User Pilot

AUGUST 10, 2023

Tracking your product’s DAU, WAU, MAU metrics will provide insights into user engagement and how well your tool is performing. This article shows you the right way to measure those metrics. According to venture capital firm Sequoia , the standard DAU/MAU ratio is 10-20%, with only a handful of companies having over 50%.

Metrics 96

Metrics Venture Capital Benchmarks Engagement 96

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

OCTOBER 11, 2022

Later stage venture capital was so free-flowing, that it made sense to invest in sales, customer success (and marketing to some extent) at much higher levels that before. SaaS basically shortened this to 10% of the whole deal, since traditional software margins were 90%+. But they do have to deliver. What do I mean? More money.

Scale 220

Scale Customer Success Venture Capital Sales 220

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Debt for SaaS companies done right is a gift. Few folks have more data than Nathan Latka and he offers up some insights on how to properly leverage up in SaaS. Geoffrey Moore calls this group the Late Majority and the Laggards in his book Crossing the Chasm , a secret bible for many SaaS CEO’s. . — ed.

Venture Capital 223

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 223

Sage Intacct

OCTOBER 20, 2022

All SaaS startups foster a secret (or not-so-secret) hope of hitting the milestone of being a unicorn. In the parlance of venture capital, a "unicorn" is a private startup whose value is greater than $1B USD.

Venture Capital 59

Venture Capital Metrics SaaS Startup 59

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2021

Top Blog Posts This Week: 12 Things You’ll Look Back On in SaaS … And Regret. FT: Yamini Rangan’s Top Metrics as HubSpot’s New CEO. How Would a Person Start a Venture Capital Fund? 6 Key Signs a VP Can’t Scale Beyond $5m-$10m ARR. 5 Interesting Learnings from Samsara at $500,000,000 in ARR.

Venture Capital 237

Venture Capital Scale Scaling Metrics 237

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2022

There’s a common meme in Venture Capital that traction is tough to quantify, but you know it when you see it. Because I don’t think Initial Traction is at all nebulous in SaaS — and I think it occurs earlier than many think. And that’s where the power and leverage is in SaaS. >>

Scale 259

Scale Venture Capital SaaS Branding 259

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2021

In theory, many things can kill a SaaS startup after $4m-$5m ARR. In theory, many things can stop a SaaS startup after $4m-$5m ARR from getting to $100m. But I’ve now looked into almost 20 SaaS companies that stalled out somewhere in the $20m-$40m ARR range. Yes, venture capital can help smooth out the bumps here.

SaaS 363

SaaS Venture Capital Churn Branding 363

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2022

So everything changed in SaaS in February and March. And with that, a lot has changed in the venture capital markets, even early stage. The expectations, the metrics, the pool of VCs. The public markets were under stress before then, as we emerged into this new post-Covid restrictions, higher interest rate world.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Cloud Investment Startup 267

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2023

It’s a marvel of business with strong growth, great efficiency & the potential to reignite interest in SaaS IPOs. The company raised $455m in venture capital, but has used only $15m, growing nearly entirely on profits. Congratulations to the team on building a paragon of a SaaS business!

Benchmarks 172

Benchmarks Venture Capital Marketing SMB 172

Kellblog

JULY 29, 2021

The purpose of this post is to embed the video recording of my recent appearance on Monday Night Metrics with Ray Rike of RevOps^2 and Ben Murray , also known by the sobriquet, The SaaS CFO. Here’s the video: Thanks to Ray and Ben for having me!

Benchmarks 121

Benchmarks B2B Metrics SaaS 121

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2023

It’s a marvel of business with strong growth, great efficiency & the potential to reignite interest in SaaS IPOs. The company raised $455m in venture capital, but has used only $15m, growing nearly entirely on profits. Congratulations to the team on building a paragon of a SaaS business!

Benchmarks 158

Benchmarks Venture Capital Marketing SMB 158

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

The venture capital firm’s mission is to be “entrepreneurs backing entrepreneurs.” Doug Pepper, General Partner at ICONIQ Growth, has invested in software and SaaS companies for 22 years, from seed to growth stage. How do the best-in-class companies perform when ARR is treated as a growth metric?

Scale 198

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Venture Capital 198

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2022

The number of global venture capital (VC) investments dipped in 2022, thanks to ongoing geopolitical tensions, turbulence in global capital markets, supply chain issues, and increasing interest rates. Venture capital firms pumped a lot of money into the economy during the pandemic, buying countless software companies.

Venture Capital 201

Venture Capital Marketing Startup Construction 201

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. This “Gap financing” — it’s especially important in SaaS, because SaaS doesn’t explode, it compounds. Always, always, be transparent in SaaS.

Venture Capital 222

Venture Capital Technical Review Finance Investment 222

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 12, 2024

Every type of investor was broadly operating in a “risk on” mindset given the ZIRP environment, and the venture capital ecosystem was no exception. I hope this post provides a bit of a cautionary tale of raising a mega round ahead of your metrics. 2025 is probably the year of max pain in the venture ecosystem.

Cloud 284

Cloud Venture Capital Acquisition Metrics 284

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 21, 2017

Last week, I participated in two discussions about the changes in the SaaS world. The level of competition in many core SaaS segments is intense. The SaaS era is about 20 years old. Venture capitalists have financed many of those businesses. Those venture dollars have financed a panoply of competition.

SaaS 187

SaaS Venture Capital Finance Machine Learning 187

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2023

SaaStr 631: What Is Going On In Venture Capital in 2023 with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin and 20VC Host Harry Stebbings    4. SaaStr Workshop Wednesday LIVE: 5 Metrics Every SaaS Company Should Care About with Salesforce Venture’s Investor Jessica Bartos 3. SaaStr 630: Sales-led vs. Product-led?

Sales Recruiting 130

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Venture Capital Sales 130

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

Hundreds of thousands of experts are telling you how to succeed in SaaS. SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares the 10 worst pieces of SaaS advice, excuses, and mistakes founders make, and what to do instead To some extent, if you have the hottest startup in the world, the full package, you can play some games with investors.

Part-Time VPE 174

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 174

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

Baremetrics

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Baremetrics is a business metrics tool that provides 26 metrics about your business, such as MRR, ARR, LTV, total customers, and more. What is Equity Financing in SaaS? What is the difference between Equity Financing, Loans, and Venture Capital Funding? What is Equity Financing in SaaS? Table of Contents.

Finance 98

Finance Venture Capital SaaS Payments Payments 98

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2021

These truly are the best of times in SaaS. But for most of you, for most of us, it isn’t any easier to raise VC capital. Who are the 2-3 public SaaS and companies most similar to you? A Fully Baked Financial Model — Including Crystal-Clear MRR and Operating Metrics. And yes, some are. But a clear path.

Scale 286

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Headcount 286

User Pilot

JUNE 13, 2022

Are you looking for the best SaaS blogs and influencers to follow in 2022? We curated a list of the best SaaS blogs and influencers to help you learn more about SaaS and increase your revenue. We covered the best blogs on SaaS growth, product marketing , UX analytics, venture capital, and sales.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital SaaS Data Scale 52

Kellblog

MAY 19, 2021

.” — Me responding to Ray calling me the Yoda of SaaS metrics. Just a quick post to highlight my recent appearance on the Metrics That Measure Up podcast, hosted by Ray Rike , founder and CEO of RevOps^2 , a firm focused on SaaS metrics and benchmarking. How metrics vary with scale. Rangaswami.

Metrics 88

Metrics Scale Benchmarks Acquisition 88

SaaSOptics

JUNE 24, 2021

Debt vs. Equity: The SaaS Financing Landscape . In a recent webinar, SaaSOptics CEO Tim McCormick and Bigfoot Capital CEO Brian Parks discussed the changes that have taken place across the SaaS financing landscape, particularly those in debt financing of SaaS companies. . Debt vs. Equity: Equity-based financing.

Finance 59

Finance Venture Capital SaaS Banking 59

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2023

B2B SaaS companies often aim to land large enterprise clients that can bring with them long relationships and large deals. We really anchor on these metrics where we can drive conversion rates higher, where we can drive average deal size higher. Others may seek to corner the SMB market. The trick is just to get started.

Startup 201

Startup Scale SMB Venture Capital 201

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

I have a strong, semi-proven thesis that in SaaS, market size doesn’t matter that much … at least in the traditional top-down sense. Yes, many of the big winners in SaaS entered already large markets, from CRM (Salesforce) to ERP (Workday) to Collaboration (Workday, Asana). And it’s better than that, these days.

Scale 203

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 203

SaaStr

MAY 7, 2023

And we’re already trending upwards of 4,000 of your fellow SaaS CEOs, Revenue Leaders, Executives, and Investors joining us for 2.5 Oh yeah, it’s gonna be a party when we all get together in London next month, as we bringing in some of the very best speakers in SaaS together from all over the globe. And take a break.

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Banking Benchmarks Scaling 209

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 12, 2014

This post is part of a continuing series evaluating the S-1s of publicly traded SaaS companies in order to better understand the core business and build a library of benchmarks that might be useful to founders. Over time, that figure has fallen, but it far surpasses any of the SaaS companies we’ve analyzed to date.

Benchmarks 110

Benchmarks Deferred Revenue Venture Capital Outsourced Development 110

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 8, 2019

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. It’s the resulting hustle that outlasts product cycles and wins against unremitting competition.

Strategy 225

Strategy Venture Capital Banking Software Review 225

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

In our first post about our online community , we mentioned launching the Global SaaS Leaders Slack group because we saw a need for the kind of software-and-SaaS-focused community we’d want to be a part of. Less focus on venture capital or funding rounds. That includes: A global focus. Professional moderation.

SaaS Payments 145

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Merchant Services Software Review 145

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

If you’ve raised venture capital, you know net revenue retention is important. In SaaS, you have three ways to make that curve stand out. You’ve made it to $6M ARR, and accounts are coming up for renewal, but as you cross that line, the compounding nature of SaaS starts to take over. That’s the end state we’re going for.

Scale 169

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling 169

ProfitWell

MARCH 17, 2020

He started a SaaS company called Spheric. Dan found himself in an all-too-common rut—working 100+ hours a week, running on only hours of sleep, and having no one to turn to for critical SaaS advice. Raised venture capital for his previous startups (Flowtown and Clarity). He shared SaaS Academy’s Hot Principles with us.

Metrics 59

Metrics Venture Capital Forecasting Consulting 59

Baremetrics

APRIL 27, 2021

Early-stage SaaS founders should spend far more time executing instead of strategizing. 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.

Startup 71

Startup Sales Hiring Venture Capital SaaS 71

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

Join me for SaaS Office Hours on February 22 in New York at the Axial headquarters. This is the first time we’ll be hosting SaaS Office Hours on the East Coast, and there will be more to follow. As always, the event will be small and intimate.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital SaaS Marketing Trends 100

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2019

All the great SaaS companies IPO’ing now have strong revenue retention, whether SMB or enterprise focused. million funded by Slack and the balance funded by the venture capital funds who partner with Slack Fund.” In fact, it has pretty similar metrics and sales cycles to other SaaS leaders here.

Scale 275

Scale Venture Capital SMB Enterprise 275

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Dive Brief: Usage-based pricing has grown 32% this year and now 45% of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies use it all or in part, up from 34%, an OpenView survey shows. The survey is based on responses from 600 SaaS companies. Closely watched SaaS metrics. Enterprise companies.

Subscription 52

Subscription Payment Features Pricing SaaS 52