SaaSletter - Cloud Cost Optimization + SaaS Headcount Trends

Plus more from Patrick Campbell + Hemant Mohapatra

Cloud Cost Optimization

From hyper-scaler earnings calls to Instacart’s S-1 disclosing its Snowflake costs, cloud cost optimization has been top of mind in 2023.

So we’re excited to debut this podcast episode with Ben Schaechter, Co-Founder + CEO of Vantage, a pure-play cloud cost optimization platform covering over $1 billion in spend that recently raised a $21m Series A from a16z + Scale Venture Partners.

AUDIO | VIDEO

For our many readers on the buyside, Vantage publishes quarterly Cloud Cost Reports that might have signal for your work

NEW SaaS Employment Index

We are excited to debut a new research series tracking headcount across 3,500+ US-headquartered, private software companies.

Some notes from 1st edition (through June 2023):

• 38% of SaaS companies with 100+ employees have had a decline in headcount in the past 6 months

  • However, only ~4% have had a decline of more than 10%

We are also offering deep dives at the functional level for each of Sales and Marketing:

Downloadable slides - including last 12 months data - are available here:

https://research.cloudratings.com/view/344790868/

Since we are creating this analysis from scratch, comparative data to other periods - i.e. vs Q4 2022 - is unavailable. That said, we will add comparisons as we go forward.

Curated Links + Tweets

Patrick Campbell makes a strong case for owned media - customer acquisition cost growth has been far below other B2B channels:

An apt quote from Hemant Mohapatra of Lightspeed India (h/t Gavin Baker):

Efficiency patterns are durable:

And finally, interim updates on our (peaking?) trend tracking for

#1 - AI search interest for the Big 3 Clouds (400+ keywords) → a directional proxy for the “AI Maker” side of the market

#2 - Cloud Cost Optimization