Scrase: Top-quartile SaaS firms have 3x shorter payback and 7x higher valuation
Lindsey Scrase · The Playbook for Going Upmarket with Stripe's CBO and Checkr's COO · Feb 12, 2025 · at 16:30
Checkr COO Lindsay Scrase discusses SaaS performance benchmarks and the impact of capital efficiency on valuations.
0:00 / 0:14exact quote · 14.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Also, if you think about payback period, if you look at top quartile SaaS companies versus bottom quartile, top quartile have three X shorter payback period than the bottom quartile and seven X higher valuation.”
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 Lindsey Scrase
Scrase: Checkr captured over 95% of the gig economy market
“We started with DoorDash from there to ride sharing and other delivery companies and had 95% plus of the gig economy.”
Checkr COO: Never trade away enterprise logo rights
“Make sure your sales teams are not trading away logo rights. You have to get those logos to be able to have them as referenceable customers, and often it takes one big lighthouse logo in an industry, and then the dominoes start to fall, and you start to be abl…”
SaaS sales and marketing spend dropped from 55% in 2019 to 30%
“If you look at SaaS companies, the amount that they're spending on sales and marketing is a percentage of revenue. This was as high as over 50, 55% in 2019. The peak of spend, free money, investment, growth at all costs. That's down to 30% in 2024, just becaus…”
Scrase: Usage-based SaaS demands different management than typical seat-based subscriptions
“This is a transactional business and usage based, and that needs to be managed very differently than a typical subscription SaaS model. And we earn revenue when the customer is using the product. It's versus the license space where you're, as a seller, on the …”