USIO

APRIL 22, 2024

SaaS companies are continually seeking innovative strategies to not just maintain but amplify their growth trajectory and increase revenue. Integrating efficient payment systems along with offering revenue share will significantly impact a SaaS company’s revenue streams and overall expansion.

Payment Services 130

Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payments 130

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What are The Most Common Mistakes Founders Make When They Are Just Starting to Scale Revenue? They will spend all your money, fail, and derail your growth. Micromanaging Your First (and Second) Management Team. But there’s a reason you hired managers. I know you can do it all. And stymie all of them.

Scaling 264

Scaling Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Market Segmentation 264

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 19, 2024

NTM revenue multiple. Their GAAP revenue grew 5% in 2023, and 29% in Q4 ‘23 YoY. For context, full year GAAP revenue in 2023 was $628m. I lay out all of these numbers to hopefully portray that the business is growing much faster than the 5% 2023 revenue growth would suggest. Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 141

Cloud Scale Subscription Payment Features 141

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2023

There are several big leaders in property management software, and AppFolio is one of them. Growth is strong if not crazy, at +29% at $660m in “ARR” Importantly, it’s efficient growth as we’ll see. Steady, Strong Growth — Since 2006 Appfolio was founded way back in 2006, and they never quit.

Payment Services 228

Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payments 228

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

General Partner Doug Pepper and General Partner and Head of Analytics at ICONIQ Growth, Christine Edmonds, share the art and science of scaling GTM at this year’s SaaStr Annual. According to ICONIQ’s data, many successful companies hit a growth plateau at around $15M ARR. What do these look like from an early-stage standpoint?

Scale 224

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 224

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 1, 2024

At $784m in ARR, growing 47% with 130% net revenue retention across 6100 customers, the company should be one of top 10 fastest growing software companies alongside Klaviyo, ZScaler, & Crowdstrike - in ARR terms. But overall revenue is growing 4.5% How can ARR grow so quickly while overall revenue is much slower?

Data 209

Data Subscription Payment Features Cloud 209

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 5, 2024

A favorite clip of mine is when Russ Hanneman is talking about how pre-revenue businesses are the best kind of businesses. Here’s part of his quote: “If you show revenue people will ask how much and it will never be enough…If you have no revenue you can say you’re pre revenue.

Cloud 161

Cloud Scale Pricing Revenue 161

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 1, 2023

One that stood out to me - net new ARR growth seems to be rebounding. When I look at the median YoY growth in net new ARR added, Q3 ‘23 was the first quarter in a while where the median has gone positive. Looking at the mid to long term, we feel very optimistic about the outlook for strong AWS growth. Bucketed by Growth.

AWS 293

AWS Cloud AI Search Cost optimization & reporting 293

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 12, 2024

Subscribe now Reinventing Founder Friendliness - Back to the Future This week I joined Ed Sim (Founder and Managing Partner at Boldstart Ventures) on Harry Stebbings podcast to chat about the state of venture backed companies heading into 2024 and 2025. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 284

Cloud Venture Capital Acquisition Metrics 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

500k+ Customers Fuel Growth, Up 28% — And NRR is 121% There A story of many SaaS and Cloud leaders today. The big enterprise customers are fueling growth at Cloudflare, at Blackline, at Smartsheet, and more. The $500k+ deals are now 56% of revenue for Braze. #2. And 44% of Revenue Outside U.S. Let’s dig in.

Sales Hiring 221

Sales Hiring Scale Cloud Enterprise 221

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

Now at $600m, ARR, growth has radically slowed to 17%. Growth Hit a Wall in 2023 HashiCorp was a rocketship from inception all the way until FY24, or early 2023 in calendar years :). Still, it’s a big drag on growth when NRR declines -15%. #3. Some of it may well be some of the challenges in commercializing open source.

Scale 225

Scale Cloud Scaling Revenue 225

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., It looks at the YoY dollar change in quarterly revenue from the hyperscalers (just looking at Azure / AWS because the data goes back further) going back a few years. Is Software Rebounding?

Cloud 177

Cloud Software Azure AWS 177

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2024

So there’s a quiet leader in the work management space that’s quietly … blowing the doors off. But the bigger ones are the ones driving revenue growth at scale. And 51% of their revenue now comes from $100k+ deals. #2. That’s been critical to them maintaining revenue growth. #5.

Technical Review 220

Technical Review Airlines Entertainment Government 220

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 12, 2024

On top of that, the median NTM revenue multiple has only fell 1% from the start of the year to today. Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples Top 10 Weekly Share Price Movement Update on Multiples SaaS businesses are generally valued on a multiple of their revenue - in most cases the projected revenue for the next 12 months.

Cloud 141

Cloud Subscription Payment Features Revenue 141

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 15, 2024

Let’s start with Q4 YoY growth. Quarterly YoY growth is still decelerating, but the rate of change is starting to slow down Similarly, the median net retention is still falling FCF margins continue to expand, with the median FCF margin in Q4 hitting nearly 20% And finally, the CAC payback period. Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 161

Cloud Software Review Subscription Payment Features 161

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

Subscribe now ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) vs ERR (Experimental Runrate Revenue) ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is one of the most popular SaaS (Non-GAAP) metrics. Many investors laugh (and some rightly so) at the fact that software companies’ valuations are often described as a multiple of revenue.

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

We still want to drive retention and growth and make money. Eventually, you can build a model to show you can create sustainable value in a company that’s not just based on a revenue multiple. Even if you were sticky, people were cutting licenses and asking for a discount in the age of efficient growth. The world has changed.

Sales Hiring 239

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 239

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 26, 2022

Vertical software companies pursue a particular market segment like car dealership management or hotel management software. From 2003 to 2014, Constellation’s revenues compounded from $80m to more than $5b, an average of 25% annually. But Constellation arrives at that growth in a very different way : they acquire to grow.

Software Review 283

Software Review Investment Software Acquisition 283

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

Will LPs allocate to new venture managers? The growth is there, but theiir losses are still large and they may need to reduce them for an optimal IPO. Growth slowed for everyone in 2023 and they now need to buy growth. Growth slowed for everyone in 2023 and they now need to buy growth.

SMB 291

SMB SaaS AI Software Review 291

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 8, 2024

The full year guide assumes 14% growth for this upcoming year after they grew 31% in 2023. They don’t expect that aggregate $80m of revenue from 2023 to repeat in 2024. A year ago, they guided 2023 growth to 16%. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Bucketed by Growth. Top 5 Median: 19.4x

Cloud 161

Cloud Revenue Subscription Payment Features 161

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 29, 2023

And below are the top performers from 2022 and 2021 Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples This year, only 1 company had a top 10 multiple for every day of the year - Snowflake. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years.

Cloud 189

Cloud Software Review Subscription Payment Features 189

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. The Growth Landscape Overview: Is growth dead? Are any growth deals getting done? New normal?

Investment 221

Investment AI Cloud Scale 221

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue. Bucketed by Growth. Mid Growth Median: 10.0x

Cloud 195

Cloud Pricing Startup Revenue 195

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2023

Software Revenue Multiples On the chart below, the darker blue line shows the median revenue multiple for 100 software companies. For those unfamiliar with revenue multiples, it’s a valuation methodology for comparing relative valuations of businesses. At the same time, the 10-year benchmark rate has gone from 2.2%

SaaS 241

SaaS Software Metrics Revenue 241

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 16, 2023

The economic slowdown which started one year ago has reduced growth rates by 31% across this group from 46% annually to 31% annually. Mongo expects the environment to challenge growth over the next few quarters. First, we expect Atlas revenue to be flat to slightly down sequentially in Q1. Mongo generated $1.28b in fiscal 2023.

SaaS 251

SaaS Cloud Revenue Trends 251

Totango

APRIL 9, 2024

Chris Dishman , SVP of Customer Success for Totango & Catalyst, hosted a roundtable discussion with industry leaders, including Rashmi Chari , Head of Global Customer Success for ThousandEyes, Kevin McIntyre , Chief Revenue Officer for Dealfront, and Madelyn DePrey , VP of Customer Success for Aircall.

Scale 106

Scale Sales Compensation Customer Success 106

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 22, 2023

Subscribe now Revisiting the “Is Software Expensive” Question The current median revenue multiple for the software universe is 6.4x, which is ~17% below the long term average multiple of 7.8x. So on a pure revenue multiple basis the software universe looks “slightly cheap.” Bucketed by Growth.

Cloud 177

Cloud Subscription Payment Features Metrics 177

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

As we look at early data for Q1, January usage growth was solid. Quarterly Reports Summary Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples Top 10 Weekly Share Price Movement Update on Multiples SaaS businesses are generally valued on a multiple of their revenue - in most cases the projected revenue for the next 12 months.

Cloud 161

Cloud AWS Metrics Subscription 161

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Subscribe now Rule of X Meritech and Bessemer both recently did an analysis that looked at the Rule of 40 and asked the question “what if growth / profitability shouldn’t be treated equally in the Rule of 40?” This could be a 30% growth rate and 10% FCF margin. Or 10% growth rate and 30% FCF margin.

Cloud 152

Cloud Metrics Subscription Payment Features 152

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

The hyperscalers are really starting to see the tailwind of new workload growth overtake the headwind of optimizations. They also are seeing AI revenue (largely compute) show up sooner than anyone else. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Bucketed by Growth. Mid Growth Median: 9.9x

Cost optimization & reporting 161

Cost optimization & reporting Cloud Azure AWS 161

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

So everyone knows Salesforce, founded in 1999, originally to manage your salesforce. But there’s another SaaS leader that almost everyone in B2B software also uses also founded in 1999 — to manage their events. Managed to Make the Most of Virtual Events. Two Related Products Are Key to Growth.

Marketplace as a Service 272

Marketplace as a Service Software Review Cloud B2B 272

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

In SaaS, once you have even a few million in ARR, the #1 challenge is recruiting top-tier VPs and building a truly top-tier management team: SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. You’ll need more than 5–10 engineers to go big.

Scale 242

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 242

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

You’re ready to cost-effectively pay for more leads, and more effectively managing the ones you do have. As soon as you know how to do events and make them ROI positive, you’re ready to hire someone to manage events for you and do “field marketing”. Done right, it’s a top revenue-generating and pipeline accelerating strategy.

Scale 227

Scale Marketing SaaS Scaling 227

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 26, 2024

Many public software companies don’t report ARR, so I’ll take the quarterly subscription revenue and multiply it by 4 to approximate ARR. Below you can see the YoY growth rate in net new ARR added. Gartner estimates that by 2027, nearly all of the growth in worldwide IT spending will come from software and IT services.

Cloud 161

Cloud Marketplace as a Service AI Subscription 161

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2023

Carta is a platform that helps people manage equity, build businesses, and invest in the companies of tomorrow. Carta manages over two trillion dollars in equity for nearly two million people globally. We help businesses of all shapes and sizes to accelerate their growth journey – quickly, simply, and securely.

Scale 188

Scale Payments Payment Solutions Artificial Intelligence 188

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

With personal experience from EchoSign and other high-growth companies, he was spoiled when it came to those companies raising money from exceptional VCs. Higher than he imagined in terms of the founder quality bar and, the stage of the business, and growth and efficiency metrics. And that’s what makes the bar that much higher.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 246