2020: A Wild Year for SaaS Metrics

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This is a podcast episode titled, 2020: A Wild Year for SaaS Metrics. The summary for this episode is: 2020 was a big year for SaaS. From IPOs to record-breaking quarters to huge M&A deals, there was no shortage of activity. But how did the average SaaS company fare in 2020? Was the breakneck growth experienced by Zoom, Shopify, and Snowflake common to the rest of the industry? Or did COVID have a bigger impact on software than the standard press headline would suggest? OpenView surveyed 1,200 software companies for our annual SaaS Benchmarks study. This year’s survey revealed the impact of COVID-19 on software companies, and some of the results may surprise you. In this episode of BUILD, we hear from the masterminds behind the report, OpenView’s own Kyle Poyar and Sean Fanning.

Key Takeaways

Top takeaways from the 2020 SaaS Metrics Report

02:12 MIN

The most popular PLG tactics

02:59 MIN

What's next in 2021

01:49 MIN

How to get back to hyper-growth mode

03:43 MIN

Is VC a seller's market?

01:56 MIN

What's the progress on diversity in tech?

01:52 MIN

What's the progress on diversity in tech?

01:52 MIN

DESCRIPTION

2020 was a big year for SaaS. From IPOs to record-breaking quarters to huge M&A deals, there was no shortage of activity. But how did the average SaaS company fare in 2020? Was the breakneck growth experienced by Zoom, Shopify, and Snowflake common to the rest of the industry? Or did COVID have a bigger impact on software than the standard press headline would suggest?

OpenView surveyed 1,200 software companies for our annual SaaS Benchmarks study. This year’s survey revealed the impact of COVID-19 on software companies, and some of the results may surprise you. In this episode of BUILD, we hear from the masterminds behind the report, OpenView’s own Kyle Poyar and Sean Fanning.

Key Takeaways:

[1:33] What is the purpose of having a SaaS benchmarks report every year?

[3:26] Who participated in the survey this year?

[5:30] Kyle and Sean share their top takeaways.

[7:51] How did PLG (product-led growth) companies fare to more traditional SaaS companies in this survey?

[11:14] Kyle and Sean share what they have learned from the specific questions in regards to PLG in the survey.

[14:58] Kyle and Sean talk about the key trends that they have seen, based on what they saw in the survey.

[16:58] How can companies do that wise and conscious growth and be mindful of the inputs and the outputs?

[20:52] Sean talks about tactics and metrics.

[23:10] How do founders feel about fundraising and how do they really feel about their VCs?

[25:46] Kyle and Sean share what they learned about diversity, equity, and inclusion from the answers to some questions on the survey.

Mentioned in this episode:

Brought to you by OpenView Ventures

You can view our blog for more context/inspiration.

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Today's Host

Blake Bartlett

|Partner at OpenView

Today's Guests

Sean Fanning

|Director of Corporate Development at OpenView

Sean supports corporate development for OpenView, helping our portfolio establish strategic relationships with potential alliance partners and acquirers, advising on and executing M&A and capital raise transactions, supporting portfolio exit planning activities, and communicating trends across M&A, PE, and public markets. He also supports various projects for OpenView’s Go-To-Market team. Prior to joining OpenView, Sean was Finance & Strategy Lead at Dispatch Technologies where he led strategic growth initiatives, aided in financial and board reporting and assisted with business development and fundraising activities. Sean began his career as an investment banker with Aeris Partners, focusing on sell-side M&A and capital raise advisory for high-growth software companies.

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Kyle Poyar

|VP of Growth at OpenView

Kyle helps OpenView’s portfolio companies accelerate top-line growth through deep insights into their market landscape and customers. He leads segmentation, positioning, channel/partner strategy, new market entry and packaging/pricing initiatives, partnering closely with portfolio leadership teams. He also covers OpenView’s SaaS metrics and benchmarking research. Before joining OpenView, Kyle was a Director at Simon-Kucher & Partners, the global marketing and strategy consulting firm known as the world leader in pricing. Over the course of six years he led consulting teams on strategy engagements with market leaders in enterprise software, business information/data services, digital media, online marketplaces and telecommunications. He completed more than two dozen projects, which commonly drove ARR improvements of 10-20%.

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