Sammy is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Blossom Street Ventures. Email him directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com, especially founders. Average Contract Value is important, but don’t obsess over it. Maximizing ACV shouldn’t be the goal and as you’ll see below, the last 38 SaaS companies to IPO had a modest median ACV of $26,985. A few…
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Nicholas Carlson wrote a fantastic book about Yahoo entitled “Marissa Mayer and The Fight to Save Yahoo.” Below I have paraphrased what I found to be valuable sections, verbatim; the full book is definitely worth the read. Allow employs to give feedback, anonymously. The questions were submitted during the week leading up to the…
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Sammy is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Blossom Street Ventures. Email him directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com, especially founders. We’ve had the good fortune of learning from and investing in SaaS businesses with excellent customer retention and upsells. Below are some of the key learnings we’ve gathered over time. The Customer Success Team is not the…
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Below are revenue multiples for publicly traded consumer tech companies we follow (B2C). Industries and therefore multiples vary widely. Commentary is below. If you’re looking for data on SaaS multiples, check out our post from last week. Social media popped to 13x. The highs in 2017 were ~14x, but a more normalized multiple historically…
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Sammy is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Blossom Street Ventures. Email him directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com, especially founders. At the link below is one of the best startup post-mortems I’ve ever read. It’s by a founder of a company called Moz. The business had fantastic growth out of the gate, took on major VC money,…
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Sammy is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Blossom Street Ventures. Email him directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com, especially founders. Recently, we got a hold of an investor letter from one of New York’s finest late stage venture funds. The letter shared insights into what the fund looks for in a management team, which resonated with…
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Sammy is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Blossom Street Ventures. Connect on LinkedIn or email him directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com, especially founders at all stages. SaaS comps have never been stronger: of the 98 SaaS companies we follow, the average public SaaS business is trading at 18.3x revenue while the median is 13.92x. Interestingly, the…
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“By Invitation Only” is the story of Gilt Groupe. While Gilt may not have been a good outcome for many investors (it ultimately exited for $250mm but was at one time a unicorn), the book has a number of great take-aways for ecommerce businesses. It’s easier to move a brand down market than…
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Sammy is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Blossom Street Ventures. Email him directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com, especially founders. Net dollar retention is the most important metric in SaaS. If you’re over 100%, revenue from upsells is outpacing revenue you’re losing from downgrades and churn. It means you’re keeping the customer base forever, and your current…
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Sammy is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Blossom Street Ventures. Email him directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com, especially founders. Gross dollar churn is important, but in our view net dollar dollar retention is the critical figure to watch. For those on annual contracts, it is generally defined as revenue from customers in the beginning of a…
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