FastSpring

APRIL 29, 2025

When payment partners fail to adapt to player demand and scale quickly, players leave your web shop empty handed, creating dissatisfaction that could have been prevented. When checkouts fail, you miss out on revenue. Tailored Scaling for Your Unique Game At FastSpring, we know that every game is different.

Payment Services 133

Payment Services Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods 133

Hitenism

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

In 2006, after Amazon Web Services (AWS) helped pioneer what we now call the cloud, product development changed forever. Today, one-third of daily internet users visit websites built on top of AWS. AWS is now an $11.5B run rate business and has made up for an incredible 67% of Amazon’s operating revenue last quarter.

AWS 189

AWS New CTO Scale CTO 189

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2021

So many startups these days are claiming they have “ARR” from revenue that … doesn’t recur. Doesn’t ARR stand for Annual Recurring Revenue? ARR now really means revenue with 100%+ Net Revenue Retention. 50% revenue from software (recurring), 50% from payments (not-recurring). .

Merchant Services 360

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 360

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2023

Scaling Early-Stage to Hyper-Growth Companies With Ed Lenta, SVP and GM of Databricks Back in the early 2000s, people didn’t entirely accept that a virtual machine could be as good as a physical one. Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks.

Scale 262

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 262

Tom Tunguz

JULY 24, 2024

Wherever the biggest dataset resided, customers ran their compute workloads that generated all of the profit and revenue growth for the last generation of data companies. Most large-scale AI products have yet to be built. AWS & others have stopped charging to move data. Today, the battle is for AI gravity.

AI 307

AI Artificial Intelligence AWS Innovation 307

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

So we’ve had a lot of fun in our 5 Interesting Learnings profiling the top SaaS and Cloud companies at scale, from Slack to Zoom, from Shopify to Datadog, from Box to DropBox. But are AWS, Azure and Google Cloud just too big for us to learn from? Google Cloud sees Cloud revenues tripling in the next 5 years.

Cloud 296

Cloud Azure AWS Scale 296

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

They were $1.7B+ ARR in October , so let’s call it close to $2B at the end of the year, growing 40%+ at that scale –and profitable! (or Canva hasn’t seen any “macro impacts” to revenue growth, nor have a number of other SaaS leaders that sell in large part outside of tech. #2. But Canva is doing it right.

AWS 312

AWS B2C Scaling AI 312

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. 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.

Scale 262

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 262

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2022

But a few thoughts on “the hardest part” for the first few stages: From $1-$100k in ARR, the hardest part is often how little revenue you get from each customer. So much work, so little revenue. Enough to pay some salaries and AWS bills, but it’s not that much. It’s just so much revenue to add in absolute terms.

SaaS 351

SaaS Headcount AWS Churn 351

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2022

So follow AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Let’s look a whole level up to the real canaries-in-the-coalmine: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. And AWS grew 37% at a $74B run-rate , down a bit from 39% the prior quarter but still adding an insane amount of new revenue. If they stumble, we’re in for a rough patch.

Cloud 299

Cloud Azure AWS Engineering 299

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

Many have used Digital Ocean at the cheaper, simpler version of AWS-Azure-Digital Ocean to get going fast and quickly. But it’s raining cash, and earnings per share is growing 22% — faster than revenue. But at scale, even the slightly less long version of the tail is where the money is. Or at least. Or at least.

Scale 297

Scale AWS Azure Cloud 297

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

At the time, they were less than a billion or two in revenue, and now, they just crossed over a $30B revenue run rate. Google Cloud Platform, on the other hand, is in a very different set that also competes with Microsoft, but AWS is considered their biggest competitor in the market.

Cloud 313

Cloud Scale AWS AI 313

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

Whether you’re going from nothing to something or already scaling and thriving beyond $10-100M, healthy, sustainable growth in SaaS is on every founder’s mind. Cockroach Labs’ CEO Spencer Kimball shares hard-won lessons from scaling from $0 to $5B and his time as an angel investor for more than 80 different startups. Ideas Are Cheap.

Scale 243

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 243

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

The charts below show the change in quarterly revenue YoY (so Q1 ‘24 rev - Q1 ‘23 rev) going back to 2017. It’s worth pointing out that Azure is a bit above the long term trendline, while AWS is still below (but accelerating up). Beating consensus revenue estimates is the first aspect of a successful quarter.

Cloud 318

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 318

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

AWS can’t support 20 partners equally. When partnering with big folks like Drata does with AWS, you have to bring business to them. Drata was one of three companies mentioned on stage by AWS’ Head of Partnerships because they did the most transactions on the marketplace than any other company. Otherwise, it falls apart.

AWS 285

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 285

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2024

Typically support consumes about perhaps 5%-7% of your revenue at scale (excluding customer success) in most SaaS models. Another 5%-7% go to core infrastructure costs (AWS, Azure, Snowflake, etc). Dear SaaStr: What is The Average Ratio of Support Staff to Customer Count in SaaS?

Azure 278

Azure AWS SaaS Customer Success 278

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

Ultimately — revenue multiples. Revenue multiples are how much VCs, investors, and ultimately, an IPO and public markets will value each dollar of revenue. Revenue multiples don’t affect customers, or even revenue itself. And generating real cash flow at scale. #2. pic.twitter.com/JNnzizB82v.

SaaS 348

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 348

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2020

After scaling sales enablement successfully, the next step is to understand where your customers are. Your customers may not know that it’s your product under the hood, so while you may gain a bunch of revenue, your brand equity won’t appreciate. Marketplaces: AWS marketplace, Heroku marketplace, Salesforce marketplace.

Scale 349

Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 349

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

The fastest grower scales to more than 600 people in 30 months. One interesting question that I would like to answer is how these hiring growth curves correlate to revenue/ARR curves. I’ve normalized the years for when all the businesses were roughly at the same headcount - fewer than 50 people.

Headcount 187

Headcount Scaling Software Business 187

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2023

Still, always helpful to see how any leader does free to paid at scale. 53% of Revenue is Outside U.S. With 1,500 employees, SEMRush is at about $190,000 in revenue per employee (1,500 employees). Spending a Hefty 50% of Revenue on Sales and Marketing. And again a challenge to everyone in SaaS to go global. #4.

Scale 261

Scale AWS Scaling Revenue 261

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

Being Multi-Platform / Multi-Product Key at Scale A story we’ve seen many times. 64% of Large Customers Sourced From Partners They are AWS’s largest cybersecurity partner. This chart of their revenue growth will make your jaw drop: Not much to not like here. ? The majority of their customers use 5 or more modules. #3.

Cybersecurity 299

Cybersecurity AWS Benchmarks Cloud 299

SaaStr

JULY 26, 2021

Even though you may not have that much revenue or that many leads, he will help you get more leads and maximize the experience of the leads you do have. It’s to scale a tiny engine into something bigger. But, sometimes a founder is >so< terrible at sales, so awful at it, that literally, it’s hopeless.

Sales Hiring 279

Sales Hiring Scale Startup AWS 279

SaaStr

MARCH 9, 2022

Focusing on smaller developers, in some ways it’s been a bit overshadowed by AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. DigitialOcean doesn’t want to take AWS, Azure and Google on in the enterprise and doesn’t really try. They are only 15% of the customers, but 83% of the revenue. Only 38% of revenue in North America.

Azure 277

Azure AWS SMB Cloud 277

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Call me when it scales.” In it he argues that an eCommerce business with $10 to $20 million in revenues is not that hard to build and also not very valuable. About two years ago, Josh Hannah of Matrix Partners wrote an excellent article titled “That's a nice little $40M eCommerce company you have there. Now let’s talk about SaaS.

Scale 192

Scale Scaling SaaS AWS 192

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2022

You need an efficient way to keep your customers successful, reduce churn, drive adoption, and increase net revenue retention. ChurnZero lets your CS team manage and expand accounts at scale with proactive, personalized engagement that helps every customer succeed.

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 260

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure AWS Enterprise readiness 260

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2023

It’s one of the few still commanding a premium multiple in today’s world, and still growing at tremendous rates: Snowflake is also a barometer of everything in SaaS and Cloud, because a significant amount of its revenue is consumption-based, at least in part. AWS is seeing this, and so is Snowflake. Not none, just less.

Headcount 246

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring AWS 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds. SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  2. SaaStr 626: 10 Lessons Learned Scaling to $1B Valuation with Drift Co-founders David Cancel and Elias Torres  5. A 6 Part Test to Help You Get It Right.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 244

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

However, even the savviest entrepreneurs might be unaware of some of the blind spots that could be costing revenue. . Says Roberge, “We’re using a sales comp plan that was invented in the 1980s, and it’s causing our customers to utilize their licenses at a lower rate, and it’s causing revenue contraction.”. When should you scale?

Sales Hiring 260

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 260

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

If the company wasn’t built around this purpose, it would be hard to scale. 80% of the revenue is in the Enterprise. If you go back 10-15 years, when people ask about build vs. buy for the long-term, people would consider building their own data center if they were spending $100k/month on AWS. It’s not an option.

Enterprise readiness 289

Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 289

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Does it cost so, so much to host a few million lines of code on AWS? Sales, done right, should be accretive (although expect sales efficiency to ultimately decline post-Initial Scale). So what makes SaaS burn so much cash, once you have enough revenue to cover the costs of the core teams you need to build and service the product?

Scale 299

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 299

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

It was just a little while ago that Salesforce was doing $1 billion in ARR revenue. How can that scale over time? Does it make sense, and scale, from an input-output perspective? And true enough … freemium only ended up being 20% of our revenue, at least strictly defined. Same software, dude. But same software.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 284

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. Many investors laugh (and some rightly so) at the fact that software companies’ valuations are often described as a multiple of revenue.

AI 190

AI Cloud Revenue Technical Advisors 190

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2022

And inflation is awful. Exceeding expectations again, and importantly, also raising guidance in revenues for the full year. #3. . — Jason 2022 SaaStr Annual Sep 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) August 3, 2022. So are we in a downturn in SaaS? Certainly, segments are. eCommerce, video, and more are having post-crazy growth hangovers.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scale 328

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

What I do know, is if you leave this position vacant for even a month — you’re putting Second Order Revenue at risk. In that case, his or her job is, at the end of the day, (x) to increase your revenue per lead and (y) get more leads. But not making the hire at all is pretty awful, too. Lots of it.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 290

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2019

GAAP revenue in Q1 ’19) because it’s in a space filled with strong competitors. We all know this from AWS and Twilio on down, but Fastly is a visceral reminder. It’s an almost 100% enterprise play — they have 227 customers spending over $100k a year, comprising 84% of their revenues. The lesson?

Outsourced Development 259

Outsourced Development AWS Retention Enterprise 259

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2024

Enterprise SaaS has a much higher average revenue per paying account, while consumer is around a $0.35 Churn is much higher on consumer subscriptions, but you have higher expansion revenue. If you’re in consumer, how can you go upmarket and get a small cohort of users paying more, churning less, and expanding revenue?

Subscription 306

Subscription Payment Features B2B Mobile 306

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

I’m referring to the full spectrum of business execution, from product management to design to engineering to marketing to sales to support and all the other functions needed to scale a business. Basic marketing and selling at a global scale is becoming easy too. The second army are your main competitors. Google, Microsoft, Apple).

Outsourcing Services 224

Outsourcing Services Software Review Software Outsourced Development 224