Technical CEO’s have better multiples than Business CEO’s

Do SaaS CEO’s with a technical background (engineering or product) outperform those CEO’s with a business background? It’s a fun question to ask and Conor Begley at CreatorIQ did the analysis. He looked at 167 companies and the data is below.

Revenue multiple and growth. Interestingly, companies whose CEO has a technical background have a much stronger revenue multiple (5.80x on median) versus those with a business background (3.44x). YOYG is also stronger at 14% on median for technical CEO’s versus 11% for business CEO’s. Those are material differences.

Margins. Business CEO’s outperform materially on EBITDA margin (4.7% on median for business CEO’s versus 2.7% for technical CEO’s).

The data is interesting, and if you’d like the spreadsheet, I’d be happy to share. Thank you Conor for doing the work.

Thank you for your readership. See more blogs and SaaS data at blossomstreetventures.com. Email the author at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com.