8 hours agoThe risk of M&A in SaaSIn 2020, Unity Software went public and one very interesting graphic from their prospectus is below. It shows their journey to becoming a public company (founded 2004) and one thing that stands out is the number of acquisitions they’ve made along the way. …Venture Capital3 min readVenture Capital3 min read
1 day agoRecruiting great SaaS sales talentThe Bridge Group is a SaaS sales consulting firm that we hold in very high regard. They release outstanding sales data which can be found at their site, bridgegroupinc.com. We recently reviewed their “Sales Hiring Hourglass” which is primer on hiring B2B sales talent. It’s well worth the read, and…Venture Capital6 min readVenture Capital6 min read
6 days agoSaaS SDR metrics and benchmarkingThe Bridge Group is a SaaS sales consulting firm that we hold in high regard. They release outstanding sales data which can be found at their site, bridgegroupinc.com. We reviewed a report regarding SDR’s entitled the “Sales Development Metrics and Compensation Research Report.” The report compiled data from 365 SaaS…SaaS4 min readSaaS4 min read
May 24SaaS acquisition multiples at ~8xQualtrics and Momentiv are being acquired by private equity firms. Alongside multiples of publicly traded SaaS companies, public SaaS acquisitions are some of the most relevant you can look at for deriving SaaS revenue multiples. These transactions are all cash, the financials are public and audited, and these are all…Venture Capital3 min readVenture Capital3 min read
May 23SaaS AE metrics & dataThe Bridge Group is a SaaS sales consulting firm that we hold in high regard. They release outstanding sales data which can be found at their site, bridgegroupinc.com. We recently reviewed their “SaaS AE Metrics & Compensation Report” which compiles data from 253 executives at SaaS companies with median revenue…Venture Capital4 min readVenture Capital4 min read
May 18How SaaS performed in ’08 recessionThe Great Recession lasted from Q4 2007 to Q2 2009 and was severe: unemployment increased from 5% to 10% in October 2009 and American households lost an estimated $16 trillion in net worth while. A quarter of households lost at least 75% of their net worth and half lost at…SaaS2 min readSaaS2 min read
May 17Learnings from Blackberry’s demiseI recently read Losing the Signal by Jacquie Mcnish and Sean Silcoff. It’s a fantastic read if you want to learn how to avoid mismanaging your market position. Below are some of the passages we learned from. Blackberry had no security equal. “No other phone maker operated its own…Tech12 min readTech12 min read
May 12Learnings from Snapchat’s foundingI recently read How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher. The book is fantastic and full of lessons. It’s well worth the read, but below are some of the passages we learned from. Snapchat really started as a sexting app. “He wouldn’t have to…Venture Capital10 min readVenture Capital10 min read
May 9Revenue per employee in SaaSTwo metrics we use to compare software businesses are revenue per employee and operating expense (opex) per employee. In our view these are great measures of operational efficiency. What is a reasonable amount of rev/head and opex/head in SaaS? The data from the last 73 SaaS IPOs is below (since…Venture Capital2 min readVenture Capital2 min read
May 8The right SaaS opex spend ratiosThe general rule of thumb for spending in SaaS is 40/40/20. In other words, 40% of operating expense should be on R&D, 40% should be on sales and marketing, and 20% should be on G&A. Rules of thumb are just generalizations, so we wanted to see what the data really…Venture Capital3 min readVenture Capital3 min read
