Usage-based pricing (aka consumption-based pricing) is a popular pricing strategy, especially among developer-focused startups. Amazon AWS, Twilio, and Datadog are three great examples of this model. Usage-based pricing is popular because it is a win-win for both sides: the customer avoids committing to a large purchase that may or may…

Net revenue retention (“NRR”) is the most important SaaS metric. It measures the year-over-year growth in ARR from existing customers; after accounting for churn, downgrades, and upgrades. An NRR of 120% means ARR from existing customers grew by 20%. NRR is a built-in growth engine. For instance, Snowflake IPO’d at…

This post is part of a series in which I extract patterns from a data set of thirty-nine SaaS companies that filed for IPO from 2018 to 2020. The previous discussions in this series are: Pricing & Packaging and the developer buyer — 4 insights from SaaS IPOs Benchmarks for…

In the three years spanning 2018–2020, at least thirty-nine¹ SaaS companies filed for IPO. They form a healthy dataset to create benchmarks for startups that are early on their journey. I use the average contract value (“ACV”) as the framework for extracting insights from this dataset. …

Alex Clayton assembles end of year reviews for SaaS IPOs of the year. You can read his reviews for 2018, 2019, and 2020 here. I feel grateful to Alex for his efforts; his reviews and S-1 breakdowns provide valuable benchmarks for founders. In this post, I build on top of…

I recently got an email from DocuSign with the subject: “How e-signatures are safer than wet signatures”. It made me wonder, why would DocuSign send such an email? E-signatures are ubiquitous; from job offers to house purchases, we e-sign most of our contracts. …