SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2023

2022 was a year of dealing with the fallout of fallen unicorns, terrible deals, and slashed valuations. It’s Year 2 of the Venture Downturn in SaaS. Outside of a few crazy outliers, no one really wants to believe in the Series A or later stages that a start-up can grow into an outsized valuation. A reality has set in.

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Startup SaaS Investment Marketing 310

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2023

G2 had us back for another great deep dive on just where SaaS investing is there days, and it was a great panel: Accel Partner Arun Mathew Inspired Capital Founder & Managing Partner Alexa von Tobel Salesforce Ventures Managing Partner Paul Drews and Jason Lemkin! It will be crucial to strike the right valuation balance.

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B2B Investment Venture Capital Scale 215

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

But overall, valuations and prices post-Series A still remain way ahead of where they were up until 2018. Even though things are down, SaaS overall and valuations are still much, much stronger than anytime before 2019. Fenwick’s data on valuation increases going all the way back to 2005 illustrates that: #4.

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Pricing Social Media B2C Startup 305

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

In the ever-evolving landscape of SaaS, Venture Capital, Bootstrapping, and Valuations – understanding market trends and investment patterns is critical. We’ll explain Jason’s take on the recent market fluctuations, highlighting major deals that shaped investment patterns and their effects on valuation trends.

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Venture Capital Scale Technical Review Software Review 212

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2023

Recently caught up with a great founder coming up on $40m ARR, but it had been a slog They raised a round at $100m valuation years back but weren’t about to raise again Their #1 competitor raised at $2.1B. One is how certain startups will just “grow into their valuations”. They’ve grown into their $1B valuation from 4+ years ago.

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Banking Startup Acquisition Pricing 244

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

And one of the most confusing thing is that: Many of the best SaaS and Cloud companies. No, what’s happened is a realization that at least in today’s climate, if you raised at a huge valuation — the next round just isn’t going to come. And that’s a huge change. That are growing really quickly and. doing layoffs. Axios: U.S.

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Startup Banking Cloud B2B 305

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

By the end of the year, valuation multiples for Cloud companies hadn’t just fallen below the 10-year trailing average but below the pre-pandemic long-term average we were used to seeing. While that deal has yet to close, it demonstrates that best-in-class Cloud companies can derive a valuation premium, even in an extremely tough environment.

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Cloud Payments Software Review Payment Solutions 245

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2022

So we’re in the 5th or so “SaaS crash” since I’ve been doing SaaS. This one is the worst, not because SaaS companies aren’t’ doing well. Not because valuations are terrible. Everyone was a genius in SaaS for a while. Ok, now things have changed, at least for now. No, they are doing better than ever.

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Venture Capital Cloud Startup SaaS 362

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

And one of my themes was that while the markets are down, I mean way down — the best in SaaS are still growing at jaw-dropping rates. But for the most part, there is no slowdown in the leaders of SaaS. There literally has never been a better time to sell a SaaS product. It really means a lot. Multiples are down.

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SMB SaaS Cloud Scaling 350

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Lower interest rates lead to SaaS multiple reflation, likely during 2H’24 It’s not clear how truly tight the link is between interest rates and SaaS multiples, but the overall correlation is clear. Lower inflation and the fed lowering interest rates should lead to an expansion of SaaS multiples. It’s just math.

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Scale SaaS AI Innovation 254

SaaStr

JANUARY 1, 2023

To many of you, it may feel like tougher times in SaaS. So this last year was one of so much change. Change at a pace we haven’t seen since 2008, when the world of SaaS was just so, so much smaller. Just 12 months ago, Bitcoin was at near-highs, as were many SaaS stocks, and multiples. But they do bounce back fast.

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Trends Enterprise SaaS Software 273

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 21, 2022

2022’s impact on the SaaS industry was significant, deeply impactful, and turbulent. Amidst this year of transformative change, what was top of mind for B2B technology leaders in 2022? Few metrics yield as much insight and impact on a company’s valuation as Net Dollar Retention (NDR). Leaders From Involve.ai Read Article.

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Customer Success Churn Subscription Payment Features 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

So we’ve talked about it often here at SaaStr, but things are just so … odd right now in SaaS. It’s still close to the best times ever in SaaS for growth and customers, even with mixed signals in the economy. Valuations are down a stunning 75% from their peak last year. But only up to a point.

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AWS Venture Capital Azure Cloud 305

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2022

VC remains open — at least for deals < $1B valuation. You need to be growing fast at $20m ARR for a growth deal (100%+), but if you are, deals are and will still be getting done routinely at <$1B valuations. Unicorn rounds are tougher today — there just isn’t as much room to grow your valuation at $1B+.

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SaaS Enterprise Startup Investment 252

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Go-to-Market matters because sales and marketing spend remain the biggest proportion of SaaS spend, so honing in on that spend to build an engine and drive growth is paramount. That’s a big change, and they can do it by building the first incentive compensation plan that includes variable compensation for specific goals.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 231

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2023

Unicorns were minted daily and weekly, and valuations were sky high. I’d roughly summarize as follows: Successful seed investors are planning to invest as usual, just looking for lower valuations. That will eventually change. And to take advantage of today’s lower valuations and multiples. More on that here.

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Investment Scaling SaaS Marketing 275

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2023

As SaaS founders are looking to scale and raise funding, it can be confusing and stressful to navigate in the uncertain market of the past few years. Valuations have dropped, and investors are more selective with their capital. In the SaaS space, revenue growth was the king of metrics for many years, but that has changed.

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Scale Scaling Software Review Operational efficiency. 216

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 23, 2021

2021: (Another) Year Of Accelerated Change. 2021 was another year of radical and accelerated change for Customer Success (CS) and the business world as a whole. While these trends began to take shape in 2020, they were forced into hyperdrive this year and created a new normal for the SaaS world. . Read Article.

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Customer Success Scale Leadership Retention 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2021

How Founders Should Think About Fundraising & Valuation in Today’s Market. Today’s SaaS market seems larger and more unpredictable than in previous years. So how should founders approach valuation and fundraising? . Instead, he attributes the high valuations to an influx of cash and a finite number of investments.

Cloud 254

Cloud Investment Scaling SaaS 254

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Many of the fundamental business models that were once engraved in the SaaS playbook are now changing thanks to a tougher macro environment and a maturing market. PST, Stephanie Opdam, Partner at Notion Capital, shares four business model changes that will allow SaaS companies to build resilience and staying power over time.

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Business Model SaaS Payments Payments Headcount 247

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2022

Especially now in 2022, when venture capital again is scarcer, and more expensive, and far harder to close than it was during the go-go times for SaaS of 2021 and late 2020. Valuations change from round to round. We can stop there, but it gets more helpful to think about the types of potential exits, especially in SaaS.

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Venture Capital Acquisition AI Pricing 355

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 17, 2022

ML propels SaaS into a massive second wave that increases workers’ productivity measurably. Machine learning models predict code, synthesize images, author blog posts reducing composition time by a factor of 2 or 3. Users grow accustomed to this very quickly & ML becomes a requisite feature in most workflow SaaS.

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Software Review Technical Review Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 259

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2022

So now is an odd time for SaaS startups: The best are growing faster than ever. They have a lot to invest and valuations only change so much as seed. Later stage VC funds and funds holding public shares have often seen their own valuations cut 30%-50% in the past few months. customers are buying more SaaS than ever.

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Venture Capital Investment Startup Pricing 231

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2022

With no end in sight to the economic uncertainty, VC investment could remain soft, with downward pressure on valuations resulting in decreasing levels of investment. Many venture investors are currently sitting on overvalued investments and don’t see a path for their portfolio companies to grow into the last round valuation.”.

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Venture Capital Marketing Startup Construction 203

SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2022

So the story of the past few years has been the explosion of SaaS and Cloud unicorns. With upwards of 400 SaaS and Cloud startups now valued at $1B+ now (out of 1,200+ total Unicorns), times are good. With the fall in valuations, it’s just a lot harder to be a decacorn. Just bear in mind how things have changed.

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SaaS Cloud Investment Startup 179

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2022

The industry has been turned on its head, as we went from private 100x ARR deals in 2021 to public SaaS companies trading at 5x ARR on average in 2H’22 and with multiples at all-time lows for the past 6 years. That’s massive change. Smaller seed rounds though are still happening, even if valuations may be down.

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Startup Cloud Growth Marketing SaaS 240

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2022

So everything changed in SaaS in February and March. It hit hard, with Nasdaq falling another 15%, and private valuations perhaps 20%. And with that, a lot has changed in the venture capital markets, even early stage. The change is still being figured out. But later stage investing has clearly changed.

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Venture Capital Cloud Investment Startup 268

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2023

Hypergrowth in today’s highly competitive and budget-constrained SaaS world may be less frequent now, but Vanta, the software tool empowering security companies to achieve compliance and manage risk, has defied the odds. With a multi-billion dollar valuation and a trajectory to double growth annually, Vanta is seizing the spotlight.

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Strategy Scale Sales Hiring Startup 210

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2022

One only has to read Twitter or any VC blog post to know that things have changed in the funding environment. In the best-case scenario, you might have to raise at a much lower valuation that you’d like. There may or may not be an extended funding winter in the coming months, but it’s clear that something is going on right now.

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Scale Management Metrics Startup 231

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Are SaaS Companies Generally Worth When They Are Acquired? A lot has changed over the years, and every situation is different. But some rough yardsticks: A slow growing, small (< $10m ARR) SaaS company is probably worth 2x-3x ARR (annual revenue reun-rate). This is roughly true in any market, good or bad.

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SaaS Pricing Revenue Sales 200

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2023

With the BVP Cloud Index down 40%+ from a year ago , and many of the top Cloud leaders trading for as low as 5x ARR, it’s just hard to justify a later stage $300m-$400m valuation round these days, let alone a true unicorn round. A great deep dive on later-stage SaaS investing here: And look venture is a mess today.

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AWS Venture Capital Finance Cloud 302

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin and Partner at QED Investors Amias Gerety chat on the Fintech Beat podstream about all things SaaS, money, and what makes a great founder. What Makes SaaS So Great If you’re here on SaaStr reading this, you don’t need to be told why SaaS is so great. Let’s dive right in. It took a while.

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Sales Hiring Headcount Finance Technical Review 225

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2022

These are Strange Times Indeed in SaaS and Cloud. The best SaaS companies from Datadog to Snowflake to HubSpot to Salesforce are growing faster than ever, even past $1B or more in ARR. And yet, the stock market has taken a big tumble, leading among other things to dramatic change in the VC ecosystem. They may be panicking a bit.

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Finance Startup Cloud Communication 261

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2021

Battery Ventures recently put out its Software 2021 report with a ton of interesting learnings across the leaders in SaaS and Cloud. Revenue growth slowed in 2020 for the average public SaaS company — but accelerated for the largest ones. The top SaaS companies are all at $400k+ in revenue per employee. ” #2.

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Investment SMB Acquisition Cloud 238

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2022

So are we in a downturn in SaaS? But where is SaaS are we really today? Alteryx, a leading public SaaS ETL company, announced it was growing 33% at $730m in ARR! And even SaaS and Cloud leaders that come up a tiny bit short of Wall Street’s lofty expectations are in many cases still doing incredibly well.

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Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scale 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

In part one of this week’s Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, he answered the community’s questions about whether all anyone cares about is AI anymore, investor appetites going into 2024, vertical SaaS, and thriving as a solo founder. The multiples fell off a cliff in 2022 for SaaS and remained crummy in 2023.

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Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success AI 229

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2022

So there’s much angst and even panic with so many SaaS and Cloud public stocks down 50% or more from their peaks. And it is stressful, especially if you invested at those peaks or as founders raised money at relatively high valuations and multiples. Will things get worse for SaaS products themselves on a day-to-day basis?

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Cloud Azure AWS Engineering 248