Everyone’s Adding AI -- But It’s Not Accelerating Growth For Most of Us
?Everyone’s Adding AI. But That Doesn’t Mean It’s Accelerating Growth.
So it's clear AI is a generational change in software. Where it will exactly all go we can’t 100% predict.
But there’s a general sense of the Haves and Have Nots. That the Open AIs, Microsofts and Databricks “get it”, that Nvidia is the fuel, that all the hot start-ups are AI native and still raising at unicorn valuation … and that many SaaS leaders are sort of being left in the dust.
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We're counting down to SaaStr Annual 24!
Save on tickets before prices go up July 31st
?Hey SaaStr Community, We're getting so close now to SaaStr Annual 2024 ?— the world's largest community gathering for SaaS and Cloud professionals — from Sept 10-12 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Head to the SaaStr Annual 2024 site to lock in your rates before the prices increase for last-chance tickets at midnight on July 31st! You're just a few clicks away from joining more than 13,000 fellow SaaS CEOs, founders, revenue leaders, and investors at the 10th(!) SaaStr Annual 2024. It's three days of experiential learning and connecting with your favorite SaaS companies, like OpenAI, Nvidia, Bill.com , Plaid, Klaviyo, Google Cloud, Oracle, G2 and many others. ? So what are you waiting for?
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What it Takes to Get Funded in 2024 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
? What does it take to get funded in 2024?
Some of this stuff you’ll know, and some of it you won’t. What’s driving VCs today? Let’s find out.
?Venture capital is the same as before but different. It’s a weird world where seed valuations are at an all-time high. It’s always been hard to raise venture capital, but if you’re in the group of folks VCs do want to fund, it’s like 2021 in some ways.
?You won’t see a new unicorn a day, but insiders are writing their third or fourth check. These unicorns are often different from the 2021 unicorns. We all mocked those 100x revenue deals as the market crashed, especially when the average public company was trading at 5-6x. But those kinds of deals are back and only in the segment of AI.
?Why are they being funded? VCs aren’t dummies. They’re bet-makers.
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Coatue: We Have a 25 Year IPO Backlog. But Software Will Bounce Back Soon.
So?Coatue a leading multi-stage VC firm put up a ton of great data in its East West conference. A few that I thought we were super helpful for SaaS folks:
?“At the 8th annual East Meets West (EMW) conference, we gathered technology leaders from around the world for three days of thought-provoking conversations and connection building.
?We kicked off the event with our annual “Coatue View on the State of the Markets” to provide an outlook on the macroeconomic landscape that helps guide our view on both the public and private markets. Despite ever-present uncertainty and change, our analysis suggests that public markets remain resilient and that AI continues to present a new vector of opportunity.”
?#1. There Are So Many Unicorns, We Have a 25 Year IPO Backlog
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Now of course in theory, IPOs could dramatically exceed their historical pace.? But assuming that doesn’t happen — and it’s been a very dry 2.5 years for IPOs — it would take 25 years to get through all the unicorns we already have.
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When Not to Offer a Free Trial. Answer: When Your App Simply Can’t Pull it Off.
Lots of SaaS companies don’t offer a free trial — intentionally. But more and more are adding them, from Atlassian to New Relic to Monday.com and more.
?Slack and Zoom showed us you can be more far freer than average and grow far faster than average. At least some apps can. And HubSpot and Mailchimp added Free later … and accelerated as a result. Some great data from HubSpot here a little ways back.
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5 Interesting Learnings from OneStream at $480,000,000 in ARR
So we’ve finally got another SaaS IPO gearing up — OneStream. It’s SaaS for CFOs and financial operations, a large but somewhat under-discussed category. SAP and Oracle are very strong here.
LET'S WATCH
Video of the Week
How to Use AI-Powered Marketing to Get More Leads and Customers with Guillaume Cabane of HyperGrowth?Partners (Video + Pod)
? As a marketing leader, how do you use today’s AI platforms and tools to become more efficient? Guillaume Cabane, Co-Founder and General Partner at HyperGrowth Partners and ex-head of marketing at Drift. Gorgias and Segment, shares how you can win with AI in outbound, SEO, and paid.
?Deep Dive: AI-Powered Marketing to Get More Leads and Customers with HyperGrowth Partners.
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3 个月Beyond VC considerations, it seems like AI is quickly becoming an expected feature of a given solution as opposed to being a unique differentiator. Would you agree?