Price SaaS Realistically: Focus on Profit, Not Hype
“I want to sell for 10x revenue because I heard that’s the average SaaS multiple.” That mindset usually leads to disappointment. Those outsized multiples exist, but they’re rare. They’re not the norm. And anchoring on them can stop you from selling at all, or worse, push you to go to market with expectations that just aren’t realistic. For most startups, revenue multiples are the exception, not the rule. A much healthier way to think about valuation is based on profit. What does the business actually throw off? How predictable is it? How risky is it to run? The only time revenue multiples really start to make sense is when you’re growing 100%+ year over year and already in the 7–8 figures of ARR. At that point, buyers are paying for what the business is becoming, not just what it is today. If you want a real outcome, price for reality, not for headlines. The goal isn’t to win an online argument. It’s to close a deal you’re happy with. PS - We talk to founders every day at @acquiredotcom about what their business could sell for. Get a free valuation from our team here: https://t.co/6hqLR8R6KG
NIMBYism Costs U.S. Workers $8,775 Annually
I found a paper that actually quantifies the amount of money that is lost by society because NIMBYism prevents NY, SF Bay Area from building enough housing for their highly productive workers: $8,775 for every worker in America every year....
Unmasking EBITDA: From 1970s Cable to AI Era
EBITDA: the most quoted metric in finance… and the least understood. So we decided to make a mini documentary on its origins… yea, seriously. In our new segment, A CFO Explains, producer Ben Hillman and I try to “adjust” our...
Early Hires Need Passion, Later Scaling Can Diversify
Not everyone on the team really needs to be on your mission But almost all the first 50 employees do Hire pirates and romantics at least until you are truly ready to scale
Invest When Hype Fades; Real Builders Keep Building
Received 400 applications for Easy Residence (@Yzilabs) next season. Every season has about 20 projects, aiming for 4-6 season's per year. I find it easier to invest when the market is less hot. All the hype goes away. Real builders...
Competitors Using AI Cut Mortgage Costs 25%
“It’s not AI that’s your competition. It’s your competitors using AI.” A real-world example from mortgage origination 👇 The frustratingly high cost to originate a mortgage (>$10K!) has persisted for decades. Except for originators on Vesta . Powerful stats from...
Accurate SaaS Gross Margin Is Critical for Valuation
Gross margin underscores the scalability of a business model and is therefore important for determining valuation. An unfortunate truth is that in SaaS, gross margin is almost never calculated or positioned correctly for investors/buyers. If you're talking to investors or...
Avoid the $50M ARR Plateau with Early Scaling Wisdom
I’ve talked about my CEO friend who raised $100M and got stuck at $50M ARR a lot. But if I could go back to 2019 when he was at $20M, and rockets were still firing, this is exactly what I...
Iceye Eyes $3B Valuation, $300M Revenue, No IPO
.@iceye_global: No IPO for now, $300M+ in 2025 rev, $3B valuation from latest funding round, wants @defis_eu & @esa to go faster in helping develop European space security network. #EuropeanSpaceConf.https://t.co/DM65XAjdCC
Early Private Deals Hide High Fees and Delayed Costs
Getting into hot companies before they go public sounds irresistible. But the fine print is brutal: high fees, opaque structures, long lockups, and risks most investors don’t see upfront. Access isn’t the same as advantage. Sometimes the real price of “early” is...
Prepare Fully Before Listing, Don't Just Test Market
“I’m just going to go out and test the market” is usually a mistake. What works better is preparing properly, listing at a fair valuation, and going to market with the expectation that you’re actually going to close a deal. Selling a...
California Risks Losing Future Startups to Austin, Miami
The Atlantic acknowledges the core risk: California could lose not just current billionaires, but the next generation of startups entirely. Austin and Miami are waiting. https://lnkd.in/gdwZ97WW
Skip Intros—Email Your Results Directly to SaaStr Fund
If you happen to want me to invest in you via @saastrfund, and it's a fit ... 📨Just email. Email me everything -- all the good stuff. No need for a warm intro, or any sort of intro. They just waste...
B2B AI Teams Achieve 5× Productivity as New Standard
The most impressive B2B + AI companies I'm seeing right now have 8 people doing the work of 40. That's not a flex—it's the new baseline. SaaStr AI 2026 is where you learn how they're doing it. May 12-14. SF Bay....
AI Secretly Powering Darren Aronofsky's Latest Film
My friend Darren Aronofsky texted me this earlier and my draw dropped. He told me it was AI. Lux is deeply invested in AI (esp @runwayml) but had he not told me I would have thought he made the movie...
Anthropic Chosen by 75% of New Startups
Insane data from @Mercury. Anthropic has quickly become the first model of choice for 75% of newly formed startups.
Even Industry Titans Can't Guarantee Startup Success
In 2020, Jeffrey Katzenberg raised $1.75 billion for Quibi. At CES, he faced a skeptical crowd and said: "I've been doing this before you all were f*&king born." Eight months after launch, Quibi was dead. Reality doesn't care about your résumé. https://t.co/ZYMpP1jLFX
Five Centuries of Venture Capital: A Visual Evolution
Cool graphic on how the venture industry has evolved over the past 500 years. h/t @pavelprata https://t.co/2CL76j0nvR
Vast VC‑LP Matching Opportunities Revealed in New List
Wow - that's a lot of opportunities for VCs and LPs to find each other...👇 🙏 Pavel Prata for collecting this list
Keep Re‑incorporating Daily Until Your Funding Closes
if you don't close your round in the first day just re-incorporate every day until you close
Wrong Leaders Cost Years of Lost Potential
Picking the wrong VP reverberates for 2+ years Picking the wrong cofounder reverberates for 10+ years You don’t fail, it’s just you could have done so much more. And that compounds, too.
Master Your Pitch, Meet Top VCs, Secure Term Sheets
- Know your worth - Hone your pitch - Meet the best VCs - Collect term sheets That's SaaStr AI VC -> https://t.co/XzJ5d0OqGr https://t.co/qulPugatLR
VCs Can't Fund Ex‑OpenAI Founders Indefinitely
“VCs can’t just keep giving OpenAI employees billions of dollars to start a new company forever” VCs: https://t.co/lVyo5wnDoI
Scaling AI Developer Infrastructure: Lessons From Meta’s Internal Agent
Office Hours: Building Developer Infrastructure at Scale with Jim Everingham In the world of AI, how do the very best companies build their developer infrastructure? To answer that question : On Tuesday, February 24, I’ll be hosting an in-person fireside...
Regulation Relief Fuels SaaS Boom in Cannabis Retail
Here’s how increased access to cannabis led to Sparkplug’s explosive growth… The startup — a LAUNCH portfolio company — offers a SaaS product that educates and rewards and benefits the dispensary clerks and “budtenders” who actually sell cannabis to clients,...
Intercom's AI Pivot Redefines SaaS Economics
Intercom has pivoted from traditional SaaS to AI better than any company I can think of. I spoke to the CFO behind the customer support juggernaut, and the outcome based product Finn. Dan Griggs is mastering the new economics of...
Don't Mistake High Volume for Real Market Size
Related, and also worth remembering: make sure you aren't chasing a small market masquerading as a large market. Big transaction volume doesn’t always translate to real market opportunity for startups.
AI Revolutionizes Enterprise Sales and Organizational Structure
New @ThePeelPod with @JacquelineSYC19 How AI is changing data, getting enterprise customers from cold emails during YC, building an AI BDR in-house, why most functions at @artie_labs report to the CTO (not CEO), and what it's like raising a Series...
Cheering on Gabriel Stengel’s Next Move
Let's go Gabriel Stengel @rogoai...
Startups Should Ditch Annual Plans for Quarterly Reset
Annual planning is one of the most over-copied “big company” rituals in startups—and it quietly creates a lot of bad decisions. In large companies, annual planning makes sense. They’re hiring hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people, mobilizing new strategies, changing systems,...
Acquiring Existing Startups Cuts Risk, Boosts Execution
One of the reasons people are successful acquiring startups is simple: they’re not starting from zero. Zach Simmons is a good example of this. Instead of building something new from scratch, he acquired Appraiva (@appraiva) on @acquiredotcom which already had real...
Software and AI Profit From Margins, Not Price
Jeff Bezos said, "Your margin is my opportunity." Does this apply in software & AI? Yes—but not on price. 🧵
Founders Reveal Real AI Metrics, Pricing, GTM Strategies
At SaaStr AI 2026, no vanity metrics Founders are sharing real numbers: What AI features actually convert. What pricing actually works. What GTM motions actually scale. May 12-14. SF Bay Bring your Granola. Or even a notebook. https://t.co/BCPo2TiqOt
OpenAI Turns Into Venture Hub, Monetizing Research Tools
>be openai >announce plans to take a cut of openai-aided discoveries >release prism, free tool for research teams >rate limit prism >announce prism+, more free credits, latest models >just promise small equity if you build co >openai becomes next yc >sama used to run yc
Early‑Stage Investors Wanted: Join Katie Jacobs Stanton’s Team
📣 Calling early stage, early career investors looking for a GREAT team to work with. Katie Jacobs Stanton and Moxxie Ventures is hiring. See posting below. 👇
Customer Success Compensation Lacks True Variable Incentives
How are Customer Success team's incentivized? Despite WHERE we tend to put CS on the P&L, they are NOT paid like sales I surveyed 132 companies on their CS compensation structures. And the VAST majority of CSMs are on plans...
Nvidia Fuels Europe's AI Stack with Massive 2025 Investments
Nvidia quietly went on a European shopping spree in 2025. 14 funding rounds, double the year before, backing names like Mistral, Revolut and Lovable. Excess cash recycled straight into the AI ecosystem. This looks less like opportunistic VC and more like long-term...
Northwood Space Secures $100M Funding and $49M Defense Deal
Northwood Space raises $100 million Series B, lands $49 million Space Force deal https://t.co/3tpiIouSVt https://t.co/bm0UUoDKA6
VC Deals Flat, Funding Doubles – Concentration Rises
Per latest data from @cartainc, from 2023-2025: VC Deals Up Only 3%, But Dollars Up 130% From Q1 2023 to Q4 2025, the number of deals went from 802 to 823. Basically flat. But dollars deployed? $12.8B to $29.5B. That's 2.3x. VCs...
Double Down on Winners: Increase Ownership Every Round
I'm a co-investor with a mega VC fund we don't talk about as much here but they are wildly successful in many top IPOs and top decile returns. And they have a really simple way they do follow-on checks: ✅If the company...
Zoom Jumps 10% as Anthropic Stake Finally Priced
Zoom is up 10% today, or about what its Anthropic position would be worth (I'd guess closer to 50x than 85x). It's trading at a $28B market cap as of right now, and its Anthropic position is probably worth ~$2-3B. Insane this...
Free Ultimate Guide for First-Time Angel Investors
We wrote the ultimate angel investing guide to help first-time angels. And it’s 100% free. More>> https://t.co/IiGiQKSHBR
A16z Pivots to Crypto, Seed, Secondaries, Abandons Series C/D
Really interesting chart from a16z's latest State of Markets report: - a16z deployed $1.5B into crypto tokens in 2025. This looks to be majority of their increase in capital deployed between 2024 and 2025. - Also looks like a big jump in...
Lower‑Middle Market M&A Thrives;
I’ve had so many conversations with founders who tell me they almost sold during ZIRP, then decided to wait because they were sure the market would only get better. They expected multiples to keep rising, capital to stay cheap, and buyers...
Stop Talking, Start Building AI Solutions
There’s an AI GTM startup I really like the founders of, they’ve been asking us for 6+ months to try them. I appreciate the emails, calls, DMs, etc. And the endless offers to “get on the phone” to see a...
Deal Flow Quality Trumps Picking Skill for VC Success
Deal Flow Quality beats “picking skill” The figure below is a reminder that most VC chest-thumping is aimed at the wrong variable. In venture, outcomes are driven by two levers: >Pool quality (base rate): how many real winners exist in what you see >Picking...
Customer Success Benchmarks: Pay, Staffing, and P&L Guidance
“How the hell do I plan for customer success?” -How should I pay the CS team? -Where should it go on the P&L? -What ratio should I use to staff it? -How big should the team be? Here are the...
Entrepreneurs Often Run Jobs, Not Independent Businesses
Many entrepreneurs think they’re independent simply by starting their own business, but if you have a complex cap table, a bank loan that’s always on your mind, or silent (or loud) partners who see things different ways, there’s a very...
Full-Team Commitment Fuels AI Startup Success
🤷♀️"AI Native" startups don't have access to better LLMs 🤷They often don't have smarter engineers 🤷♂️They don't know the space any better 🤷♀️Their sales team are often tiny and mediocre So why do they win? 100% of their team wants to do, and are willing...
AI's Rapid Progress Outpaces Bubble Concerns, Driving Profits
"There’s pockets of bubble-ish dynamics. But the technology is improving so fast, there’s so much more room to improve, and companies accelerating in AI are printing money."