SaaSletter - ICONIQ's Deck; My Real-Time Indicators for SaaS

I'm back to publishing after a long hiatus.

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A Must Read ICONIQ Metrics Deck - 2022 Trends

54 slides of granular AND longitudinal data from 92 leading SaaS companies:

Rule of 40 trending down in 2022

Burn Multiples worsening in 2022

Magic Numbers dropping fast in 2022

ICONIQ Deck - Best In Class Benchmarking

Great to have segmented by ARR bucket

Zooming out from YTD 2022 metrics, I found laying out the longitudinal data remarkably good

A few of the many highlights:

Best in class goals from $1m ARR onward

Drivers = new logos early on, expansion more important at scale

Moving up market is inevitable

Not good! - declining returns on Sales & Marketing with scale

Operating leverage *looks* good... but makes me wonder about long-term margins if this "as good as it gets" *5* years after $10m ARR

Good (and rare!) segmentation of marketing spend

The supply of PLG content is unstoppable

SaaS vs Macro - Indicators I'm Watching

Sales performance - as measured by RepVue quota attainment - has been quite bad in 2022:

Matt Harney @SaaSletter

Checking in on @repvue as a *real-time* proxy for SaaS sales environment vs macro. *Great* platform @ryan_c_walsh has built Quick snapshots: ENTERPRISE - trending down

Matt Harney @SaaSletter

MID-MARKET - trending down even more repvue.com/compensation/m…

Matt Harney @SaaSletter

SMB - Stabilizing but down from January repvue.com/compensation/s…

But demand indicators look healthy -> implies sales cyclces lengthening. This is consistent with management commentary on earnings calls across most of SaaS:

Matt Harney @SaaSletter

🧵 Given the macroeconomic situation, I wanted to explore if there has been any weakening in buyer demand for SaaS products: Looks like no macro impact...so far But.. /1

Assorted SaaS Links + Tweets

How Quickly Should You Grow to Key ARR Milestones? The Rule of 56789 - Kellblog — kellblog.com Question:  what do you call a 10-year old startup with $10M in ARR? Answer:  a small business [1]. When you make a list of key SaaS metrics, you’ll rarely find age listed among them.  That’s correct in the sense that … Continue reading →

"State of Tech" Deck - Kinesic Capital — twitter.com “Hi FinTwit, I'm pleased to share the second edition of Kinesic Capital's "State of Tech" Report, updated through July 2022. You can download a copy at the link below. I hope you enjoy! https://t.co/1tBoMrDbyW”

How Software Is Stifling Competition and Slowing Innovation - The New York Times — www.nytimes.com A tech entrepreneur turned academic takes on the “disruption myth.” Big companies, he argues, have built software moats against rivals.

Matt Harney @SaaSletter

State of Small Cap SaaS IPOs in 1 Picture: Thinkific (course creation software, like Teachable, Kajabi): $THNC 🇨🇦 - $0 enterprise value! - on $50m ARR growing 40%! - stock down 88%!

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