Could Inflation Be Your Biggest Competition?; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

Hey SaaStr Community,

So there’s a new competitor out there, that we haven’t seen in a long time

No, it’s not That Other Vendor that you directly compete with.

No, it’s not that Huge Vendor that claims to do everything.

No, it’s not that scrappy new player that just raised a round.

It’s Inflation.

The reality is that for most of us the biggest competitor wasn’t another vendor doing sort of the same thing, but really, all the other vendors a customer is now paying for or planning to pay for. 

So direct inflation hasn’t been a huge deal,

Til now. 

So a great founder doing tens of millions in ARR recently asked us what we thought of doing a “small IPO” as they approached $100m in ARR.  It’s something we don’t see too often these days, as $200m+ ARR sort of became the new floor to IPO in SaaS.

But we thought we’d take a deeper look at one example, Weave.  Weave started off as a dental ERP and comms platform (including  VoIP / phone), and then expanded beyond that as it scaled.  Today, it crosses dentistry, optometry, veterinary, physical therapy, specialty medical services, audiology, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and other home services.

At this point, any founder in SaaS should know the public markets have fallen 50% or so from the peaks of 2021.  It’s profoundly frustrating as SaaS revenue growth hasn’t fallen.  The best in SaaS are growing faster than ever, even past $1B or more in ARR.  And yet, they are still worth half of what they were just a few months ago.

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Laika

It's almost here.

We're less than 60 days away from Annual 22!

SaaStr Annual 2022 will be a huge celebration that brings together 10,000+ of the best in SaaS, the best speakers, the best mentors, the best CEOs, CROs, CMOs, and more.

Don't miss the #1 place to be this year in SaaS.

Ticket prices go up on August 1st.

Ah, vendor viability.  It can be a stressful situation.  You finally get into a big potential deal, and often, you’re competing with someone much bigger.  And you’re asked for your financials.

Do you hide? Share everything?

Dave Kellogg, Executive-In-Residence at Balderton Capital, breaks down the most common mistakes companies make when going from startup to scale-up. He helps showcase these errors and advises on how to stop them from crippling a business’s growth.

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by WorkOS

• BlueSnap is looking for a Director of Sales to be responsible for training, coaching, and mentoring an energetic sales team responsible for achieving sales and profitability objectives from new clients by prospecting and converting warm leads into customers.

• Grammarly is seeking an Engineering Manager to join our Grammarly for Developers team. The person in this role will lead a talented team of software engineers focused on building out and scaling Grammarly’s developer platform; delightful, context-aware writing assistance for end users; easy-to-use and well-documented APIs and SDKs for developers; self-serve developer onboarding experiences; and integration configuration portal.

• SaaStr 573: Scaling from $1 to $10M, an AMA with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
• SaaStr 574: 5 Scale-Up Mistakes for Startups with Dave Kellogg
• SaaStr 575: The State of SaaS Marketing in 2022: Mutiny & SaaStr CMO Panel (with Salesforce President & CMO Sarah Franklin, Box CMO Chris Koehler, and Attentive CMO Sara Varni)

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

Yes, valuations are way down

But less discussed is the evaporation of liquidity:

- Founder's secondary is way down, now absent in most rounds

- IPO market frozen

- M&A way down

We acted in 2H'20-Q1'22 like liquidity didn't matter

We'll see if in the end it does or not

Summer 2023: Markets are back!! SaaS is on fire!! Things are going so GREAT, but why is pipeline a bit ... low?

OH YEAH. WE PAUSED MARKETING LAST YEAR FOR 4 MONTHS.

Is SF “gone”?

No, but, well this much is clear:

Until March 2020, the best of the best came to make their mark there.

Not all of ‘em.

But most, in SaaS at least.

That’s not true anymore

I miss it

But that part, it’s gone

When your CTO wants it as badly as you do

That's when true magic happens

© SaaStr 2022

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