Snapchat cofounders Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy owned a combined 44% of Snapchat before it went public. Mark Zuckerberg owned 31% of Facebook, Sergey Brin and Larry Page owned 31% of Google, the founders of Eventbrite owned 35%, and Reed Hastings owned 24% of NetFlix. These are remarkable levels of CEO ownership upon going public/exit,…
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We recently got Software Equity Group’s SaaS M&A Snapshot for Q2 2020. SEG is an investment bank focused SaaS companies and they put out fantastic data on what they’re seeing in the market. They’re also a great firm if you’re looking for a banker (softwareequity.com or I can make an intro). Key observations from their…
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Building out, maintaining, and upgrading a technology stack requires a constant commitment to developers and engineers, so what is an appropriate level of development or R&D expense for a successful SaaS business? We looked at 90 publicly traded SaaS businesses at the time of IPO and 2 years prior to get a sense for how…
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A good friend of mine just exited the business he founded for $25mm. Since he built the business on so little outside investment, he owned 52% at exit and took home $13mm. This type of exit brings up an important point: too many founders take a typical venture approach which is to focus on the…
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Cash efficiency is as important as growth, especially when you’re a fast growing, cash burning startup with limited capital. One measure of cash efficiency is revenue/total capital invested. When you’re in early revenue the metric will look abysmal, but as the business grows and realizes economies of scale (generally $2mm+ of revenue), the measure improves….
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What’s the level of investment needed to build a tech company that goes public? The data and observations from 161 tech IPOs are below. Software businesses needed $135mm of equity. On median, publicly traded software companies raised $135mm through their Series D before going public. Note the average equity raised of the 16 companies…
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How many years will it take you to exit? 10 years is the generic answer, but that’s wrong. The data says depending on what industry you’re in, it might take as long as 11 years (hardware) or as few as 4 years (payments). We looked at 156 tech companies in various industries that have IPO’d…
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This happens. Occasionally you and your investors/VC won’t see eye to eye or worse yet, you’re sideways with your VC and the relationship is acrimonious or hostile. While I’ve never had a hostile relationship with a founder, certainly there are times where we’ve been in disagreement on major issues or a founder isn’t happy with us for…
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Venture backed companies like Airbnb, Uber, WeWork, and Spotify, are unprofitable. Is this the norm or just a trend for the more recent vintage of high flying companies? To answer that question, we took a look at the operating income and free cash flow of 123 tech companies at the time they went public going…
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There, I said it. Average Contract Value is (“ACV”) is a vanity metric that does not deserve focus. It is a byproduct of your business model, not a driver of it. It shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. Here is why: The world’s biggest and best software companies tend to have smaller ACV’s. Below is…
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