SaaSletter - G2's State of Software
Plus Our New Partner Management Software Quadrant
2024 Partner Management Software Quadrant
We released our Partner Management Software Quadrant for 2024.
Through Cloud Ratings research partnership with G2, the Sales Engagement Software Quadrant has been enhanced with ROI, implementation timelines, and customer mix data from G2.
G2’s Latest “State of Software”
G2 published their latest “State of Software” report (40 slides). As always, go read the full report. My excerpts:
75% of AI buyers receive ROI within 12 months:
Another view of ROI: by my math, this chart averages to a ~50% IRR from software purchases -> Shows why software keeps growing relative to 15% corporate hurdle rates (benchmark via Michael Mauboussin at Counterpoint Global).
Zooming in on *review growth* (a key proxy for product adoption + revenue), some notable trends: Service and HR are both strong (stronger than "trendy" areas like Security or Analytics)
Reminder: while Gartner has the overall SaaS industry growing at 20% for 2024e, if the number of products is growing at 10% (per this G2 chart), the real "same-store sales" growth rate is 10%
Interesting data on most viewed categories, with Vertical a clear number one:
Curated Content
“The AI Hype: $600B question or $4.6T+ opportunity?” - from Ashu Garg, General Partner at Foundation Capital, adds to the “AI Math” debate we’ve covered here and here
It always comes back to the revenue machine → this analysis from David Spitz of Benchsights shows:
Efficient sales + marketing: stocks +32% YTD
Inefficient GTM: stocks down 13% YTD
A good chart from Goldman Sachs: past forecasts have underestimated ultimate cloud market sizes by 34% to 108% (h/t Jeff Richards of Notable Capital)
My AI highlights from Salesforce’s earnings transcript:
1,500 AI deals in Q2
AI bookings doubled quarter over quarter
Warnings against customers DIY AI
Marissa Moore, CFA - vertical software lead at OMERS Ventures
- and Taku Murahwi are upcoming guests on our “Cloud Returns” podcast. Any questions for them? We will cover their vertical AI deep dive, 152-page report (excerpt below) on the show.
About Cloud Ratings
In case you missed it, we recently announced a research partnership with G2 - more here:
with this slide showing how our G2-enhanced Quadrants, this newsletter, our podcasts, and our growing True ROI practice area (see Ivan Arizaga’s appointment as a Principal Analyst) all fit within our modern analyst firm:
Superb read!