SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

Seat Contractions Have Brought NRR Down From 120% to 111% While 111% NRR is still quite an engine at this scale, the drop in NRR from seat contractions explains a good chunk of the headwinds Okta has seen. #2. AWS alone generated $175m of contract value for Okta, growing 130%. Way, way too many startups focus 100% on direct sales.

Fractional VPE 216

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 216

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Instead of requiring a scale-out database in the sky, most analyses are faster with an optimized database on your computer that can leverage the cloud when needed. Because of these advantages, MotherDuck is the best place for startups to build their first Modern Data Stack. But most workloads aren’t massive.

Cloud 340

Cloud AWS Data Analysis Benchmarks 340

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. That’s a high value for AWS.

AWS 206

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 206

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. 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. AWS’s marketplace has seen 1.5 Rico Mallozzi, Sr.

Scale 199

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 199

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 28, 2022

A few months ago, we retired our last pieces of infrastructure on DigitalOcean, marking our migration to AWS as complete. Our journey was not your regular AWS migration as it involved moving our infrastructure from classic VMs to containers orchestrated by Kubernetes. Ultimately, we decided to go with AWS. Managed databases.

K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) 52

K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

The startup I invested in that were acquired by PE in the 2020-2021 Boom were acquired for 8x in one case, 12x in another, and 15x in a third. And also while many of the above names had seem growth slow at scale, bear in mind they are all awfully good SaaS companies. So what do they pay on average? You might be worth less ?

AWS 246

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2023

We’ll have dozens and dozens of workshops, braindates, and much more! It will be the #1 place to talk SaaS, learn SaaS, and share SaaS learnings in APAC in 2023!

AWS 243

AWS Cloud Trends Startup 243

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. So many startups these days are claiming they have “ARR” from revenue that … doesn’t recur. Doesn’t ARR stand for Annual Recurring Revenue? Well of course it does.

Merchant Services 359

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 359

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds. Why VCs Love Founders That Respond to Email Almost Instantly 90%-95% of Salespeople Won’t Make It At Your Startup. 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 187

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 187

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 25, 2021

On November 3rd, our co-founder Des Traynor will be on the stage sharing his keynote on “ How to grow up without growing old “ Later that evening we partner with AWS and Aircall for a “Startups Happy Hour” party, where you can decompress and have one (or a few!) drinks on us and celebrate a little taste of normality.

AWS 198

AWS Scale Innovation Startup 198

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

3 days, more than 100+ sessions and 300 expert speakers, who will be sharing their best practices to help you scale faster, build smarter, and close more customers. From AWS to Vimeo: this year’s speaker lineup is packed with incredible speakers and content. We just launched the entire SaaStr Annual 2021 Agenda !!

Scale 256

Scale AWS B2C SaaS 256

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

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2020

The first place to start is to learn to sell your startup’s product well. To make a partnership successful, your startup will need to teach another sales team to sell your product. After scaling sales enablement successfully, the next step is to understand where your customers are. Here are my notes. Where to Start.

Scale 319

Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 319

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? Sales, done right, should be accretive (although expect sales efficiency to ultimately decline post-Initial Scale). Churn burns a lot of cash at scale. Some are barely burning any cash. So is SaaS cursed?

Scale 280

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 280

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and even Google Cloud are on fire, adding insane amounts of revenue this year. And generating real cash flow at scale. #2. Personally, I’m betting on #2 (The Bull Case), planning using #3 (The Rational-Positive Case), and advising startups to extend the cash they do have at least another 6 months.

SaaS 333

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 333

FastSpring

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

Since 2016, SaaS North has been recognized as THE Canadian hub for rapidly-scaling SaaS founders and their teams. It is the largest in-person event in the country—2,000+ attendees, 800+ companies, and 100+ speakers—along with features such as Betakit Keynote Stage, AWS Pitchfest, Workspaces Tradeshow.

Merchant Services 135

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payment Services 135

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2022

And inflation is awful. And startups that had planned on a big up round this year are in many cases, really struggling. . — 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 284

Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scale 284

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Innovative startups. The first army are innovative startups. 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.

Software Review 224

Software Review Outsourcing Services Software Outsourced Development 224

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Call me when it scales.” Starting a new company is always hard and most SaaS startups never get to $1-2 million in ARR. The point is that getting to $1-2 million in ARR probably has less predictive value concerning a company’s ability to get to true scale than most people think – or at least thought some years ago.

Scale 192

Scale Scaling SaaS AWS 192

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. But not making the hire at all is pretty awful, too. But don’t let 6 months go by if you’re trying to get from Initial Traction to Initial Scale without making your critical management team hires. It’s true.

Sales Hiring 272

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 272

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 12, 2021

This post is an adaptation of a talk I recently gave at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) community day event in Dublin about the technical strategies I’ve experienced that don’t work and the ones that have helped us to grow and scale at Intercom. Day one of your startup is probably not the time to be learning Kubernetes.

Technical Review 269

Technical Review Scale multi-cloud Kubernetes Scaling 269

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

Rich Archbold , Senior Director of Engineering, has been at the forefront of codifying and scaling this philosophy over the past few years. Our chat covers the origins of Run Less Software, how it has evolved at scale, and how it differs from the equally valid approaches of other engineering teams. What it means to Run Less Software.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

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 90

Development Technical Review AI AWS 90

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

What will fill the void left by the business you worked hard to build, scale, and sell? 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. Related posts: How to Prepare Your Startup for Acquisition.

Startup 52

Startup Acquisition SaaS Scale 52

Chart Mogul

MARCH 2, 2021

What will fill the void left by the business you worked hard to build, scale, and sell? 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. Related posts: How to Prepare Your Startup for Acquisition.

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. The foundation of our operational health is availability.

Software Review 118

Software Review Technical Review Management Systems Review 118

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 31, 2019

The scale is extraordinary. 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. There are about 3.2

Payment Solutions 259

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Software SaaS Payments 259

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

Folks with bigger investor wallets may be OK with this, but when I’ve invested in SaaS startups at the late seed-stage who just have too high a burn rate … it never works out. This is sort of awful. They never catch up. Their CACs or cost structures are just too high. I don’t want to be that. It takes its toll.

Sales Recruiting 336

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 336

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 1, 2018

The EU was kind enough to provide a stress test for our email delivery pipeline during the GDPR surge on a scale that I doubt our engineering team as a whole would have agreed to, and we passed. A little context first: here at Intercom we have one of the largest databases in the AWS Cloud. We scaled up considerably.

Scale 204

Scale Engineering AWS Scaling 204

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

While the data ends here, here’s what I can tell you I am seeing in growth rounds today: Very few growth rounds are happening at all When the do happen, they are for capital efficient startups growing > 50% at scale And … the peak valuation is about 15x. Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds.

Venture Capital 58

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 58

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 24, 2018

I joined intercom remotely two years ago as the first person in Sydney, and since then we have scaled the APAC team (lovingly referred to as the APAC Alliance) to almost 20 people across 4 countries. Due to our rapid growth, we needed to scale the team remotely before opening an office.

Sales Hiring 149

Sales Hiring Company Culture Scale Customer Support 149

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

AWS has decreased prices for EC2, elastic compute cloud, and S3, simple storage service, 42 times in eight years. The first manifestation of large scale, near-free compute I’ve seen is in machine learning. Cloud computing prices are hurtling to zero. Storage is following a similar path.

Innovation 100

Innovation Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Scale 100

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. We talked about growth.

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

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.

Scale 184

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 184

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. You must build a lean, impactful team to help your business scale.

Scale 173

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 173

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