The Cloud 100's Growth Rates Have Plummeted

So how are the top SaaS and Cloud companies doing in 2023?

Bessemer’s latest Cloud 100 answers the question. 

Their top 100 SaaS and Cloud companies — the “Cloud 100” — are almost all at $100m+ ARR, and growing on average 55% year-over-year.

Now that’s still pretty darn impressive at $100m+ ARR.  But in 2022, they were growing 100% annually.

The impacts aren’t even, however.  I know a few in the Cloud 100 whose growth has plummeted to 20% or lower.  And several of the high-fliers are growing faster than ever, over 100%.

Still, averages are good to give us all a sense of overall “macro” impacts in SaaS.  Net net, the leaders’ growth has plummeted by almost half.  Still growing, but relying a lot on upsell and retention.

Here’s to an uptick in 2024!!

So recently a sales leader I really like reached out to me regarding his next role.  He’d recently resigned from a startup I knew reasonably well, and where I’d met the founder.  I was happy to help.

Until I looked at his LinkedIn and saw that while I thought he’d been there for a while … but it was just 1 Year 7 Months per LinkedIn.

Then I looked at his prior role.

1 Year 4 Months. 

And the one before that? 

Not much longer or better.

I wanted to help, but without a single recent role for more than 24 months, and with him having resigned (not been laid off) from his last role, I just couldn’t. 

Whatever his strengths, I couldn’t in good faith recommend him for a leadership role, or even one in a real position of trust.

So this is a very simple post, and a simple suggestion: before you quit a role you’ve had some success in, at least consider staying 24 months.

I know times have changed, and the world has changed, and folks are leaving roles more quickly, more often.  But almost every CEO and founder know is looking for folks to put in positions of trust that might stay.  That might stay through Year 2 when you get better, Year 3 when you really crush it, and Year 4 when you run the place.  If you’re just there to learn a bit, you often learn all the playbook in 14-18 months.  But if you are there to lead, even as an IC, you start to get great around month 24-30.  And then scale from there.

The fifth edition of SaaStr Europa will feature 2.5 days, and 3,500 B2B/ SaaS Founders, Executives and Investors, coming together to share their learning in the heart of London. 

We’ll once again take over the entire Tobacco Docks for SaaStr Europa 2024, 4-5 of June and bringing the best in SaaS with us. Use our exclusive newsletter code for a discount on early bird tickets.

Any founder you talk to likely remembers every investor who said no to them.

Those founders hold a special kind of “not hatred,” says Michael Seibel, Managing Director and Group Partner at Y Combinator, but a special kind of something for those investors and a desire to prove them wrong.

If you’re a seed-stage startup, Michael shares the best ways for you to present your company to startup investors.

In this article, we’ll cover the best tactics to catch investor attention and reveal the secret to standing out.

This is the same advice they give YC companies to become much more successful at fundraising when they’re pre-product market fit.

Dealing with stress is important, especially for founders, who do have to hide … some of it.  Per the WSJ and Challenger, Grey, this year more CEOs have left their jobs than any year since 2002 when they started tracking.  More than in 21+ years.

For me at least, 4 things made a material impact.

So there’s no question HubSpot overall is far bigger than recently IPO’d Klaviyo, at an impressive $2B in ARR, growing an epic 27%.

But HubSpot is a platform today, from Marketing to Sales to Service to CMS — a true Customer Platform.

Its first product is the most mature — its Marketing Hub is growing 20%, vs CRM at 30% and Service at 40%.

HubSpot used to break out the revenue by Hub, I’m not sure it does today but guessing based on prior estimates, Marketing is probably around $1.2B of the $2B total ARR for HubSpot.

Now let’s compare that to its Marketing-Only (for now), eCommerce almost entirely (for now), neighbor in Boston, Klaviyo.

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