Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Having spent the last few years studying this market, we observed two key drivers behind the adoption of this platform shift — one architectural, and the other organizational. More importantly, their unique product instinct and taste for what developers love has positioned them uniquely in the market.

Investment 100

Investment DevOps as a Service AI Search Application Development 100

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Will a VC Invest in a Venture That Is Or Can Be a Competitor To An Existing Investment? As a rough rule: the larger the check, the less likely a VC will invest in a direct competitor. You invest so early, sometimes it’s not totally even clear what the company will really do. And markets change.

Investment 182

Investment Marketing Business Leadership 182

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! Low investment multiples pose a key challenge.

B2B 197

B2B Investment Venture Capital Scale 197

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

But with that out of the way, let’s talk just enough about financial accounting to explain why Big Tech Companies both acquire smaller ones — and do corporate VC investment. Because in the short-term, it often costs basically close to nothing to acquire a smaller startup with cash on hand, or do a corporate VC investment.

Acquisition 216

Acquisition Investment Headcount Banking 216

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 26, 2024

In 2022, as LLMs took the world by storm, the market was trying to navigate the right way to build solutions on top of the many models becoming available. I t’s clear that founders Trey Holterman, Diego Baugh, and Tyler Johnson are craftsmen with a vision to redefine the status quo.

Investment 116

Investment Healthcare AI Business Model 116

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

How much should a SaaS startup invest in sales and marketing at different stages of the business? Sales and marketing investment depends on many different factors including establishing product market fit, the business’s sales model (inside, field, freemium), and not least, cash balance and fundraising capacity.

Investment 274

Investment Startup Marketing SaaS 274

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2021

And even more importantly, triple down on customer success, customer marketing, and customer happiness. You Aren’t Doing Enough Customer Marketing. Invest More There. They not only will stay a decade or longer. But they’ll likely grow 3x-10x in size. Almost like clockwork. No matter how big you get.

Scaling 325

Scaling Investment Cloud Customer Success 325

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 26, 2022

A former venture capitalist, Mark Leonard started Constellation in 1995 with $15m of outside investment & a goal of buying vertical software companies with a moat & good unit economics. Vertical software companies pursue a particular market segment like car dealership management or hotel management software.

Software Review 232

Software Review Investment Software Acquisition 232

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

But with that out of the way, let’s talk just enough about financial accounting to explain why Big Tech Companies both acquire smaller ones — and do corporate VC investment. Because in the short-term, it often costs basically close to nothing to acquire a smaller startup with cash on hand, or do a corporate VC investment.

Acquisition 186

Acquisition Investment Headcount Banking 186

ChurnZero

APRIL 1, 2024

When companies think about investing in their customer base, they are usually thinking about driving product adoption, reducing churn, or even delivering expansion revenue. One role a CSM can play is acting as an internal marketer for your stakeholders and their successes. This is a guest post by Todd Busler, CEO of Champify.

Investment 92

Investment Sales Funnel Customer Success B2B 92

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

And the playbook has mostly been as follows for those with tougher times: Cut the burn Freeze hiring If growth is really slow, look at layoffs if necessary and Cut marketing to almost zero To some extent, this makes sense. Marketing is a variable cost with generally medium-term benefits in SaaS and B2B. So marketing gets cut.

Marketing 203

Marketing Scale B2C B2B 203

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

As the world’s most traded asset class, the fixed income markets are a pillar of our global economy. Fixed income, as an asset class, is in the midst of a dramatic market structure transformation. This is all in spite of the fact that global fixed income markets total $130 trillion , compared to equities at only $42 trillion.

Investment 83

Investment Construction Finance Government 83

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Go-to-market (GTM) design and efficiency are sometimes overlooked, but they’re a critical driver of any SaaS business. Rajeev Dham and Karan Singh, Partners at Sapphire Ventures, and Jane Lee, Vice President at Sapphire walk us through how to double your “Magic Number,” a shorthand for your sales and marketing efficiency.

VP of Engineering 202

VP of Engineering Scale Marketing Benchmarks 202

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 6, 2022

If I gave you $10,000 to invest in one company today among the following four software businesses, which would you pick? Which investment will generate the greatest return? The first company isn’t a company but a composite of where the private markets traded at the end of 2021. Growth Rate. Multiple (ARR/EV).

Investment 245

Investment Pricing Business Model Enterprise 245

Tom Tunguz

MAY 2, 2022

A founder recently told me he would have built his company differently in another fundraising market. In 2008, tightfistedness dominated the market. The 11 year bull market transformed that dynamic. It depends on the depth of the potential recession and the impact to the capital markets.

Product Marketing 317

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Marketing Software Development 317

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2023

Harry Stebbings of 20VC was kind enough to have us back on the latest VC Roundtable with 2 of the very, very best in growth / late-stage investing — the leaders of Insight Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures. They’ve led later stage investments in the best in SaaS and Cloud. And Where is Growth Investing?

Investment 210

Investment AI Cloud Scale 210

Sparktoro

JULY 6, 2023

Why do 90% of marketing dollars flow to paid/performance channels that provide attribution? HINT: It’s not because ads are 10X more effective than organic investments. It’s because ads aren’t just measurable, they’re attributable.

Investment 77

Investment Marketing Advertising 77

Andreessen Horowitz

AUGUST 15, 2022

The demographic trends driving America’s housing market are impossible to ignore: our country is creating households faster than we’re building houses. Structural shortages in available homes for sale push housing prices higher, while young … The post Investing in Flow appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

Investment 145

Investment Trends Pricing Sales 145

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 16, 2023

In The Figures that Will Move the Venture Capital Market in the Next 3-5 Years , I wrote about the correlation between interest rates & venture capital investing. The chart above shows the predicted invested in grey & actuals in orange. About one third of the way through the year, early stage VCs have invested about $16.5b

Venture Capital 266

Venture Capital Government Marketing Banking 266

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

Q: I run a bootstrapped software company and our biggest customer (60% of our revenue) has offered on several occasions to invest in the company. Taking an investment from your largest customer certainly will complicate things. Rarely keep investing after the initial investment. But a VC investment is.

Investment 272

Investment Software Review Acquisition Pricing 272

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

To get the most efficiencies out of their marketing team and resources, Gorgias puts a big emphasis on using only high-quality data that they audit regularly. Essentially, you invest more into acquiring the customer as they become more aware and have higher intent to buy vs top-loading all your spend in your TAM.

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 205

Tom Tunguz

JULY 4, 2020

As a reminder, 2008 saw a 40% reduction in venture dollars invested in startups. The Seed, Series B, and Series C markets are down 37%, 23%, and 29%, respectively. On the other hand, the Series A market is up about 10% from the trailing 2 year period previous high. The fundraising market is contracting.

Marketing 362

Marketing Investment Cloud Startup 362

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2023

I think of marketing teams as hedge funds. Marketing teams develop a portfolio of different strategies to acquire leads. Some days, content marketing works. Like an investment portfolio, any individual strategy may thrive one day & suffer the next. One day, a post hit the front page of Hacker News. How can I use them?

Marketing 177

Marketing Outsourced Development Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 177

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 5, 2024

We need to make some key investments in people and platforms. And at the university, which is not a notable university, there was a lot of investment from DoD in supercomputing and they’ve bought supercomputers and I worked on them as a researcher, and that led me to a job in Lawrence Livermore National Labs.

AI 80

AI Investment Artificial Intelligence Outsourced Development 80

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

A great product, while necessary, isn’t sufficient to build a market leader and eventually a public company. Companies that win a market are just as good at Go-to-Market as they are at building great products. But to develop a GTM strategy, you must have Product Market Fit. Without it, you don’t have a business.

Scale 213

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 213

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 5, 2021

Let’s examine the relationship between total venture capital investment and the 10 year Treasury in some detail. The y-axis tracks enture capital investment by year and the year of the data point resides in the reddish circle. In other words, the market is acting according to theory. There are arguments on both hands.

Venture Capital 355

Venture Capital Marketing Government Investment 355

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

In the new episode, Jason sits down with Drata CMO Sydney Sloan to talk about what’s new at Drata, the role of CMO at Drata vs. Salesloft, partner marketing, customer marketing, and more. Sydney pulled someone from Salesloft with a product marketing background who understands operations, running programs, and being strategic.

AWS 189

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 189

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2022

Everyone has slightly different data, but it helps answer a seeming conflict in the VC markets: Massive amounts of funding have flowed into startups … and yet … Why doesn’t it seem easier to raise seed funding for many startups? So net net: Global VC investment doubled in 2021 from 2020, from $335B to $643B; and.

Investment 228

Investment Startup Revenue SaaS 228

Casey Accidental

MARCH 29, 2022

A common issue leaders in product management, design, or engineering face is justifying investment in the “non-sexy” stuff. I’ll walk through some frameworks and examples from my career on how to drive excitement and investment in these critical areas that may not be properly valued or staffed currently in your organization.

Investment 139

Investment Underperforming Technical Team User Experience Scale 139

FastSpring

MARCH 15, 2024

Todd Harris knows how to leverage effective video game marketing strategies to get games in front of players. As the former COO and Co-Founder of Hi-Rez Studios, he spent 15 years making games and marketing them to gamers — with the studio’s games reaching 150 million players. (At

Payment Methods 179

Payment Methods Marketplace as a Service Payment Solutions Payments 179