Hey everyone -

We're quickly approaching our largest, and most ambitious SaaStr Annual yet -- and with less than 80 days to the biggest SaaS event of the year, we don't want you to miss out!

Be there September 6-7-8 in the heart of the Bay Area for 3 days of tactical content, hands-on workshops, mentorship sessions, speed networking, recruiting and epic evening events.

With 12,500+ of the best SaaS leaders, executives, revenue leaders and investors joining us this year, this will certainly be the biggest and best SaaStr Annual yet.

So YCombinator put out a list of its largest success stories not by valuations (as they’ve done in the past) — but by revenues.

It’s 2023.  It’s not a valuation game anymore.  It’s about putting real points up on the board, and after that, real profits.

So when sliced by revenue, what can we learn?

That 50% of the top YC companies of all time by revenue are B2B/SaaS.

Yes, B2C companies still often get more attention.  But revenues?  50% of YC’s top companies by revenues are B2B, vs. 22% that are consumer.

A few thoughts:

Talk to as many founders they’ve invested in as you can. Do reference checks. YYou may hear 1 or 2 rough stories, bear that in mind. Don’t expect 100% support, at least not for folks at big funds that write big checks and serve on boards. But talk to as many as you can, at least a few. And listen. And ask how supportive they were vs. the others.

Ask how many investments they write second and third checks into. VCs that don’t write second checks are much less valuable.

See how pushy they are around control. If they insist on a board seat for < 10% ownership, that’s a flag. If they want control disproportionate to the cap table, that’s a flag.

Ask if they’ll still be there in 10 years, at the same fund. Just ask. If you don’t get a clear answer, they may not be.

Ask what’s the toughest founder-VC experience they’ve been through, and what they learned from it. They are always frictions. See what they’ve learned from it.

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When change is happening, even “negative” change, there’s always opportunity in it, says Bill Magnuson, Co-Founder and CEO of Braze.

But how do you find that opportunity when there’s a lot of pressure from venture and the market? 

Braze was founded in 2011 when the most exciting mobile apps were a compass, a flashlight, and a game where you could feed fish. They were building for a market that didn’t exist so they could sell to job titles that also didn’t exist. 

If you’re building a generational company, you need to think long-term. You can’t chase shiny objects. You need to parse through the vanity metrics and figure out what will endure. 

Magnuson shares his insights on how to find opportunities during headwinds and how Braze scaled to $400M+ ARR.

Each year we get 1000s of applications to speak at SaaStr Annual and Europa, and on our podcast and Workshop Wednesdays.  Maybe 1% of applications get accepted.

But — it’s not that simple.  The best ones just leap off the page.  And there are clear reasons some of the ones “on the edge” get slotted and others don’t.  At least 50% of the ones that meet the bar get slotted.  At least half.

In Q1 of 2023, Vendr gathered data on SaaS Spending and yielded some pretty interesting results. 

Completed Deal Counts for Software Types

This list reveals the types of software with the highest deal counts across Q1 2023

1. CRM
2. Cybersecurity
3. Project Management
4. Application Performance Monitoring
5. Digital Analytics
6. Sales Intelligence
7. Business Intelligence Platform
8. Cloud Data Integration
9. e-Signature 
10. Sales Engagement
11. Video Conferencing
12. Version Control Hosting
13. Business Communication
14. Password Manager 
15. Cloud Identity and Access Management

© SaaStr 2023

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