Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. After the cloud giants reported this week, the timing of the presumed re-acceleration is very much in question. Staggering scale already. At the same time - Google Cloud also massively decelerated from 28% last quarter to 22% this quarter.

Cost optimization & reporting 152

Cost optimization & reporting Cloud Azure AWS 152

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

Overall, the BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index is up 22.97% this year. I went further and put together a quick list of 25+ SaaS and Cloud leaders to see how their share prices are doing. On average, their share prices are up a stunning 68.50% and they are worth on average $26 Billion! But not everyone. Not by far.

Cloud 246

Cloud Scale SaaS Pricing 246

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 19, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Subscribe now The Bar For Going Public There’s a lot of talk recently about “are IPO markets open” or “what scale do I need to get public.” The answer is they may, but just at a different price / valuation.

Cloud 177

Cloud Scale Compensation Metrics 177

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

Jessica Alexander, Senior Director Cloud Technology & OEM Partnerships, Crowdstrike. This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. But with cloud computing spend, it’s concentrated typically with one primary vendor. Rico Mallozzi, Sr.

Scale 204

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 204

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

We’re so many years into the Cloud, and here we are at hundreds of billions in annual Cloud spend and growing at 6x over eight years. There are advantages beyond higher pricing, with higher pricing being the smallest advantage. But when they pulled it open, only 20% of the lift was explained by higher pricing.

Scale 234

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 234

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 5, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. They’ve shown they can hit escape velocity, at scale, with profitability. My point of this post is simply to point out some of the challenges that arise from a hype round at an “at scale” valuation. This list goes on.

Cloud 161

Cloud Scale Revenue Pricing 161

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

Q4 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. This has all resulted in the median stock price declining 5% YTD. We then dipped below the trendline as we hit the period of “cloud optimizations,” and things have started to rebound. What’s going on with rates (the 10Y has gone from 3.9%

Cloud 177

Cloud Software Azure AWS 177

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2022

Scale-ups are exciting. Scaling to satisfy customers’ demands depends on innovation and foresight combined with enterprise-ready technology and the right partners. On top of considerable dedication, creating a scale-up requires a functional edge—a unique and unreplicable capability compared to the players in the industry.

Scale 228

Scale Scaling Marketplace as a Service Entrepreneurship 228

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. But this is changing - many categories are becoming commoditized leading to massive pricing pressure. Subscribe now Share Clouded Judgement Leave a comment Follow along to stay up to date! Buyers are also experimenting on vendors.

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 21, 2023

Q3 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. Commentary from the cloud providers seems to be that the major macro headwinds around optimizations and new deal scrutiny have started to abate. ” 3 months later, what happened to those green shoots? So we’d expect the YoY growth rate to pick up in Q3 ‘23.

Cloud 177

Cloud Software Benchmarks Retention 177

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2024

So we’ve probably covered HubSpot more than any other SaaS and Cloud leader on this 5 Interesting Learnings series, but there’s a good reason for it: First, HubSpot is a lot like most of us. Despite raising prices and selling more products, HubSpot ACV is basically flat at $11,365. And second, so many of us use HubSpot.

Scale 244

Scale Cloud Scaling Pricing 244

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2024

They’re still transitioning from onprem / appliciance model to cloud, which makes some of the metrics a touch confusing. New Customers Still Growing 22% at Scale. For me, Net New Customer Count has become the metric I obsess the most about at scale. Since then, we’ve had just one — Klaviyo.

Scale 230

Scale Pricing Scaling Cloud 230

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

The Cloud is expanding and moving forward at a phenomenal rate, so we invited the team at Bessemer Venture Partners back to SaaStr to unveil their latest findings in the 2021 State of the Cloud. Is Cloud growth sustainable for the long term? Is Cloud growth sustainable for the long term? Hello Unicorns . trillion.

Cloud 193

Cloud Scale Payment Methods Payment Solutions 193

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Mark Roberge , SaaStr fan-favorite and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital brought together some of the top CROs in SaaS during the SaaStr Annual to share some of their greatest learnings and pivotal moments leading some of the Cloud 100 SaaS companies. It’s better to find the best ICP to get to $5M-$10M and scale from there.

Scale 230

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 230

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2024

Usually more scale-ups, at $20m+ ARR or later. And one way or another, they all made about $800,000 a year working at big, public SaaS / Cloud companies as senior but still mid-level managers. If the stock price is flat, but the cash flow is strong (many are very profitable today), they know for the best, they have to pay up in cash.

Scale 227

Scale Cloud Startup Pricing 227

Clouded Judgement

JULY 21, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Let’s look at Salesforce - they may be in maturity mode in their core CRM business, but they also have marketing, commerce and data cloud products that are not in maturity mode. Follow along to stay up to date! ” Quite the claim!

Cloud 130

Cloud Software Sales Hiring Scale 130

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 11, 2024

A lot of big customers want to have open file formats to give them the options…So data interoperability is very much a thing and our AI products can generally act on data that is sitting in cloud storage as well. It also ushers in an epoch where the query engines will compete for different workloads with price & performance.

AI 276

AI Engineering Cloud Trends 276

How To Buy Saas

MAY 15, 2024

In today’s world, cloud computing has become very popular among businesses of all sizes because of its effective tech services. Cloud computing services have helped businesses conveniently access and utilize tools to perform different tasks. You can get them all through cloud computing. Ensure cloud security and compliance.

DevOps as a Service 52

DevOps as a Service Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS 52

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

Q2 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. As you can see from the data below most cloud businesses beat the consensus estimates for Q2 Source: company filings and Pitchbook consensus estimates Historically, the median beat of consensus estimates is closer to ~4%. However, it’s still a fun data point to track.

Cloud 169

Cloud Software Benchmarks Retention 169

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2022

Cliff Bockard, Senior Vice President of Revenue at DigitalOcean, joined us at SaaStr Scale to discuss how businesses can serve SMBs and still bring in large numbers of revenue. . So, they’re not diluting their efforts by going towards the “hyperscaler enterprise customers” or “niche developer clouds.” Market understanding.

Scale 205

Scale Scaling Revenue Enterprise 205

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 12, 2023

Q4 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. As you can see from the data below most cloud businesses beat the consensus estimates for Q4. This quarter more than half of cloud software businesses missed next quarters consensus. They do this to set themselves up to consistently beat estimates, demonstrating momentum.

Cloud 161

Cloud Software Benchmarks Retention 161

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 13, 2021

You can watch a video of that talk below, or read on to learn how we built our Elasticsearch cloud on AWS. So we decided to do something contrary to our engineering principles – run our search infrastructure ourselves on Elastic Compute Cloud hosts, or EC2 as it’s known. Core part of Intercom. cluster.routing.allocation.exclude._ip"

AWS 249

AWS Cloud Software Review Systems Review 249

User Pilot

OCTOBER 24, 2023

From the messaging, positioning, and pricing models, every little detail needs to be perfect for product-led growth to take off. TL;DR Usage-based pricing is a consumption-based pricing model that charges customers based on how much they use a product (instead of at a flat monthly rate). What is usage-based pricing?

Pricing 91

Pricing Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payments 91

Clouded Judgement

JULY 14, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. My guess is there are quite a few private companies who have IPO scale (ie >$200m LTM revenue). Subscribe now Share Clouded Judgement Leave a comment Follow along to stay up to date! consensus) and 0.2% consensus) Core Inflation: 4.8%

Cloud 130

Cloud Metrics Scale Software 130

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

So is it possible to be too efficient in SaaS and Cloud? But at scale, even the slightly less long version of the tail is where the money is. Even small cloud customers worked to bring down their spend in 2023. #5. Almost All Customers Still from Self-Service This makes sense at these price points. Churn Stable.

Scale 229

Scale AWS Azure Cloud 229

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 20, 2023

Q1 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. The market is clearly pricing in lower rates + reacceleration of growth. As you can see from the data below most cloud businesses beat the consensus estimates for Q1. We’ll check back in next quarter to see if the market is right!

Cloud 161

Cloud Software Benchmarks Scale 161

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Introducing usage-based pricing requires a fundamental mindset shift away from securing cash up front and toward providing value so your customers consume more. The point of usage-based pricing is to create a great experience that encourages your customers to consume, but overages slow down that seamless adoption and usage experience.

Pricing 114

Pricing Scale Forecasting Compensation 114

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 20, 2022

Q3 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. As you can see from the data below most cloud businesses beat the consensus estimates for Q3. This quarter more than half of cloud software businesses missed next quarters consensus. They do this to set themselves up to consistently beat estimates, demonstrating momentum.

Cloud 130

Cloud Software Review Software Benchmarks 130

Blulogix

JANUARY 16, 2024

Understanding the Benefits of Usage-Based Pricing By BluLogix Team In the fast-paced and ever-changing world of modern business, the ability to adapt and be flexible is crucial for thriving. This is especially true in the realm of pricing models, where a one-size-fits-all approach often falls short.

Pricing 52

Pricing Scale Telecommunications Subscription 52

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2024

OK Gartner is NOT a SaaS or Cloud company. And its stock price is up +35% the last year, and +192% the past 5 years: 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. About 104% Effective NRR Gartner sees about -18% gross revenue churn, but price increases add +3% back, and additional research and purchases add +19%. And its very profitable.

Revenue 235

Revenue Enterprise Cloud Pricing 235

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2022

Was the “Covid Boost” in Cloud multiples just an anomoly? Put differently, if you look at multiples of revenue for top SaaS and Cloud companies above from 2014-2022, you could come to one of (at least) two conclusions today: Conclusion #1: Q2’20-Q4’22 Cloud Revenue Multiples Were a Covid Anomaly.

Scale 267

Scale SaaS Cloud Pricing 267

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

If you’re selling cloud infrastructure, for the most part, growth may be down a smidge but is still strong, e.g., MongoDB. On top of that, inflation and price increases are eating into overall IT budgets. Growth in public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Snowflake, etc.) So where does this all net out?

Merchant Services 267

Merchant Services Azure Software AWS 267

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2022

Atlassian has gone almost 100% Cloud since then, and has held up nicely in the overall public markets even as others have taken bigger hits. Never let it be said that SaaS can’t generate a lot of cash at scale. #3. 5%+ pricing increases help fuel growth. Should you have annual price increases in SaaS? They work. #8.

Scale 298

Scale Marketplace as a Service Headcount Cloud 298

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2024

So Elastic is the somewhat under-the-radar SaaS and Cloud leader that still almost everyone, at least for search. It send the stock price up 112% over the past 12 months! That’s a solid +60% logo growth at scale. Go ask your developer ? It’s quietly crossed $1.2 But it’s also gotten much more efficient.

ChatGPT 224

ChatGPT AI Search Scale Sales Hiring 224

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

And that challenge some of your assumptions on how to scale. This is trending to 50/50 now that Asana has crossed $400m in ARR, but still a reminder a self-serve motion combined with sales jumping on the bigger deals can scale very, very far. Word-of-mouth can scale forever. And it’s the true magic in scaling SMB SaaS.

Scale 350

Scale SMB SaaS Scaling 350

Baremetrics

AUGUST 8, 2021

For most, the easiest ways to increase customer acquisition rates are to offer a freemium model or price your product on the lower end of the spectrum. However, to keep your business afloat, you’ll need to effect a SaaS price increase. Ensures You Attract the Right Customers When Should You Increase Your Pricing?

Pricing 111

Pricing SaaS Scale Churn 111

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 16, 2023

On the other hand, enough uncertainty permeates the market to depress prices. Public software companies’ share prices have fallen 10% on average in the last 30 days dotted with positive notes like the stabilization cloud growth rates for Microsoft & Google.

Startup 179

Startup Scale Strategy Forecasting 179