Opinion
Goyal: Large SaaS companies cannot be built without US success
“I still continue to believe that there is no software company to be built unless you can be successful in US. And I hope I'll be wrong soon, and I want to be wrong actually, genuinely on that, but not yet. I don't think in 10 years I have seen that ability to …”
Opinion
Goyal: Whatfix beats WalkMe across every SaaS metric
“There was WalkMe in that segment. But today, WhatFix beats WalkMe just in every SaaS metric one can think of.”
Opinion
Goyal: Incumbents Like Seismic and Highspot Will Fail on AI Enablement
“They're just rethinking how sales enablement should be thought about using AI. And I don't think that the seismics and the high spots of the world are going to get there. I know that's a very strong statement to make, but I just don't think they will.”
Disclosure
Stellaris has led rounds where existing investors refused to reinvest
“There are multiple companies in our portfolio, which had existing investors in the company. They decided not to Put more money behind those companies and despite their signaling, we have actually come and led the rounds in those companies also.”
Insight
Goyal: DPI is the only venture metric that ultimately matters
“LPs as well as GPS. We have all realized that all numbers are good, but there's only one number that eventually matters. And that is DPI, right?”
Insight
Goyal: LPs tolerate underperformance more than strategy drift
“I think they're okay taking sometimes even lack of performance in a particular fund, but they're backing a certain strategy. What they don't like is sort of macho behavior where you said I will do X, but you end up doing Y because then that's not consistent wi…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2029
Goyal: India will produce 10+ billion-dollar SaaS IPOs or exits by 2029
“My hypothesis or my projection, Siddharth, is that in the next three to four years, you will see at least ten billion dollar plus exits or IPOs in SaaS. All built from India.”
Prediction Held up
Goyal: Late-stage venture funding will collapse in 2023
“I think 2023 is going to be a very hard time. What that means is that as public comms correct, or have corrected, I'm sorry, you will see that the late stage funding is going to go for a toss totally.”
Assertion Supported
Goyal: Profitability has replaced growth as primary driver of US SaaS multiples
“The biggest driver of multiples today is whether you're profitable or you're not profitable, right? Sentiment has changed.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Goyal: Number of Indian $100M+ ARR SaaS companies will grow exponentially
“I think of this as an exponential curve, Siddharth, not as a linear curve. You build one today, you build three tomorrow, you build nine the year after, and then 27 the year after. So, I think of it as an exponential journey and not a linear journey.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Goyal: Bulk of Software Incumbents Will Fail to Adapt to AI
“Some incumbents will get their act together. Bulk of the incumbents will not get their act together.”
Opinion
Goyal: Indian founder ambition scales as ecosystem benchmarks like Swiggy emerge
“Now when a Swiggy goes public at a more than a ten billion dollar valuation, You will find people thinking much, much bigger than what they used to in the past. So I think just the bar of the ecosystem gradually changes, but I think we are progressing there ve…”
Insight
Goyal: Venture deals should never require consensus or allow individual vetoes
“We do not believe consensus is a great way to make decisions for venture deals. We also believe that nobody should have a veto. No single individual is so smart. Across sectors that they know what the world will look like in eight to 10 years data suggests tha…”
Opinion
Goyal: Go-to-market strategy for AI applications is identical to traditional SaaS
“There is no difference between taking an AI application to market versus taking the applications to market that used to exist in the past as well.”
Insight
Goyal: SaaS market premiums only reward category leaders and top followers
“Even in SAS, you will find that in every category, there is like a massive market leader, which will be the outlier, 40, 50, 60% market share. There'll be two or three others, anywhere between 10 to 20, 30% kind of market share, and then there's a long tail. A…”
Insight
Goyal: Pre-Series A Indian startups should avoid hiring US-based GTM teams
“I would argue that if they try to attempt and build a U.S. Go-to-market team with U.S. People, that is a very high-risk strategy. It can work, but I think it's too high-risk a strategy in my opinion.”
Insight
Goyal: Late-stage SaaS needs Net New ARR to Net Burn >1
“At the later stages, the metric actually I worry about the most is net new ARR added divided by the net burn in a quarter. And if that ratio is more than one, you're healthy. If that ratio is less than one, you're not so healthy.”
Insight
Goyal: Great SaaS companies are not built on cost advantages
“I personally don't even believe in the cost advantage. I don't think great SaaS companies are built because you have lower cost.”
Opinion
Goyal: Only a thin slice of India's developers matter for SaaS
“And not because we have four million developers, et cetera, because I would argue in those four million developers, it's only that very thin slice at the top is actually what matters to these product companies.”
Disclosure
Goyal: Stellaris passed on Postman's seed round due to lacking understanding
“Is why I left Postman. In fact, if I may admit, I couldn't even understand what they did at that point in time. I looked at it at the same time as others did in seed stage. One of my colleagues was very keen, actually, that we do it, but I couldn't even unders…”
Insight
Goyal: Developer tooling will create massive value due to developer supply shortage
“Software productivity just has to go up. There is no other way. Or we will not have the software. Right? So the demand exists. Supply doesn't exist. And so the supply has to scale faster. And the only way supply will scale faster is when developer productivity…”
Insight
Goyal: Early-stage investors must evaluate founder learning agility over domain knowledge
“I think we need to judge people for their learning capability, not their Prior knowledge of the problems and the solutions to those problems.”
What-if
Goyal: Whatfix would have died if they followed most of my advice
“You know, if WhatFix had listened to most things I had said, I think they'll be dead five years back. The reason they're successful is because they apply their own judgment, and I'm not saying that everything I've said was wrong, but we sit at a distance.”
Disclosure
Goyal: Stellaris enforces strict sector boundaries for its investment team
“We took a call right at the beginning that we will be organized by sectors. And these are fairly hard gated boundaries of sectors. If I do SAS, then I do SAS. When I find a FinTech deal, I'm actually going to send it to him. I'm not going to do that because qu…”
