SaaSletter - SaaS Metrics Palooza 2025
Featuring Dave Kellogg, Mark Roberge, Marcos Rivera, and Tidemark
This edition = *partial* highlights from Ray Rike + Benchmarkit’s SaaS Metrics Palooza 2025 2-day event last week → access replay here.
Tidemark Vertical SaaS Benchmarks
Andrew Walsh previewed Tidemark’s 2025 Vertical SaaS benchmarks1. I decided to save excerpts of their excellent multi-product section when the full report comes out.
Call outs from their AI x Vertical SaaS research:
The median AI attach rate has more than doubled (2024: 22% → 2025: 59%)! While noting that attach rate definitions can vary, our read of Tidemark’s 59% for Vertical SaaS is likely a bit ahead of AI adoption rates for (more Horizontal) public companies (see our recent AI quantification summary for 20 PublicCo’s)
Unsurprisingly, AI Enabled vendors are growing faster (+8%) with higher NRR (+5%).
Dave Kellogg On “Selling Work vs. Selling Software”
Dave Kellogg (EIR at Balderton) had a thoughtful deck on “Selling Work vs. Selling Software” that gets into some of my favorite topics: *customer* ROI and how software vendors share the value creation (aka value capture + value selling):
AI Monetization
Dave Kellogg’s talk transitions well into Marcos Rivera, Founder + CEO of Pricing I/O, a SaaS pricing consultancy, on “Monetizing AI Without Getting Your SaaS Kicked” - two excerpts from his key “BAM” (Base - Allowance - Meter) framework:
Mark Roberge On Sales AI
As somewhat of a sales AI skeptic, I found Mark Roberge’s (Co-Founder Stage 2 Capital, Founding CRO Hubspot, Professor at Harvard Business School) talk to be encouraging. His framework slides here… with supporting implementation case studies (from AI portco’s MomentumIO, Letter AI, and Rally UXR) in the event replay.
More SaaS Metrics Palooza 2025 Sessions
We can’t fit everything from a 2-day event into 1 newsletter. Other call-outs to go watch in the replay:
Jon Miller on branding (excerpt below)
“The AI Monetization Trap: Why SaaS Leaders Must Optimize for Moat, Not Margin” - from Gary Survis + Ethan Desilva of Insight Partners
“AI in Go-to-Market Benchmarks” - Craig Rosenberg of Scale Venture Partners
“Inside Tech PE: What Makes an “A” Asset” - Jennifer Smith
from Bain and Company and Katherine Zhang from OPEXEngine
Podcast With Godard Abel Of G2
FULL EPISODE: VIDEO | AUDIO: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | All Platforms
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:
The 2024 Tidemark report and our highlights are here:
