SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2023

Dear SaaStr: I’m an Early Employee and Have a Chance to Sell Some of My Startup Shares. Note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer) The post Dear SaaStr: I’m an Early Employee and Have a Chance to Sell Some of My Startup Shares. Congratulations on the change for some liquidity. It’s both exciting — and confusing.

Startup 203

Startup AWS Pricing Marketing 203

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

" Here’s another insight : Google’s cloud is more expensive for customers than others : " One of the reasons why GCP is not as big as just so much more expensive for our customers to operate in GCP than it is in AWS and Azure. And as a result, our salespeople are really not inclined to do much in GCP.”

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 129

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure Data Startup 129

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 192

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 192

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. Team expertise.

K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) 52

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

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. Pursuing Two Different Segments: The Tale of Startups vs. Enterprise From a marketing perspective, the GTM marketing position and product market messaging differ between Google Workspace and Google Cloud.

Cloud 221

Cloud Scale AWS AI 221

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

They are overall benefitting here from the growth in Cloud and security budgets, even if smaller companies and startups and scaleups are struggling more. AWS alone generated $175m of contract value for Okta, growing 130%. Way, way too many startups focus 100% on direct sales. Their multi-million dollar contracts are 30%. #5.

Fractional VPE 200

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 200

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2023

I’m using Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive), AWS , Vercel , Slack , Figma , Notion , Salesforce , HubSpot , Secureframe , Clari , and Zapier. #2. Last week we had a great one with Luca Penati, CMO & CCO of BEE, check it out here. This week we have Shrav Mehta, Founder and CEO of Secureframe! #1. What’s your core stack of apps today?

AWS 212

AWS compliance AI Startup 212

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Some of the brightest minds in data founded MotherDuck including BigQuery founding engineer Jordan Tigani & a broader team from Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, Meta, Elastic & Firebolt, among others. Because of these advantages, MotherDuck is the best place for startups to build their first Modern Data Stack.

Cloud 318

Cloud AWS Data Analysis Benchmarks 318

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2023

AWS re:Invent : AWS re:Invent is Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) annual conference, focused on cloud computing and SaaS-related services. The event brings together developers, architects, and IT professionals to explore the latest AWS developments.

ChatGPT 207

ChatGPT AWS SaaS CTO 207

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. Products that are as close to an annuity as possible, that are amenable to efficiency gains. So what do they pay on average? The prices would be lower today for the latter two I suspect.

AWS 231

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 231

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 225

AWS Cloud Trends Startup 225

Tom Tunguz

JULY 19, 2022

Here’s my mental model: Imagine a startup that sells sports cards. We swapped the transaction database from PostGres to a blockchain like Ethereum or Sui , and the file storage from AWS S3 to a decentralized storage provider, perhaps Filecoin or ArWeave. What is the difference between web2 & web3, really?

Blockchain 280

Blockchain AWS Engineering Startup 280

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 25, 2023

For startups building LLM-based applications & infrastructure, this alters the calculus of selecting a cloud. Five years ago, many startups defaulted to AWS for the generous credits, broad catalog, & rapid pace of innovation. Cloud infrastructure players are picking teams within the infrastructure layer.

Artificial Intelligence 186

Artificial Intelligence AI AWS Cloud 186

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 25, 2022

We work exclusively with AWS as our cloud services provider and currently provide data hosting offerings in three different global regions – US, EU, and Australia – each architected across multiple availability zones for high availability. Our tooling allows for high availability. Discover other posts in the Intercom for Enterprise series.

Scaling 252

Scaling AWS Software Review Technical Review 252

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

MAY 31, 2019

The post Do startups ever have one founder with substantially more equity than the other founder(s)? They have done awfully well, too. Ditto for Slack, where the ratio seems to be about 2:1, plus an additional grant to the CEO: Other were certainly a classic 50/50 or similar split. Atlassian was, and they’ve done pretty well, too.

Startup 190

Startup AWS Investment SaaS 190

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 22, 2022

They will manage their own servers to reduce the $3m annual AWS bill by 60%. For a hypothetical startup, a 60% reduction in infrastructure costs boosts sales efficiency by 11% & net income margin by at least 12%. For many high-growth startups, the juicy 11% improvement in sales efficiency likely isn’t worth the squeeze.

Sales Hiring 222

Sales Hiring Cloud AWS Sales 222

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

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

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 355

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 355

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. The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. 5 Interesting Learnings from Duolingo at $360,000,000 in ARR.

Sales Recruiting 206

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 206

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. Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Why Now is a Great Time to Raise Seed Funding. Really, Really, Low.

Sales Recruiting 174

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring AWS 174

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Here’s an overview of the series: Part 1: How to Categorize Expenses in a SaaS Startup v2.0 Donut charts – while often frowned upon – are handy for quickly introducing your company’s expense breakdown. Use area charts for more detail.

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

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. And it’s one of the three large cloud vendors that we all know: Microsoft, AWS, and Google. Jabari Norton. Crowdstrike.

Scale 184

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 184

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 266

Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scale 266

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

From AWS to Vimeo: this year’s speaker lineup is packed with incredible speakers and content. The Secrets to YC’s Essential Startup Advice with Y Combinator’s Partner and CEO of YC’s Startup Accelerator, Michael Seibel. Check out the full detailed agenda here.

Scale 255

Scale AWS B2C SaaS 255

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. Marketplaces: AWS marketplace, Heroku marketplace, Salesforce marketplace. Here are my notes. Where to Start. But, there’s a tradeoff.

Scale 295

Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 295

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2024

Previously, Amit led marketing efforts at startups like Tact AI (1st AI Assistant for Sales backed by AWS, Microsoft, and Salesforce), HP Inc (next-gen computing) and Spire AI (Human Capital SaaS). 35:57) Advice for startups entering a market with established incumbents. (43:00)

AWS 79

AWS AI Advertising Finance 79

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Innovative startups. The first army are innovative startups. Understand the potential consequences of outsourcing to young startups. Young startups go out of business regularly and their security and reliability is often worse than more mature companies. Best in class Late-stage Startups (e.g. Mid-stage startups.

Software Review 224

Software Review Outsourcing Services Software Outsourced Development 224

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and even Google Cloud are on fire, adding insane amounts of revenue this year. 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. Customers are buying more than ever.

SaaS 319

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 319

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.

Trends 130

Trends Cloud Azure AWS 130

FastSpring

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

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. The conference is jam packed with networking opportunities too!

Merchant Services 126

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payment Services 126

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? I’m doing a lot of this financial planning now. And one thing I can tell you is I see a lot of different plans for next year even at fairly similar ARRs. Some are barely burning any cash. So is SaaS cursed?

Scale 275

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 275

Chart Mogul

MARCH 2, 2021

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. What do investors look for in a SaaS startup? You’re hot stuff.

Startup 52

Startup Acquisition SaaS Scale 52

Chart Mogul

MARCH 2, 2021

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. What do investors look for in a SaaS startup? You’re hot stuff.

Startup 52

Startup Acquisition SaaS Scale 52

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

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 18, 2019

The direct listing becomes the standard way for startups to go public in 2020. Most startups at IPO have plenty of cash and don't need to raise more in the public markets. Most startups will be distributed (have several offices) before they reach 50 employees. Here are my 5 predictions for 2020. Distributed becomes the norm.

Blockchain 138

Blockchain AWS Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 138