Prices are Going up in SaaS; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

Hey SaaStr Community,

It’s not just you.  SaaS is getting more expensive, for a variety of reasons.

HubSpot, for example, which has been very judicious on holding the line on pricing and ACVs, raised prices 12% for the first time since 2018 — albeit only on new customers.

Slack also similarly did its first pricing increase in history recently, of about 10%.

And when we asked our audience, half of you said you're planning to raise prices.

So lots of folks talk about GitLab as a leader in software development and devops, but GitLab also has sort of a quieter cousin that also IPO’d: JFrog.

JFrog started off as the #1 binary repository and has expanded from there as a multi-product suite for software development.  Fast forward to today, it’s at $270m ARR, growing an impressive 39% a year, and generating positive cash flow.

So as we’ve talked about before, these are Strange Days in SaaS.   The best in SaaS and Cloud are growing faster than ever … yet are worth less than half of what they were not all that long ago.

Where will be when we come out of this?  Will we come out of it at all?  Or is this The New Normal?

I don’t know.  You don’t know.  And certainly, 90% of the VCs on Twitter don’t know.

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

Early bird tickets are here! SaaStr Annual will be back in the Bay Area in 2023 and will be bigger than ever. 

We just hosted 10,000 Founders, Revenue Leaders and Investors last month for this year's edition of the Annual, and we want to see even more members of the SaaStr community next year! 

Super early bird tickets are on sale now for their lowest price they'll ever be. 

Don’t join a B2B/SaaS company where you don’t believe in the CEO. 

This may sound obvious but the CEO in SaaS/B2B is almost always the Chief Customer Officer, the Chief Marketing Officer, and often, the best salesman.  If you don’t believe … who else will?  Well, maybe they will.  But it won’t be a good cultural fit for you.

Anu Hariharan works with hundreds of startups annually as Managing Director at Y Combinator. Through experience, she explains five company-altering learnings from B2B startups that founders should consider at the earliest stages of their businesses. 

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

• Secureframe is looking for a Head of Global Corporate Communications and PR to set the communications strategy and execute the plan that builds positive brand awareness for Secureframe. 

• SafeBase is seeking a Customer Success Manager to build and nurture customer relationships and become a trusted adviser for SafeBase’s enterprise customers.

• SaaStr 593: State of the Cloud 2022: The Centaur Report with Bessemer Venture Partners Sameer Dholakia, Mary D'Onofrio, and Elliott Robinson
• SaaStr 594: Optimizing GTM for PLG with Stage 2 Capital Co-Founder and Managing Director Mark Roberge
• SaaStr 595: 5 Critical and Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups with Y Combinator MD of YC Continuity Anu Hariharan

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

Let’s all be clear, 2021 was insane:

* SPACs worth billions with no revenue

* Multiples magically tripled

* Fintechs with 10% GMs worth same as 80% GMs

* #5 in market got same premium as #1

* Growth stage seen as free money *

Seed VCs bought in $3B-10B rounds vs sell

CMO probably a more stressful job than CRO

Why?

A CRO can always hope they can make it up in Q4. And once in a while, they even do.

For a CMO, that’s way too late. Almost none of the pipeline you build in 2H will close this year.

As strange as it sounds, there is a subset of SaaS startups that are finding VC fundraising a tiny bit easier in this market

Who?

Folks with strong, efficient growth that are doing very well

But not quite Top 5% well

They just get the Zoom now if growth is good + burn is low

If public multiples don't rebound at least a bit, startups will still get funded at a decent clip

But they will have to be far more capital efficient than they've been in years

© SaaStr 2022

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