 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. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. It shows the number of months it takes for a SaaS business to payback their fully burdened CAC on a gross profit basis.

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

OPEXEngine

JUNE 11, 2020

You hear the terms SaaS, subscription, term licenses and perpetual license software tossed around frequently. We sometimes hear companies call themselves “SaaS” companies, because they sell subscriptions, but they do not host software. The product is hosted by the vendor or a 3 rd party (like AWS).

SaaS Payments 52

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Subscription Payment Features 52

Frontegg

OCTOBER 14, 2020

Presenting: the first pre-built suite of universal SaaS capabilities, enabling SaaS teams to focus on core features, shorten time-to-market and drive user adoption. Frontegg liberates dev teams from the burden of building SaaS capabilities that have become de-facto standards in the landscape of modern SaaS products.

DevOps as a Service 52

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

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 17, 2019

SaaS gross margins have been getting attention lately as investors dig into SaaS cost structures and revenue growth rates going into 2020. SaaS cost of revenue is comprised primarily of hosting and network costs, plus any professional services, implementation, training and other services. Source: OPEXEngine EdgarEngine 2019.

Scale 40

Scale SaaS AWS Revenue 40

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

It was around that time about 12 years ago that Jeff Bezos launched AWS, and some of you may remember that, when he did this, Wall Street analysts were looking at him and saying, “Why would you take what’s already a very unprofitable business and drive it further into the red by investing in this AWS initiative?”

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 31, 2019

Rise of the cloud and SaaS businesses. The wave of SaaS companies that built themselves on the likes of AWS and Azure have reinforced the pre-eminence of cloud computing. And so we end up with juice companies , meal-kit companies , underwear companies , to select just three, seeking to mimic the “as a service” aspect of SaaS.

Payment Solutions 259

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Software SaaS Payments 259