Most recent deck

In 2021 I covered three extensions of SaaS basics:

  1. Measuring SaaS. Most GAAP metrics are trailing indicators of the state of the business.

  2. LTV segmentation and GTM. Aligning go-to-market tactics with the reality of what your customers are worth is key to building a fast-growing SaaS business.

  3. SaaS-iness. Most SaaS companies are not pure SaaS. They’ve layered in other business models opportunistically, including transaction fees, services, and hardware. In addition, many non-SaaS business are trying to become more SaaS-y by shifting to subscriptions. It’s helpful to think of SaaS-iness as a spectrum and to ask of any business, “How SaaS-y is it?” The answer to this question will inform how they form and execute strategy.

 
 

Measuring SaaS

Understanding SaaS and SaaS metrics 2.0. A good place to start.

Clouded Judgment. A weekly overview of public SaaS metrics.

All revenue is not created equal. From Bill Gurley, how to think about revenue multiples.

What it takes to become a public SaaS company. An overview of financial benchmarks to reach IPO scale.

A history of Public SaaS valuations. Just what it sounds like.

 
 

LTV and GTM

Five ways to build a $100mm business. A great, simple framework for understanding the interplay between average customer value and go to market tactics.

 

Bundling and Unbundling

Bundling and unbundling. From Harvard Business Review, an interview with Jim Barksdale and Mark Andreessen on Barksdale’s famous quote and what it means.

The four myths of bundling. A phenomenal dive into why bundles exist and how to construct them. One idea in here in particular has incredible power: The value of any bundle component is its marginal impact on retention. (I found the author’s podcast interview to be an even better distillation than the original article.)

Commoditize your complements. A classic, and a really good way of understanding why certain SaaS businesses behave the way they do. By no means a SaaS-specific idea.