SaaSletter - Best Software + AI Content Of 2025
With New Content from Meritech, Battery Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and 6Sense
Our past curations of the best content (see 2H 2024, 1H 2024) have proven popular, so here are our selections for 2025:
Investor “State of __” Reports - Best Of 2025
[NEW] Meritech: Recently released their “2025 Market Update” (Slides | Video)
[NEW] Battery Ventures: “State of Enterprise Tech Spending December 2025” - covers 100 CXOs with $44 billion of tech spend = great coverage of “Enterprise Plus+” - h/t Evan Witte, Scott Goering, Nick Elsner)
[NEW] Menlo Ventures: “State of Generative AI In The Enterprise” - h/t Tim Tully, Joff Redfern, Deedy Das, Derek Xiao
Coatue: “Public Markets Update” (SLIDES | VIDEO) from October 2025 - with our excerpts + takes here
[NEW Curation] Scale Venture Partners: “State of GTM AI” - h/t Craig Rosenberg + co
Related Resource: Subscribe to Scale’s Quarterly Flash Reports - great real-time read of the market - h/t Dale Chang + co
[NEW Curation] Norwest: “B2B Sales & Marketing Benchmark Report” (102 slides, n=177) - h/t Renée Cohen
Redpoint - “2025 Market Update” - our takes + excerpts here - h/t Logan Bartlett, Adil Bhatia, Lydia Day
ICONIQ’s “State of Software 2025” (73 slides, h/t Christine Edmonds + co) - our full coverage here.
Bessemer Venture Partners - “State of AI 2025” (note the change from the historic Cloud → AI)
Felicis Ventures: “How to Size the Market for Vertical AI” - h/t Sundeep Peechu + Eric Flaningam
… plus my “State of Software + AI” presented at Bowery Capital’s Annual Meeting:
Benchmark Reports - Best Of 2025
Tidemark: 2025 Vertical + SMB SaaS Benchmark report (60 slides, n=200+). This is one of the most granular AND thesis-driven reports in the industry. Our full coverage here. h/t Dave Yuan, Andrew Walsh + co.
High Alpha: “2025 SaaS Benchmarks” (n=800+) with our takes here. h/t Kristian Andersen, Scott Dorsey, Mollie Kuramoto + co.
Benchmarkit + Emergence Capital: Cloud Ratings was honored to support Ray Rike + co’s benchmark report (n=563) as a partner, with our full coverage + update of our historical time series here:
Sapphire Ventures + KeyBanc: Here is the 2025 Benchmark Report (email required) from the longest-running series in the industry. Our coverage here.
Industry + Operator Reports - Best Of 2025
G2: Tim Sanders + team’s “A Leap of Trust: AI Agents Are Winning Hearts and Wallets” (57 slides; n = 1,000+ B2B software buyers). Key themes:
More evidence of solid AI ROI
Surprising signs of a “risk on” mentality from buyers despite meaningful incident rates and higher-than-expected human oversight. Those incident rates align with the poor AI success rates we covered in “Is AI An Abject Disaster?”
Related reading: G2’s “2025 Buyer Behavior Report” with our report takes here:
Fullcast: Guy Rubin + team’s “2025 H1 GTM Benchmarks” (covering $43 billion of pipeline) and their full year 2024 GTM benchmark report, which I deep dived with Guy Rubin on our “Cloud Radio” podcast (Audio | Video).
Zylo: Yet another favorite that was worthy of its own podcast episode: Ben Pippenger + team’s “2025 SaaS Management Index” covers $40+ billion of software spend across 40 million licenses, with uniquely strong visibility into the “Enterprise Plus” segment (average SaaS spend of $284 million per org!). Our report coverage focused on shorter contract durations as a symptom of AI-driven uncertainty.
[New] 6Sense: “2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report” - authoritative + scientific from Kerry Cunningham + co
Pavilion: Their excellent member surveys enabled our own research into n=227 forecast outcomes: “Pipeline & Deal Flow” is the most cited driver of misses, inspiring our “Marketing Takes The Blame” note:
~Indie Writers - Best Of 2025
Dave Kellogg always (deservedly) makes this list → some of his best work highlights of 2025 include “SLIDES - Selling Work vs Selling Software” + “How To Navigate the Pipeline Crisis” + “The Era of Haves and Have-Nots”
Along with ~anonymous writers deserving of shout-outs - OnlyCFO + Infra Play + Hacking SaaS Sales …
And Patrick McGovern of Bowery Capital for taking on the Sisyphean task of creating a new VC Substack in the year of 2025 → help him by subscribing to the “Capital Efficient” newsletter.
Recurring Market Updates - Best Of 2025
Recurring updates to subscribe to:
RepVue Cloud Sales Index - h/t Adam Little + co
ChartMogul Monthly Benchmarks - h/t Sophia Faustino + Nick Franklin
Scale Venture Partners’ Flash Report - h/t Dale Chang
Our Own Best Content Of 2025
Our 2025 Cloud Ratings Podcasts
Godard Abel of G2: VIDEO | AUDIO: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | All Platforms
Joey Brookhart of AlphaRepo: VIDEO | AUDIO: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | All Platforms
Guy Rubin of Ebsta / Fullcast: VIDEO | AUDIO: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | All Platforms
Ben Pippenger of Zylo: AUDIO | VIDEO | All Other Platforms
Our Value Creation Summit
With the theme “Better Data = Better Forecasts + Returns,” we were honored to have Guy Rubin, Ryan Walsh, Sean Saint, Jaap Westrik, and Kai Mitsushio serve as expert speakers:
Event Replay Available On YouTube
With our written event recap here, my presentation slides here, and my session here:
About Cloud Ratings
In mid-2024, we announced a research partnership with G2 - more here:
with this slide showing how our G2-enhanced Quadrants (like our recent Sales Compensation Software) release, this business of software newsletter you are reading, our podcasts, and our True ROI practice area all fit within our modern analyst firm:
Thanks, Matt! Always enjoy all your updates and writing as well!
Always one of my favorite your end ‘must read’ lists. 👏👏👏👏👏