The Latest from SaaStr: The Great Coming Rebound in SaaS

So, things are brutal in the public markets, with multiples approaching all-time lows.

But … we’re seeing those very low prices bring out the Private Equity firms.

They are looking for bargains.  The latest is Coupa. 

In fact, this one was such a bargain that a bidding war broke out between two of the mighty giants here, Vista and Thoma Bravo.  Thoma Bravo won, agreeing to take Coupa private for $8 Billion. 

When 2 of the giants in PE, in the midst of a huge downturn, enter into a bidding war … that’s a sign.  A sign many of those with the biggest checkbooks in SaaS think things will get substantially better.

No way, you say?

Across their 100,000 customers, HubSpot has endured an unforgettable past few years. Lately, its customers have become very thoughtful about where they can spend their budget and how to do more with less in times of uncertainty.

Yamini Rangan, CEO at HubSpot, has many insights on how to serve SMB customers at scale.

That’s why Yamini sat down with Jason Lemkin, Founder & CEO at SaaStr, to share her thoughts with the SaaStr community.

Are super-corn rounds dead?  Well, yes, mostly for now.  But not entirely!  Dataiku passes $200m in ARR and raises $200m at a $3.7B valuation at the end of 2022!

A leader in enterprise AI, let’s take a look at 2 amazing sessions with the CEO and VP of Dataiku

#1. “The Toughest Roadblocks When Breaking Through to $15M ARR with Dataiku, Talkdesk and Tasty“.  A look back at the earlier days of breaking through with the CEO of Dataiku and the CEO and Co-founders of $10B Talkdesk and Tasty.

#2. “Product & Customer Success lessons for Companies of Any Size with Dataiku CCO + Lead of CS”. Dataiku’s CCO joined us for a deep dive on how to really pair product + customer success.  When they work together, customers are happier and more problems are solved.

Workshop Wednesdays are back next week! 

And we'll have none other than SaaStr's own CEO + Founder, Jason Lemkin, host a workshop on 8 Ideas On How to Motivate The Sales Team After a Rough Patch.

If you haven't attended Workshop Wednesday yet, these are live, interactive, 30-minute sessions with tons of audience participation and live Q&A. 

Cooley is one of the top law firms representing startups, and so they have data that no one else quite has. 

They know exactly what venture deals are priced at, exactly how many are happening, and exactly what is happening across 100s and 100s of leading startups.

Other data sources are great, but law firms have a unique access to the exact, real data.  Everyone else is scanning public filings and making some educated guesses.

And what Cooley has seen for later-stage VC rounds is pretty brutal.  More brutal than I thought, in fact.  You can see the simply massive decline in the total amounts of VC capital raised this year.

It’s time for our annual round-up of your favorite SaaStr content! Today, we’re giving you #25-#13 of our top podcast episodes of 2022! Keep an eye out for the second half of the list on Thursday!

Having now worked with a few dozen SaaS CEOs who are much better CEOs than I ever was, I think I can boil it down to 2 characteristics:

• They can see the future, and
• They have the ability to recruit and build the teams to get there.

The best founders, at least by the time they have 50–100 customers, can see at least several years into the future. They know where the markets are going, where their competitors are weak and strong, and they can basically answer almost any question about their markets you can throw at them. And importantly, when they don’t know the answer, they always tell you they don’t.

Your sales and customer success teams are losing deals and customers due to backlogged integration requests.

But can you really justify spending months of development on each integration, when an embedded iPaaS can help offload 70% of the work?

There are a lot of factors to consider in this build vs. buy decision, and it's all outlined in this guide.

Tip the payment scales in your favor by being one of the first to unlock exclusive early access to BlueSnap's 2023 Payment Predictions eBook.

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