Inc - 4 Truly Great SaaS IPOs Since 2021

So SaaS is back. Top SaaS stocks are on fire the past few months, and the SaaS downturn in B2B2B appears to be behind us.

And as stock prices rip higher, growth VC floods back in. It’s natural.

But how aggressive will late stage investors be? 

• In AI, it’s insane.  As is growth, in some cases.  The 300x ARR round is here.  It’s 2021 but all over again, and different 
• But in SaaS overall, the growth playbook hasn’t totally worked out on the last 4 SaaS IPOs.  All of which are epic companies with epic metrics.

Some rough metrics for the last 4 SaaS IPOs — which again are epic ones.

Don't miss your chance to join 13,000+ SaaS founders, executives, and investors at the world's largest B2B SaaS conference. For a limited time, secure your spot at SaaStr Annual 2025 and enjoy Holiday savings.

At SaaStr Annual, Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO and Founder took questions from founders on everything from product-led growth to knowing when to sell your company. If you missed part one of the AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) catch up here.

In this Ask Me Anything Part 2, Lemkin answers the questions: 

1. As a bootstrapped company at $35M ARR with 60% gross margins but slower growth, should we raise venture funding?
2. What’s your view on product-led growth (PLG) for early-stage startups?
3. How do you know when you’ve reached product-market fit in SaaS?
4. What do you recommend for scaling beyond a founder-led sales motion after attaining $1-2M ARR?
5. When approached by a larger competitor with a “build or buy” narrative, what should a founder consider?
6. What’s Jason’s take on bootstrapping versus VC funding?

Let’s find out the answers. 

I’ve been there, on both sides of it. Let me just add my personal learnings.

First, this isn’t legal advice, but my guess is the contract mostly likely IS enforceable.

The signer probably did have the legal right to sign the contract. And even if they didn’t, they probably had sufficient “apparent authority” to bind your prospective customer.

But … at least in my experience … it ain’t worth trying to enforce it.

I tried this twice in our Year From Hell, when I thought it mattered:

The first time, a Fortune 100 TechCo signed a contract like this with us. I would have let it go, but it was very important to a sales rep. Against my better judgment, this one time, I tried to enforce it. What I quickly learned is two things: (1) you can’t afford to hire a lawyer because legal fees will quickly eclipse the value of the contract (this should be obvious), and (2) but you absolutely can send it to an enforcement / debtor / credit outsourcing firm.

There are firms that will try to enforce contracts for say 20% of the value. The problem is, like most folks working on contingency, they don’t try that hard. As soon as this Fortune 100 company said “we ain’t paying, period”, the firm stopped doing any real work. Worse, this company ended up going with our competitor after this process. Never, again.

The flip side, at about the same time, we had two contracts ourselves with vendors for about $30-$50k each that were not performing. One I paid based on the argument this vendor was also a customer. This turned out to be irrelevant, because it was such a different division of the customer, that the left arm never talked to the right. I shouldn’t have paid.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Prismatic

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So SaaS is back. Perhaps Databricks isn’t really SaaS, it’s Cloud + AI/Cloud infrastructure. But close enough for purposes of this post. The meta point is after a tough late 2023 and into 2024, SaaS, Cloud and more is back:

• In some cases, AI is the driver (Databricks, Palantir).
• In others, AI is a boost (Salesforce, Asana, HubSpt) to buying that has bounced off lows after Q3’24.
• In some cases, like vertical SaaS and B2B2C, it’s a combination of the strength of the economy plus automation (Samsara, ServiceTitan, Shopify, Klaviyo).

It’s a genuine set of issues to work on.

Having said that, many successful startups were founded by friends and partners. Mailchimp was. It sold for $12 Billion. Canva was. It’s valued at $40B.

What’s ultimately key is to talk about:

• How committed each of you are
• What happens if it takes 2–3 years to take off
• What happens if you totally have to change your product, vision, etc.
• What happens to your roles as you scale to say 20, 50, 100 employees
• What happens if one of you needs to move to a smaller role
• Do you both really want to do this for 10+ years

You at least need to talk about this.

– Director of Content:

Take over and manage a big part of our content calendar, and help manage our speakers and webinars. The engine already works here, you don’t have to create content (unless you want to), but you need to own a big chunk of the calendar and speakers. You have to be able to work at scale and with a lot of volume of content (30+ posts, 2 podcasts, 2 youtubes a week; 200+ speakers a year; 50 workshop wednesdays). But if you can own a big chunk of it, it’s a great chance to own it at a strong brand and platform.  This is not a great job for someone that likes to just work on 1 or 2 pieces of content a week or per month.

– Director of Growth:

Take over our rich, nuanced email campaigns and a multi-million dollar revenue target. If you know Marketo / HubSpot cold and love running highly segmented campaigns, this could be your role. A lot of variable comp potential. If you are truly great at email++, come get paid to run the playbook at scale here.  It’s really a B2C playbook for B2B executives though.  It’s a ton of high-volume campaigns, carefully tailored to many sub-audiences.  With relatively big revenue targets.

– Senior Sales Exec, Sponsor Sales

A chance to close $2m+ of partner / sponsor sales a year or more, and get paid well doing it, with a fair amount of autonomy. A fun way to close $60k-$100k deals with great brands to sell to — and a great brand behind you. If you enjoy selling to marketers especially.  But it’s selling sponsorships (events + media).  Make sure that’s you.  The role can be U.S.-based remote, it’s OK. The ideal candidate could work 2-3 days a week from our Palo Alto office, however. You can learn a bit what it’s like here.

– Director of Events

Want to help own SaaStr Annual, Europa and APAC?  Are you a truly hands-on IRL event exec that wants their shot at owning several iconic industry events?  Take your time and let us know what you could truly own here. And not just tell an agency to do it all.

When Dan O’Connell stepped into the CEO role at Front, a customer service platform with nearly 9,000 customers and nearly $100M in revenue, it wasn’t his first rodeo. Having previously taken over from the founder as CEO at TalkIQ (pre-revenue), Dan brought to SaaStr Annual his valuable insights about managing change at different company stages.

Dan shared four practical tips for leaders stepping into new roles – whether as a CEO, executive, or first-time manager. Here’s what he learned about driving effective change while preserving company culture.

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