2. Ascent Venture Partners: Matt Fates
Experience:
Ascent Venture Partners 2002 – Present
Norwest Venture Partners 1998 - 2000
Alex Brown & Sons 1996 – 1998
Areas of Focus: Data analytics, cloud business services, security
Current Investments:
Education: BA, Computer Science, Economics – Yale University
MBA – Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth (Tuck Scholar)
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3. Ascent Venture Partners
Who we are
Investment team of six, dedicated to
investing in IT innovation for the
enterprise
Supporting early-stage entrepreneurs
At the forefront of enterprise tech investing
We have backed more than 100 early-stage, emerging technology companies
since 1985, generating more than $10 billion in enterprise value
We leverage our extensive network to make connections for portfolio
companies to investors, customers and advisors that can support their long-
term success.
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5. SaaS Investments: Transforming Legacy Industries
Cloud Scheduling for large & small enterprises
Appointment CRM: Enable self-serve appointment scheduling for
customers, employees and partners
Cloud Print Service for large enterprises
Store it in the cloud. Print it where needed, when needed, in any amount.
Quality guaranteed.
SaaS-based Service for business data
Live data streamed directly into e-commerce and CRM applications
SaaS-based Security for specialty markets
Enables control of data while gaining the collaboration and cost savings
benefits of the cloud
7. … And Then There’s SaaS
Custom SaaS
Built to the specific pricing and hosting
needs of a company
Subscription pricing
Most commonly an annual or monthly
subscription fee
Subscription plus transactions
A monthly or annual fee plus a fee per transaction
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8. Measuring SaaS
Key SaaS metrics we monitor:
Fully loaded cost of customer acquisition vs. contribution margin and
expected duration
Line up all costs associated with acquiring a customer against their
contribution margin
Consider time offset (length of sales cycle)
How long to they stay customers on average?
Expected future contribution from existing
customer base
Churn vs. Expansion/Upsell
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9. Impacts of SaaS
Business Impacts of Using SaaS:
Cash vs. revenue vs. bookings vs. CMRR
When it comes time to sell the company most buyers
don’t use SaaS metrics or accounting!
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10. Ascent Venture Partners: Matt Fates
Thank You
Ascent Venture Partners
255 State Street, 5th Floor
Boston, MA 02109
(617) 720-9400
www.ascentvp.com
@AscentVP
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Editor's Notes
As you know, we focus on Enterprise IT, a $1Trillion dollar market in the US alone.Within this space, we continue to see many areas of massive potential and innovation.This ven diagram shows the sectors we are focused on today with the Enterprise customer at the center. As you can see there is certainly some overlap amongst them. For example, Network Intelligence, a security company, was both a data analytics company and a security company.We have been investing in these sectors for a number of years now, but there is far more to come.
SaaS in its pure form…One copy of the code, used by all customers on shared servers. Pay by the month.Scale up, scale down as needed.
But not all SaaS is completely “Pure” SaaSThere are a number of different models that generally fall in the SaaS bucket. After all, you have to sell it in a form that makes sense for the target customers.
CAC – tells you if you are acquiring customers cost effectively and predictable or wasting money or still figuring it outExpected future Contribution impacts what kind of support costs you can sustain, should also have value to an acquirorGenerally expect to see some churn over time, but it needs to be managed closely. The best way to offset churn, besides reducing it, is to demonstrate expansion of upsell business with existing accounts.Clearly, there are many other metrics to look at, and depending on the business model, some others may also be key
While many folks initially thought ofSaaS to be just another way of delivering software, we know it is far more than that.SaaS affects implementation, support, upgrades, expansions and the entire business model.Do you get paid up front? Do you sign annual or monthly contracts? When do you recognize revenue?Is CMRR the key top line indicator?Who are the eventual strategic partners/acquirors for your business? Are they SaaS companies? What metrics do they report and track?