Clouded Judgement

JUNE 27, 2025

The use cases are new, the distribution channels are new, and the product categories are still forming. Whether it’s polishing a blog post, a product release, or anything else…Speed of execution and iteration is now becoming more important. Spinning up GTM before product-market fit is fully obvious. Then iterate.

Cloud 157

Cloud Sales Hiring Scale Investment 157

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 21, 2025

They build organically, but also acquired their way into new products and markets. With more recent cloud software companies, there was a lot of organic expansion - ie expanding into new markets and capabilities through internal product development. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.5x Slack is a great example.

Cloud 188

Cloud Subscription Payment Features Pricing 188

USIO

JUNE 19, 2025

In a recent academic paper published by Springer, researchers noted that: “Usage-based pricing models align a provider’s growth with customer success, increasing both revenue potential and long-term retention.” — SpringerLink, Software Product Management and Pricing Models In other words: more usage = more transactions = more revenue.

Payments 130

Payments SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions 130

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 20, 2024

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.2x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 18.4x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 144

Cloud Banking Subscription Payment Features 144

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 24, 2025

For many current large language models, once they are exposed to domain-specific challenges or niche inquiries—like in-depth product troubleshooting or compliance-related questions—they can stumble. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.6x Top 5 Median: 19.9x Bucketed by Growth. Mid Growth Median: 12.2x Low Growth Median: 4.3x

Enterprise 157

Enterprise AI Cloud Artificial Intelligence 157

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 20, 2025

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.3x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 23.3x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 157

Cloud AI Headcount Pricing 157

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 13, 2025

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.4x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 23.1x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 144

Cloud Data AI Investment 144

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 6, 2025

This “misuse of ARR” trend has accelerated in the age of AI, as business models have evolved (into more usage/success-based vs. seat-based), and everyone is tinkering with new AI products. For founders—make sure you know how your customers (and particularly your largest customers) define success/ROI from your product.

Cloud 144

Cloud Technical Review Software Review Technical Advisors 144

Clouded Judgement

MAY 16, 2025

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.5x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 21.8x Bucketed by Growth.

Trends 144

Trends Cloud Subscription Payment Features 144

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 14, 2025

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.4x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 24.0x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 144

Cloud Software Subscription Payment Features 144

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

But … First, a whole bunch are simply “not on point” The team, product, or space obviously does not meet the venture bar. If you look at Homebrew’s stats, yes ~1600 were intro’d to them. Or, in many cases, the stage is simply off. And of those 64 — 10 got funded.

Investment 273

Investment Venture Capital Leadership 273

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Those are rough stats. That gloom will continue to cast over the ecosystem until a founding team figures out a way to assemble decentralized databases, tokenomics, wallets, & NFTs into a product that changes the world. In addition, hackers have stolen more than $2.3b of assets from projects year-to-date.

Technical Review 254

Technical Review Innovation Technology Business Model 254

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 24, 2018

These live chat stats will show you the conversion power of messaging. Here are 11 stats that speak to the conversion power of live chat (or scroll down for the full, embeddable infographic). How to use live chat for a product launch. Live chat delights your visitors – and your finance team. Learn more: . Learn more: .

Advertising 205

Advertising Finance Acquisition Sales 205

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 28, 2019

These days customers want to know not just what products and services a business can provide, but the mission that drives the company at its core, the promise it’s making to its users. But it’s really the perfect format for celebrating our customers, the actual people who use the product. The Intercom brand promise.

Branding 217

Branding Investment Engagement Business 217

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 13, 2018

Integrate the product into your efforts. So when you’re looking to make an upsell , you’re going into the interaction with previous baggage and need to show them the product possibilities that they could tap into if they give you even more money. And the larger the business, the greater the impact of upselling. Only 23.9%

Scale 224

Scale Sales SaaS Sales Funnel 224

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 11, 2024

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.6x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 17.3x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 167

Cloud Cost optimization & reporting GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Review 167

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

“We are misaligning our customers with our product because of the pricing model because we’re raising the price. If you ask any SaaS founder what differentiates their product, they would likely rattle off answers they have at the ready. Copy your entire product. In fact, the stats show it’s mostly false.”

Sales Hiring 256

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 256

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2022

No matter how innovative a product might be, a business can only succeed if it enables its customers. During my time at Stripe, I have seen how we’ve grown our product with SaaS in mind: not just for billing and invoicing, but for everything from revenue recognition, to tax, to identity verification. . Build a killer product.

Payment Features 259

Payment Features Payment Services Outsourcing Services Payment Solutions 259

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.3x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 22.2x Bucketed by Growth.

Systems Review 144

Systems Review Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence 144

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2024

When you want to buy a car, you test drive it, look at the stats, the steering and handling, the air conditioning, the quality of the sound, and how you feel about it. It’s an end-user-focused growth model where your product drives acquisition, activation, expansion, and retention. The last is product-led. That’s PLG.

Scale 299

Scale AI Search Azure Sales 299

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 30, 2024

In a world without venture capital (or other sources of external financing for startups), each company would have to grow solely based on the merits of their product and sales. Over the long term, the best products and teams will win. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.3x Top 5 Median: 14.8x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 274

Cloud Venture Capital AI Startup 274

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Couple takeaways for me: 2024 is shaping up to be the “prototype to production” year for AI. On the former - we’ll see a lot of these experiments translate to production facing apps in 2024. Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.8x This year, there was tons of experimentation. Top 5 Median: 16.6x Bucketed by Growth.

AWS 299

AWS Cloud AI Search Cost optimization & reporting 299

SaaStr

OCTOBER 2, 2023

Transitioning into Sponsor stats, here’s what we found: Huge learning when it came to sponsors: Sponsors with an activation had 60% more leads than those without. So of course, we had to run the numbers to see what changed: the percentage of attendees attending SaaStr at a VP level and above rose to 56%.

Trends 273

Trends New CTO CTO Data 273

SaaStr

JANUARY 15, 2021

Let’s assume you are trying to segment leads for a SaaS business in the sales productivity space. Of course, not indulging in lead scoring can lengthen your sales cycle and decrease your sales productivity. The key point here is to come up with a small set of information that is most indicative of a high-value lead.

Software Review 270

Software Review Market Segmentation Engagement Sales 270

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2024

It’s a painfully impressive stat, but Grafana Labs isn’t trying to monetize every use case. But when they discover a large global bank using Grafana Labs, that’s where the product strategy comes in. They decided to become multi-product at stage two. Going multi-product is a big deal, and a lot of companies struggle with it.

Scale 291

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 291

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 29, 2024

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.4x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 17.8x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 284

Cloud Forecasting Subscription Payment Features 284

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2022

There are times when customers will need a lot of support because they are trying to get a product to market. They need specific features built into the product in order to close the deal, and they need these features fast. There’s complete transparency on how the product build is going. Impact of the usage-based evolution.

Scale 261

Scale Payments SaaS Payments Payment Services 261

FastSpring

JANUARY 9, 2025

Podcast Full Interview: Video Transcript David Vogelpohl (FastSpring) (00:04) Hello everyone and welcome to Growth Stage by FastSpring where we discuss how digital product companies grow revenue, build meaningful products and increase the value of their businesses. you know, those types of stats are generally true.

Payments 165

Payments Mobile Payment Methods Revenue 165

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

How do I leverage GenAI in my product to drive competitive advantage? Experimentation and learning still have to happen, and there is a need for smart, strategic employees to monitor how AI is working to improve the product market fit, application, and safety for their customers. As a startup, you can look at it a few ways.

Generative AI 299

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 299

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 10, 2023

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.8x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 11.8x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 244

Cloud Trends Subscription Payment Features 244

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 2, 2024

million users (in total; I couldn’t find any MAU stats), PeerTube has 356K, and Pixelfed 255K. “Not everyone wants to use one product,” he said , “and I think making it so that they can use an alternative but can still interact with people on the network will make it so that that product also is more valuable.” 

Social Media 114

Social Media Underperforming Technical Team Government Blockchain 114

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Q: Should Product Marketing Work for Product or Marketing? Product marketing is a weird art, with many over-indexing. These days, CEOs are looking for too much magic from product marketing. These days, CEOs are looking for too much magic from product marketing. Product marketing is neither marketing nor product.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 7, 2019

There’s a stat that should strike fear in the heart of every marketer, but particularly those involved in publishing content. Take this post on how to file a good bug report which states that everyone in your company (from the CEO to the intern) should know how to highlight problems in your product. Opinions sell products.

Content Marketing 222

Content Marketing Marketing Social Media B2C 222

Buffer Resources

JULY 25, 2024

While LinkedIn doesn’t directly offer monetization features for newsletters, you can indirectly monetize by promoting your products, services, or affiliate links within your content. Visit the Newsletter tab on your profile to view these metrics. Can I monetize my LinkedIn newsletter?

Social Media 122

Social Media Engagement Metrics Strategy 122

Clouded Judgement

JULY 12, 2024

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.2x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 15.8x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 288

Cloud AI Investment User Experience 288

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 1, 2024

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 6.2x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 19.6x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 317

Cloud AI Investment Metrics 317

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

Overall Stats: Overall Median: 5.2x The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. Top 5 Median: 15.0x Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 252

Cloud Forecasting Metrics Subscription 252