Kellblog

FEBRUARY 28, 2021

I’ve also embedded it here: Dave Kellogg on SaaShimi Discussing Differences between Private Equity and Venture Capital. If you missed it and/or you’re other interested, on my prior appearance we did a pretty darn comprehensive overview of SaaS metrics, available here on Apple podcasts and here on Spotify.

Venture Capital 75

Venture Capital Technical Review Metrics SaaS 75

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2023

Sometimes you can offer flexible payment terms to customers, but then finance part of the future payments to recover the CAC upfront and be able to redeploy the cash in the future. If you need to raise venture capital, preparation is important, both in terms of process and in terms of expectation alignment.

SaaS Payments 198

SaaS Payments Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 198

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2022

But, over the years as both a founder and a start-up exec, I have raised over $40m in Venture Capital across 4 successful start-ups. And 100 of those 110 were for just one tough Series C financing. This “Gap financing” — it’s especially important in SaaS, because SaaS doesn’t explode, it compounds.

Venture Capital 222

Venture Capital Technical Review Finance Investment 222

Chart Mogul

AUGUST 15, 2019

Revenue-based financing is quickly becoming a popular way for startups to raise funds without sacrificing equity. This is a guest post by Brian Parks, Managing Partner at Bigfoot Capital. New investment structures are gaining traction in the early-stage SaaS financing market. A high-level look at Revenue-based financing (RBF).

Finance 85

Finance Payments Revenue Payment Solutions 85

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2020

We’re going to do something a little different here, and both catch up on the state of Equality in Venture Capital and Cloud, and also revisit Aileen’s classic pieces in TechCrunch that kicked off the age of the Unicorn. We’ll do a deep dive into the latest metrics on what it takes to build something iconic.

Trends 216

Trends Venture Capital Scale PayPal 216

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 8, 2019

Finance, like many other industries, and many software segments, sells a commodity. First, they focused on handful of key metrics. In many SaaS categories as well as in venture capital, this idea is absolutely true. And that starts with a focus on metrics and hiring the right people. That’s the key.

Strategy 225

Strategy Venture Capital Banking Software Review 225

Chart Mogul

AUGUST 15, 2019

Revenue-based financing is quickly becoming a popular way for startups to raise funds without sacrificing equity. This is a guest post by Brian Parks, Managing Partner at Bigfoot Capital. New investment structures are gaining traction in the early-stage SaaS financing market. A high-level look at Revenue-based financing (RBF).

Finance 52

Finance Payments Revenue Payment Solutions 52

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 21, 2017

Venture capitalists have financed many of those businesses. Those venture dollars have financed a panoply of competition. Salesforce for Sales, Workday for HR & Finance, ServiceNow for Operations, Atlassian for Engineering and so on. I’m using SaaS seed rounds as a proxy metric.

SaaS 187

SaaS Venture Capital Finance Machine Learning 187

SaaStr

JUNE 30, 2023

You need to parse through the vanity metrics and figure out what will endure. When I look at the purpose of venture capital, it’s not to burn a dollar five in order to grow a dollar of revenue,” says Magnuson. If you’re chasing around shiny things that pop up every six months, you’ll run out of energy and financing.

Scale 189

Scale Mobile Venture Capital Scaling 189

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 12, 2017

Reverting to the original question, when should a profitable company raise capital, if ever? The answer is the same for all businesses regardless of financing history: Raise capital when you are confident that you can use it to attain a higher growth rate and the higher growth rate is worth a trade-off in dilution.

Sales Hiring 201

Sales Hiring Venture Capital Startup Finance 201

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 12, 2014

WorkDay financed this huge investment by coupling long-term, near-million-dollar agreements and nearly $200M in venture capital. In dollars, WorkDay $30M on research & development on revenues of $25.2M

Benchmarks 110

Benchmarks Deferred Revenue Venture Capital Outsourced Development 110

Kellblog

AUGUST 21, 2022

When you make a list of key SaaS metrics, you’ll rarely find age listed among them. Bootstraps , which are capital constrained and grow more slowly. Bootstraps should largely ignore the rule (unless they plan on changing their financing strategy) because they are definitionally not trying to impress venture capitalists [7].

Venture Capital 118

Venture Capital Retention Finance Scaling 118

OPEXEngine

JANUARY 25, 2022

Against this backdrop, every SaaS company would be well-served to consider three things as they plot their path to public capitalization: speed to market, the cost of its finance team’s capitalization efforts, and investment scrutiny. Speed to Market. The Cost Associated with that Time. Article Sources: .

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital Cybersecurity Forecasting Finance 52

Baremetrics

AUGUST 23, 2021

Now, we use bootstrapping to describe the not quite impossible task of building your business without financing. If you choose not to finance your business by selling part of it to venture capitalists, and you also do not want or cannot secure a loan, then you are left with bootstrapping. What are the bootstrapping stages?

Business 96

Business Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 96

Baremetrics

APRIL 27, 2021

The urgency to execute is particularly true for making financing decisions. At Bigfoot Capital , we fund early-stage SaaS companies. Followed by the first institutional equity (seed) and initial institutional debt , this may just turn into growth-stage venture capital or private equity. Let’s Recap.

Startup 71

Startup Sales Hiring Venture Capital SaaS 71

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 4, 2023

Given the shifting landscape, it’s helpful for you as a CEO and/or founder—or for your finance and capital markets teams, if you have those hires to help you through this process—to know who the key players are at each stage so you can spend your time and energy speaking to the right firms. small business loans for their customers).

Outsourcing Services 122

Outsourcing Services Software Review Scale Banking 122

User Pilot

JUNE 13, 2022

We covered the best blogs on SaaS growth, product marketing , UX analytics, venture capital, and sales. The Brad Feld blog is one of the best venture capital blogs dedicated to entrepreneurs and investors. Chaotic flow blog focuses on SaaS marketing, SaaS sales, SaaS metrics, and cloud computing. Venture capital.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital SaaS Data Scale 52

The Angel VC

JUNE 9, 2013

Example for a Geckoboard KPI dashboard Last week I spent a day in Stockholm to attend a metrics seminar organized by our friends at Creandum. I did a talk about SaaS metrics (I'll post the slides shortly), and in the Q&A session Andreas Ehn asked a really good question: "As a VC, what are the most important KPIs for yourself ?"

Venture Capital 158

Venture Capital Investment Metrics Finance 158

Chart Mogul

JUNE 8, 2018

On what it takes for SaaS startups to get venture capital funding today. “If you want to raise capital from a VC fund then it only makes sense if you really have the ambition and a very strong desire to do something really really big.” On increasing transparency in venture capital. Let’s dive in!

Venture Capital 84

Venture Capital Software Review Scale Startup 84

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2019

It had just raised three million dollars at a 12 million dollar valuation from a venture capital firm and it had just secured a two million dollar secured credit facility from a commercial bank that the venture capital firm had introduced Power Drive to. A pretty steady Eddie company with venture financing.

Startup 109

Startup Venture Capital Banking Scale 109

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

In many ways, 2022 (Q2-ish) marked the end of the glory days and we entered the “SaaS slump” We saw new business plummet and an 82% year-over-year drop in venture capital investment in 2022. Key metrics to measure SaaS growth efficiency Almost every aspect of go-to-market strategies can be measured with some set of metrics.

AI Search 52

AI Search Benchmarks Venture Capital AI 52

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

In the business world, the term generally refers to: “Financing and growing your business without the need for external assistance in the form of capital investment.” The growing divide between SaaS and venture capital. I’m using SaaS seed rounds as a proxy metric. So what’s the deal?

Venture Capital 77

Venture Capital Startup SaaS Travel 77

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

You’re investing resources in hiring and training the right people, tracking different metrics at different stages, adding more and more complexity with each increase in headcount, use cases, and customers. When it comes to metrics, too many support teams are looking at agent and internal effort scores instead of customer effort scores.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

Kellblog

DECEMBER 27, 2021

Net dollar retention becomes the top SaaS metric. Flood of venture capital (VC). The combination of Covid accelerating digital transformation and unprecedented VC financing has accelerated software company growth (aka, the Covid boost ). Venture capital continues to flow. High-growth.

Blockchain 142

Blockchain Technical Review Venture Capital Sales Hiring 142

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

What I’m going to do is talk a little bit about what we’ve seen over the course of the last year and then also talk about some metrics we track or we encourage our founders to track as they’re building their businesses, and then, lastly, try to go through a few predictions for the next couple of years.

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

Finance types on the board might view these as simple canapes served before the meal. The first slide is focused on the ARR leaky bucket, metrics derived from ARR, and ARR-related product.ivity measures. Slide 1: The Leaky Bucket of ARR and Related Metrics. A laundry list of goals. OKRs are great. Expansion ARR as % of new ARR.

Technical Review 116

Technical Review Software Review Forecasting Churn 116

Kellblog

MAY 29, 2021

Someone who pushes for standard metrics and templates. This is not primarily because I like metrics, but because it is human nature to cherry-pick metrics and the only way I know to prevent such cherry-picking is to design standard, holistic templates and use them at every meeting.

Sales Hiring 128

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting Government 128

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2020

For example Founders Fund, I don’t think we changed our criteria at all, but I felt like maybe we were on the 20th percentile in terms of conservatism on some of these metrics. But we’ll still put up two backs even with COVID, which by most metrics that’s a pretty good year. Does venture capital even need to bother?

Investment 155

Investment Scale Travel Venture Capital 155

Point Nine Land

MARCH 7, 2019

Lemkin recently posted a tweetstorm about his observation that most startups are bad at finance. As you’d expect from Jason, he didn’t try to sugarcoat things: A top trend I have noticed past 3 years: Startups are MUCH, MUCH worse at finance. No proper finance or account until even after raising millions, even to $5m+ ARR.

Sales Hiring 72

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Payment Services Finance 72

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2019

And the very first thing that I did, like any neurotic person is I Googled corporate venture capital. Big companies, CVCs, they can get creative with financing, so generally don’t lead rounds. But generally a big company or a corporate venture fund won’t lead a round. That’s how much I knew about it.

Development Team Review 130

Development Team Review Scale Technical Review Software Review 130

Kellblog

JANUARY 23, 2022

People who typically majored in economics or finance (sometimes CS), worked for 2 to 4 years in management consulting or at a tech firm, attended a top business school, joined a VC firm as an associate, and then worked (usually hard and against the odds) their way up to partner. Finance executives.

Compensation 124

Compensation Entrepreneurship Finance Startup 124

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

For example, HR and finance SaaS vendor Workday bought Scout RFP (a San Francisco startup with a team of 8) for $540 million. Each seller provides key metrics to give buyers an accurate idea about the sustainability of their business. Tiny Capital. Tiny Capital is a different breed in the micro acquisition space.

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Payment Methods Acquisition Development Team Review 144

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

In order to execute on this mission, founders can bootstrap their company, raise outside money ( venture capital is the most popular), or use a combination of both to help build their business. While there are various metrics and KPIs they will be tracking, there’s one underlying theme — growth. “ Go Find Your Unicorn.

Outsourcing Services 78

Outsourcing Services Scale Startup Outsourced Development 78

Kellblog

AUGUST 1, 2019

In startups that are largely driven by short-term, sales-oriented metrics, there will always be the temptation to take a high-risk deal today, live to fight another day, and hope that someone can make it work before it renews. They wreck your SaaS metrics and put future financings in danger.

Churn 75

Churn Systems Review Customer Success Software Review 75

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

And then with your finance person or yourself or your outsourced person, you build a C-90 plan, which is one, we’re 90% sure, even if sales slow, we’re going to hit this plan. Where am I going to wire out half of my 8 million a venture capital? More likely than not, but barely. I don’t know. Never came back.

Outsourcing Services 179

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 179

Kellblog

JULY 25, 2020

Finally, to come back to valuation multiples, let’s look at a metric that’s new to me, growth-adjusted EV/R multiples. This is a cool metric. I like financial metrics that normalize things, built in [11]. but as investor I like compound metrics as much as the next person. growth-adjusted EV/R ratio.

Technical Review 95

Technical Review Software Review Pricing Metrics 95

BetterCloud

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

The key is regularly showing IT’s impact on the metrics that matter to the business, including business generated, improved time to market, and realized revenue. As a CIO at a venture capital firm, Uy is always thinking about how to help his firm’s startups find more cloud-first IT talent.

Venture Capital 40

Venture Capital Cloud Cloud Engineering Finance 40