Introduction
SaaS founders are having trouble sleeping at night – trust us, we asked. With capital more readily available than ever there are well-funded competitors across nearly every corner of SaaS. There are also increasingly aggressive expectations for founders to make the most of this capital and live up to their whopping valuations (we’re looking at you, Zoom, with your 32x forward revenue multiple). Otherwise, founders and early employees risk getting squeezed under the weight of an excruciating preference stack (see FanDuel).
Objective data is critical to making the right strategic decisions that can propel your long-term growth. To help you rest a bit easier, we’re releasing the results of our third annual Expansion SaaS Benchmarks survey. This report was designed specifically to enable operators to compare themselves against their exact peers across the metrics that matter most in a SaaS business.
This year’s survey included a record number of participants who came from companies all around the globe. It revealed surprising insights about the adoption of product led growth (PLG) – a go-to-market strategy that underpins some of today’s most successful businesses. While most companies are still in the experimentation phase, those who’ve mastered product led growth are exhibiting faster growth at scale while maintaining efficient customer acquisition. We’ve also covered topics ranging from top concerns for founders, remote-first as a key differentiator, progress on executive diversity and much more.
OpenView’s 2019 report was written and compiled by Kyle Poyar and Sean Fanning. Special thanks to Ned O’Leary and Bayley Dietz for support on the data analysis, design and marketing. For questions, comments or to participate in next year’s survey, please email Sean Fanning at sean@ov.vc.