SaaS Contribution Margin & Customer Profitability

Bill.com, SumoLogic, and Confluent are public SaaS companies with excellent customer performance.?In their prospectus’, each of these companies was generous enough to share beautiful contribution margin data.?Specifically, Bill.com shows the contribution margin of customers acquired in 2017, and SumoLogic and Confluent do it for customers acquired in 2018.?It’s a very nice illustration of the first three years of a SaaS customer in a healthy SaaS business.?The charts are below.?Commentary follows.?

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The definition.?Contribution is generally defined as the aggregate ARR from an annual cohort at the end of a given fiscal year, less the estimated associated cost of revenue and estimated allocated sales and marketing expense.?

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In the first year, your margin is -100%.?Generally speaking, the first year of any customer in a SaaS business is an unprofitable one.?That’s because the sales & marketing expense to acquire the customer is incurred in year 1.?As you can see for Bill.com, for fiscal 2017, the 2017 Cohort represented $6.7 million in revenue billed to these customers, $11.8 million in sales and marketing costs to acquire these customers, and $2.3 million of cost of sales representing a computed contribution margin of -108%.?

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For SumoLogic, the 2018 cohort accounted for $10.1 million in ARR and $19.8 million in associated costs, representing a contribution of -$9.7 million, or a contribution margin of -97%.?

?Confluent’s contribution margin was -$22.5mm for a contribution margin of -107%.

In the 2nd year, you start becoming profitable.?Since you never incur sales & marketing expense again to acquire the customer, the only cost in any SaaS business is just the “cost of sales”. For Bill.com, in fiscal 2018 and 2019, the 2017 Cohort represented $14.2 million and $17.3 million, respectively, in revenue billed to these customers and $3.9 million and $4.2 million, respectively, in estimated costs related to retaining and expanding these customers, representing a computed contribution margin of 73% and 76%, respectively.?

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For Sumo, at the end of fiscal 2019, the 2018 cohort accounted for $14.6 million in ARR and $7.6 million in associated costs, representing a contribution of $7.0 million, or a contribution margin of 48%. At the end of fiscal 2020, the 2018 cohort accounted for $18.3 million in ARR and $8.2 million in associated costs, representing a contribution of $10.1 million, or a contribution margin of 55%.?

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For Confluent, the 2018 cohort accounted for $40.7 million in subscription revenue and $20.0 million in associated costs, representing a contribution margin of $20.7 million, or a contribution margin percentage of 51%. In 2020, the 2018 Cohort accounted for $46.7 million in subscription revenue and $17.3 million in associated costs, representing a contribution margin of $29.4 million, or a contribution margin percentage of 63%.

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The revenue grew.?Note that for Bill.com, revenue in year 1 was only $6.7mm.?In years 2 and 3, it was $14mm and $17mm respectively, meaning the cohort grew materially.?Indeed, good SaaS businesses have cohorts that grow over time, as upgrades in the customer base outpace downgrades and churn.?For Sumo, year 1 revenue was $10.1mm, but then grew to $14.6mm in 2019 and $18.3mm by 2020.?Confluent’s revenue went from $21mm in year 1 to $40.7mm and $46.7mm respectively.?All of these companies enjoy net dollar retention over 100%.?For instance, Confluent’s NDR in 2020 is 125%.?

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Payback is fast.?According to Bill.com, “for customers acquired during fiscal 2018, the average payback period was approximately five quarters.”?Good SaaS businesses recover the cost of acquiring the customer within 1.5 years.?

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Bill.com, Sumo, and Confluent’s customer cohorts are a nice example of what a good SaaS business will experience: i) you lose money on the customer in year 1 (about -100% marign); ii) in year 2 the customer becomes very profitable and you recover the cost of acquiring the customer; iii) over time, your customers buy more product from you rather than less so long as net dollar retention is over 100%+.?Maintain these same attributes in your own SaaS business and you’ll be on your way to joining these companies in an IPO.???

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Sammy is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Blossom Street Ventures.?Visit us at blossomstreetventures.com and email directly at [email protected] .?We invest in companies with run rate revenue of $3mm to $30mm, with year over year growth of 20% to 100%+ depending on revenue.?We lead or follow in growth rounds and special situations like inside rounds, small rounds, rushed rounds, corralling investors with our term sheet, cap table clean up, and extensions.?We can commit in 3 weeks and our check is $1mm to $4mm.?Also visit https://blossomstreetventures.com/metrics/ for always up-to-date SaaS metrics.