Shen: Top quartile cloud companies reach $100M ARR in 5 years
Christina Shen · Bessemer Venture Partners: The State of the Cloud, 2017-2018 Edition · May 13, 2017 · at 9:38
Christina Shen of Bessemer Venture Partners presents SaaS growth benchmarks at SaaStr Annual 2017 based on historical data from 43 public cloud companies.
0:00 / 0:15exact quote · 15.7s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We mapped the 43 top cloud companies out there, and looked at the top, median, and bottom quartile. And we saw that the top quartile gets from one to a hundred million in just five years. The median in seven, and the bottom quartile in just over 10.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Christina Shen
Shen: Growth-adjusted private SaaS valuations remain reasonable relative to public markets
“That means in the last two years, despite seemingly high private company valuations it actually shows on a growth-adjusted basis, private valuations have actually been fairly reasonable.”
Shen: The 70-50-30 efficiency rule for scaling SaaS companies
“The BVP efficiency rule says if you're greater than thirty million in revenue, you just have to remember three numbers. 70, 50, 30. And that's because when you're expansion stage company and you're, call it 30 to sixty million in ARR, 40 is actually too low of…”
Shen: Cloud software investment quadrupled in six years, taking 50% of VC
“If you look at what's been invested in cloud software, it has literally quadrupled in a six year time period and represents about 50% of total venture capital funding”
Shen: Early-stage private SaaS growth accelerated from 170% to 250% by 2018
“In 2011, they were growing on average of a 170%. These are companies that are between one and twenty million ARR. Today, they're growing about 250%.”
Shen: Top SaaS companies scale from $1M to $10M in two years
“If you are a good company, you got from one to ten million in AR in just four years. That means you did a little better than a double, double, double, double, and you're on the same growth trajectories as companies like Cornerstone and Mindbody. If you're in t…”
Shen: CAC payback benchmarks for SMB, mid-market, and enterprise SaaS
“If you are a mid-market company, 12 month probably is your right number. But if you're selling to enterprise and you've got hundred K ACV deals, you're driving great upsell, you should think of everything as an LTV to CAC ratio. So if you've got a higher LTV, …”