How can a online service provider like NetFlix which has become the preferred way of consuming tv shows be launched in India.
Services which NetFlix can offer to Indian youth who would be interested in "Binge watching"
How do you successfully pitch your business to investors? As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I've been on both sides of the funding process. Here are 7 myths of startup financing -- and the truths you should follow.
You Can't Fix a CAC Payback Period SaaS Metrics Palooza r2.3.pptxDave Kellogg
Slides from the presentation I gave at SaaS Metrics Palooza which discuss how VCs and operators view metrics differently by drilling into CAC payback period as an example.
Hangzhou Ruhnn Holding went through a backdoor listing less than a year ago and has limited public information available. As a fashion retailer and talent management company, it contracts popular bloggers to promote products and generate sales, primarily through online stores on Taobao. Its business model relies on bloggers to build large followings in the first half of the year and convert followers to customers in sales in the second half, particularly around Singles Day. While the blogger economy in China is growing, the industry also faces risks such as overcompetition and increasing costs to acquire traffic.
LUMA's Upfront Summit Keynote: "The Future of TV"LUMA Partners
LUMA Partners presents “The Future of TV,” as presented at the Upfront Summit conference on February 4, 2016. This presentation reviews some of the key topics discussed at the conference: the rise of digital video, the traditional TV model, and convergent video.
With many people losing their jobs and incomes due to economic hardship, starting a home business online is a good way to build extra income for oneself and one's family. There is a lot of information available online about starting a home business, which can lead to information overload. Affiliate marketing is recommended as it requires little to no investment and teaches valuable skills for selling products online and having success on the internet that can then be applied to other types of businesses.
Business Plan Sample for a Cannabis Cultivation Business Start-UpCannaBusinessPlans
This is the extraction from the Business Plan written for a cannabis cultivation business in Colorado. Find the decision for your business: cannabis business plans templates and financial models https://cannabusinessplans.com/shop/
How can a online service provider like NetFlix which has become the preferred way of consuming tv shows be launched in India.
Services which NetFlix can offer to Indian youth who would be interested in "Binge watching"
How do you successfully pitch your business to investors? As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I've been on both sides of the funding process. Here are 7 myths of startup financing -- and the truths you should follow.
You Can't Fix a CAC Payback Period SaaS Metrics Palooza r2.3.pptxDave Kellogg
Slides from the presentation I gave at SaaS Metrics Palooza which discuss how VCs and operators view metrics differently by drilling into CAC payback period as an example.
Hangzhou Ruhnn Holding went through a backdoor listing less than a year ago and has limited public information available. As a fashion retailer and talent management company, it contracts popular bloggers to promote products and generate sales, primarily through online stores on Taobao. Its business model relies on bloggers to build large followings in the first half of the year and convert followers to customers in sales in the second half, particularly around Singles Day. While the blogger economy in China is growing, the industry also faces risks such as overcompetition and increasing costs to acquire traffic.
LUMA's Upfront Summit Keynote: "The Future of TV"LUMA Partners
LUMA Partners presents “The Future of TV,” as presented at the Upfront Summit conference on February 4, 2016. This presentation reviews some of the key topics discussed at the conference: the rise of digital video, the traditional TV model, and convergent video.
With many people losing their jobs and incomes due to economic hardship, starting a home business online is a good way to build extra income for oneself and one's family. There is a lot of information available online about starting a home business, which can lead to information overload. Affiliate marketing is recommended as it requires little to no investment and teaches valuable skills for selling products online and having success on the internet that can then be applied to other types of businesses.
Business Plan Sample for a Cannabis Cultivation Business Start-UpCannaBusinessPlans
This is the extraction from the Business Plan written for a cannabis cultivation business in Colorado. Find the decision for your business: cannabis business plans templates and financial models https://cannabusinessplans.com/shop/
31 growth hacking resources for startup marketers covering newsletters, podcasts, books, communities, and blogs. Bonus Twitter list of growth hackers to follow included.
Bessemer Venture Partners' is proud to share The State of the Cloud for 2017.
As the definitive guide to the biggest trends in the cloud industry, this year’s “State of the Cloud Report” includes:
1. A Look Back at 2016
- 2016 was a marquee year for a number of reasons. First, we all remember the rocky start in February where the Cloud Market dropped 35%
- Subsequently, rebounded back to normal levels and ended the year up +15%.
- The dip in the market had two main outcomes: First, it led to unprecedented amounts of M&A (4x more than any other year and 40% of the total cloud market cap of $300B) – and second, it led to the fewest number of cloud tech IPOs since the financial crisis.
- A combination of these factors has led to the highest quality backlog of private cloud companies in history. The top 100 private Cloud companies alone represent over $100B of private enterprise value.
2. We provide a deeper look into the three top questions every private cloud CEO should be discussing with his/her executive team
- How fast should I be growing?
- How much should I burn?
- How do I scale?
3. Bessemer’s 7 Predictions for 2017
- The year of human assisted AI
- APIs will serve as the backbone for a majority of software infrastructure
- Architect for infinite scale without infinite spend
- Mobile unlocks non-desk worker productivity
- NPS everything
- Diverse teams win
- The screenless software movement
Relational Database Management System(TCS)Preethi T G
This topic is about IT sector. I was selected TCS company which is named as Tata Consultancy Services. I was created the company's database system and I was included Entity Relationship Diagram which is named as ER Diagram.
Monthly Sales Scorecard PowerPoint Presentation Slides is a highly visual tool tailor-made for sales executives and management. Showcase the opportunities created with the help of monthly sales BSC PPT theme. Our balanced scorecard for sales PowerPoint slideshow also assists users to assess unique visitors for each month. Demonstrate monthly performance scorecard of the regional sales team using this sales scorecard PPT template deck. You can even illustrate the performance of your sales staff through the strategic management sales BSC PowerPoint theme. Elucidate products monthly sales with respect to the service line and cumulative sales using our sales dashboard PPT templates. Designers of this eye-catching sales BSC PowerPoint theme follow a content-driven approach. The audience can skim the whole company sales scenario in a glance. Competitor based monthly sales forecast scorecard layout is loaded with pie charts, and bar graphs. Download our sales balanced scorecard PPT slideshow to showcase the sales endeavors of your organization in real-time. https://bit.ly/3koJ2tB
How to make an investor pitch deck that really worksDeck Rooster
In sales, a well established principle is, before one starts pitching to a customer, one should listen to what the customer has to say. That is because if you listen carefully he will lay out his needs in front of you, letting you present your solution in a way that fits into his needs perfectly.
The principle should be equally useful while pitching to an investor while raising funds. I can’t see a reason why it won’t be. But no one seems to be suggesting “you should listen more and talk less during an investor pitch”. Probably it is assumed that we already know what investors look for in a business. Is it a rockstar team; or may be a huge market size or is it traction or a break-through technology? Or may be different investors look for different combination of those things.
Actually all of those are means towards an end. They help investors figure out something more specific and quantitative that all investors look for in a startup before investing. But what is it?
A 10x return on their investment. That is it.
That number may vary from an early stage investor to a growth stage one, but you get the point, right? Not everyone says it out loud, because it makes them look money hungry, but that is what an investor business is all about.
But, now with that knowledge, how do you tweak your pitch and your pitch deck to make an investor feel that you are offering him an investment opportunity that could deliver a 10x return? And more importantly, can your business even deliver 10x return?
The above presentation by Deck Rooster answers those questions and offers a structure (not a template) for an investor pitch deck for startups. Check it out.
Slide dari sesi Roundtable Disscussion : "Bagaimana membuat pitch deck yang menarik perhatian investor?"
Credit to : Kevin Darmawan, Managing Partner Coffee Ventures
Sales Enablement Plan PowerPoint Presentation Slides SlideTeam
Presenting this set of slides with name - Sales Enablement Plan Powerpoint Presentation Slides. Enhance your audiences knowledge with this well researched complete deck. Showcase all the important features of the deck with perfect visuals. This deck comprises of total of twenty eight slides with each slide explained in detail. Each template comprises of professional diagrams and layouts. Our professional PowerPoint experts have also included icons, graphs and charts for your convenience. All you have to do is DOWNLOAD the deck. Make changes as per the requirement. Yes, these PPT slides are completely customizable. Edit the colour, text and font size. Add or delete the content from the slide. And leave your audience awestruck with the professionally designed Sales Enablement Plan Powerpoint Presentation Slides complete deck.
The Best Pitch Deck Format To Attract InvestorsBryce North
**Validated by real investors!**
Based on the Guy Kawaski format, this pitch deck layout has been proven over and over again and has helped many companies raise their investment round.
If you are looking to raise your seed round, impress investors, and build a high-quality investment deck, then make sure you follow this format. This is the best pitch deck template available today.
Find more great resources here --> www.dontbealittlepitch.com
The Best of Kellblog: 10 Non-Obvious Things about Scaling SaaS with HostAnaly...saastr
This document contains a 10-point list by Dave Kellogg, CEO of Host Analytics, about non-obvious things related to scaling a SaaS company. The points discuss the importance of focusing on annual recurring revenue, the subtlety of SaaS metrics like churn rates and customer lifetime value, how bookings should be defined, that former public company CFOs may not understand venture-backed SaaS metrics, how to think about multi-year deals and professional services, and the value of retaining long-term team members as a company grows.
From Bessemer Venture Partners, Partner Mary D'Onofrio releases the definitive benchmarking report on how cloud companies grow operationally efficient businesses and scale to $100 million in ARR (and beyond).
1) The document discusses common pricing mistakes made by SaaS companies, including being too cheap, using the wrong value metric, making purchases difficult, having a broken upsell path, and having static pricing.
2) It provides examples of companies like StatusPage and Salesforce that successfully evolved their pricing over time to increase revenue and better align with customer value.
3) The key takeaways are that pricing is important but often overlooked; the right value metric helps differentiate and increase sales; usage-based pricing and feature packaging can reduce churn; and pricing should be regularly tested and iterated as the company and products evolve.
The document provides tips for pitching to investors for a seed round. It emphasizes that the pitch is not just a presentation but a performance to convince investors. Key points include writing a script instead of freestyling, using visuals like graphs and videos to tell the story, knowing the audience, and getting comfortable speaking to show confidence and enthusiasm for the opportunity. The goal is to clearly explain the problem, solution, market potential, team's ability to execute, and next steps to prove traction and seek funding.
The document describes a pitch deck template called "The Show" that tells a startup's story in a compelling way. It begins by outlining common pitches' failures to either provide too little content or too much cluttered content. The template then advocates conveying three key things: that the problem matters and is painful, that the founding team can solve it, and that early success indicates future growth. It presents the template as its own story, with an observation of pitches' shortcomings, the problem this creates, and the template as the solution. The document teaches the mechanics of an effective story while demonstrating the emotional storytelling style.
Outbound prospecting for highly targeted lead flowDavid Skok
This presentation described how and when outbound prospecting (Cold Calling 2.0) can work to provide a predictable flow of leads from highly targeted prospects.
From Mice to Whales – 5 Ways to Build a $100 Million SaaS BusinessChristoph Janz
This document discusses 5 ways to build a $100 million SaaS company by focusing on different types of "animals" that represent average revenue per account (ARPA). It analyzes the ARPA of 74 SaaS companies at or around their IPOs and groups them into categories like mice (<$333 ARPA), rabbits ($333-$3,333 ARPA), deer ($3,333-$33,000 ARPA) and whales (> $333,000 ARPA). Most $100M+ SaaS companies target deer or elephants. However, some companies broke the rules to succeed with lower ARPA through viral growth, content/WOM, patience or moving upmarket over time. The key takeaw
Netflix is an American streaming service operating in over 190 countries. The document discusses Netflix's problems in the Indian market, despite its global brand recognition and success. It performs a SWOT analysis, identifying strengths like brand reputation and original content, but also weaknesses such as a lack of local/regional content and higher prices than competitors. Opportunities include increased interest in streaming due to COVID and niche marketing. Threats include regulations, password sharing, and strong competitors like Disney+ Hotstar and Amazon Prime Video. The document proposes strategies like collaborating with ISPs, surveying audiences, creating more local content, and alternative pricing models to help Netflix better penetrate the Indian market.
Transparency is one of our core values at Seedcamp and we are no strangers to how tough the fundraising process can be. In a continued spirit of openness and to show how - like with startups - our own story and proposition moves on, we're sharing the deck we used to raise our heavily-oversubscribed Seedcamp Fund V.
Read more about our plans to invest in and support the next generation of exceptional European talent on our blog: https://seedcamp.com/news/
Founders Factory is an accelerator and incubator based in London that was founded in 2015. It aims to build technology companies through two main programs - an accelerator that supports existing startups, and an incubator that develops new companies from scratch with Founders Factory and its corporate investors. It has a team of over 60 specialists and has worked with over 60 startups and created 12 startups through its incubator program. It is backed by six major corporate investors in sectors like media, travel, fintech, beauty, education technology and AI. The organization provides funding, services, expertise and access to corporate partnerships to help technology companies scale rapidly.
Presentation from Marc Phillips, Managing Partner of Arafura Ventures, and author of "Inside Silicon Valley: How the deals get done," with a slide-by-slide approach to developing your pitch deck -- using examples from real-life winning pitch decks.
Check out sample essential pitch deck slides for: .
- Mission/Vision
- Problem/Solution
- Market size
- IP
- Financial projections
- Management team
- and more!
Sponsored by Early Growth Financial Services and Cooley.
31 growth hacking resources for startup marketers covering newsletters, podcasts, books, communities, and blogs. Bonus Twitter list of growth hackers to follow included.
Bessemer Venture Partners' is proud to share The State of the Cloud for 2017.
As the definitive guide to the biggest trends in the cloud industry, this year’s “State of the Cloud Report” includes:
1. A Look Back at 2016
- 2016 was a marquee year for a number of reasons. First, we all remember the rocky start in February where the Cloud Market dropped 35%
- Subsequently, rebounded back to normal levels and ended the year up +15%.
- The dip in the market had two main outcomes: First, it led to unprecedented amounts of M&A (4x more than any other year and 40% of the total cloud market cap of $300B) – and second, it led to the fewest number of cloud tech IPOs since the financial crisis.
- A combination of these factors has led to the highest quality backlog of private cloud companies in history. The top 100 private Cloud companies alone represent over $100B of private enterprise value.
2. We provide a deeper look into the three top questions every private cloud CEO should be discussing with his/her executive team
- How fast should I be growing?
- How much should I burn?
- How do I scale?
3. Bessemer’s 7 Predictions for 2017
- The year of human assisted AI
- APIs will serve as the backbone for a majority of software infrastructure
- Architect for infinite scale without infinite spend
- Mobile unlocks non-desk worker productivity
- NPS everything
- Diverse teams win
- The screenless software movement
Relational Database Management System(TCS)Preethi T G
This topic is about IT sector. I was selected TCS company which is named as Tata Consultancy Services. I was created the company's database system and I was included Entity Relationship Diagram which is named as ER Diagram.
Monthly Sales Scorecard PowerPoint Presentation Slides is a highly visual tool tailor-made for sales executives and management. Showcase the opportunities created with the help of monthly sales BSC PPT theme. Our balanced scorecard for sales PowerPoint slideshow also assists users to assess unique visitors for each month. Demonstrate monthly performance scorecard of the regional sales team using this sales scorecard PPT template deck. You can even illustrate the performance of your sales staff through the strategic management sales BSC PowerPoint theme. Elucidate products monthly sales with respect to the service line and cumulative sales using our sales dashboard PPT templates. Designers of this eye-catching sales BSC PowerPoint theme follow a content-driven approach. The audience can skim the whole company sales scenario in a glance. Competitor based monthly sales forecast scorecard layout is loaded with pie charts, and bar graphs. Download our sales balanced scorecard PPT slideshow to showcase the sales endeavors of your organization in real-time. https://bit.ly/3koJ2tB
How to make an investor pitch deck that really worksDeck Rooster
In sales, a well established principle is, before one starts pitching to a customer, one should listen to what the customer has to say. That is because if you listen carefully he will lay out his needs in front of you, letting you present your solution in a way that fits into his needs perfectly.
The principle should be equally useful while pitching to an investor while raising funds. I can’t see a reason why it won’t be. But no one seems to be suggesting “you should listen more and talk less during an investor pitch”. Probably it is assumed that we already know what investors look for in a business. Is it a rockstar team; or may be a huge market size or is it traction or a break-through technology? Or may be different investors look for different combination of those things.
Actually all of those are means towards an end. They help investors figure out something more specific and quantitative that all investors look for in a startup before investing. But what is it?
A 10x return on their investment. That is it.
That number may vary from an early stage investor to a growth stage one, but you get the point, right? Not everyone says it out loud, because it makes them look money hungry, but that is what an investor business is all about.
But, now with that knowledge, how do you tweak your pitch and your pitch deck to make an investor feel that you are offering him an investment opportunity that could deliver a 10x return? And more importantly, can your business even deliver 10x return?
The above presentation by Deck Rooster answers those questions and offers a structure (not a template) for an investor pitch deck for startups. Check it out.
Slide dari sesi Roundtable Disscussion : "Bagaimana membuat pitch deck yang menarik perhatian investor?"
Credit to : Kevin Darmawan, Managing Partner Coffee Ventures
Sales Enablement Plan PowerPoint Presentation Slides SlideTeam
Presenting this set of slides with name - Sales Enablement Plan Powerpoint Presentation Slides. Enhance your audiences knowledge with this well researched complete deck. Showcase all the important features of the deck with perfect visuals. This deck comprises of total of twenty eight slides with each slide explained in detail. Each template comprises of professional diagrams and layouts. Our professional PowerPoint experts have also included icons, graphs and charts for your convenience. All you have to do is DOWNLOAD the deck. Make changes as per the requirement. Yes, these PPT slides are completely customizable. Edit the colour, text and font size. Add or delete the content from the slide. And leave your audience awestruck with the professionally designed Sales Enablement Plan Powerpoint Presentation Slides complete deck.
The Best Pitch Deck Format To Attract InvestorsBryce North
**Validated by real investors!**
Based on the Guy Kawaski format, this pitch deck layout has been proven over and over again and has helped many companies raise their investment round.
If you are looking to raise your seed round, impress investors, and build a high-quality investment deck, then make sure you follow this format. This is the best pitch deck template available today.
Find more great resources here --> www.dontbealittlepitch.com
The Best of Kellblog: 10 Non-Obvious Things about Scaling SaaS with HostAnaly...saastr
This document contains a 10-point list by Dave Kellogg, CEO of Host Analytics, about non-obvious things related to scaling a SaaS company. The points discuss the importance of focusing on annual recurring revenue, the subtlety of SaaS metrics like churn rates and customer lifetime value, how bookings should be defined, that former public company CFOs may not understand venture-backed SaaS metrics, how to think about multi-year deals and professional services, and the value of retaining long-term team members as a company grows.
From Bessemer Venture Partners, Partner Mary D'Onofrio releases the definitive benchmarking report on how cloud companies grow operationally efficient businesses and scale to $100 million in ARR (and beyond).
1) The document discusses common pricing mistakes made by SaaS companies, including being too cheap, using the wrong value metric, making purchases difficult, having a broken upsell path, and having static pricing.
2) It provides examples of companies like StatusPage and Salesforce that successfully evolved their pricing over time to increase revenue and better align with customer value.
3) The key takeaways are that pricing is important but often overlooked; the right value metric helps differentiate and increase sales; usage-based pricing and feature packaging can reduce churn; and pricing should be regularly tested and iterated as the company and products evolve.
The document provides tips for pitching to investors for a seed round. It emphasizes that the pitch is not just a presentation but a performance to convince investors. Key points include writing a script instead of freestyling, using visuals like graphs and videos to tell the story, knowing the audience, and getting comfortable speaking to show confidence and enthusiasm for the opportunity. The goal is to clearly explain the problem, solution, market potential, team's ability to execute, and next steps to prove traction and seek funding.
The document describes a pitch deck template called "The Show" that tells a startup's story in a compelling way. It begins by outlining common pitches' failures to either provide too little content or too much cluttered content. The template then advocates conveying three key things: that the problem matters and is painful, that the founding team can solve it, and that early success indicates future growth. It presents the template as its own story, with an observation of pitches' shortcomings, the problem this creates, and the template as the solution. The document teaches the mechanics of an effective story while demonstrating the emotional storytelling style.
Outbound prospecting for highly targeted lead flowDavid Skok
This presentation described how and when outbound prospecting (Cold Calling 2.0) can work to provide a predictable flow of leads from highly targeted prospects.
From Mice to Whales – 5 Ways to Build a $100 Million SaaS BusinessChristoph Janz
This document discusses 5 ways to build a $100 million SaaS company by focusing on different types of "animals" that represent average revenue per account (ARPA). It analyzes the ARPA of 74 SaaS companies at or around their IPOs and groups them into categories like mice (<$333 ARPA), rabbits ($333-$3,333 ARPA), deer ($3,333-$33,000 ARPA) and whales (> $333,000 ARPA). Most $100M+ SaaS companies target deer or elephants. However, some companies broke the rules to succeed with lower ARPA through viral growth, content/WOM, patience or moving upmarket over time. The key takeaw
Netflix is an American streaming service operating in over 190 countries. The document discusses Netflix's problems in the Indian market, despite its global brand recognition and success. It performs a SWOT analysis, identifying strengths like brand reputation and original content, but also weaknesses such as a lack of local/regional content and higher prices than competitors. Opportunities include increased interest in streaming due to COVID and niche marketing. Threats include regulations, password sharing, and strong competitors like Disney+ Hotstar and Amazon Prime Video. The document proposes strategies like collaborating with ISPs, surveying audiences, creating more local content, and alternative pricing models to help Netflix better penetrate the Indian market.
Transparency is one of our core values at Seedcamp and we are no strangers to how tough the fundraising process can be. In a continued spirit of openness and to show how - like with startups - our own story and proposition moves on, we're sharing the deck we used to raise our heavily-oversubscribed Seedcamp Fund V.
Read more about our plans to invest in and support the next generation of exceptional European talent on our blog: https://seedcamp.com/news/
Founders Factory is an accelerator and incubator based in London that was founded in 2015. It aims to build technology companies through two main programs - an accelerator that supports existing startups, and an incubator that develops new companies from scratch with Founders Factory and its corporate investors. It has a team of over 60 specialists and has worked with over 60 startups and created 12 startups through its incubator program. It is backed by six major corporate investors in sectors like media, travel, fintech, beauty, education technology and AI. The organization provides funding, services, expertise and access to corporate partnerships to help technology companies scale rapidly.
Presentation from Marc Phillips, Managing Partner of Arafura Ventures, and author of "Inside Silicon Valley: How the deals get done," with a slide-by-slide approach to developing your pitch deck -- using examples from real-life winning pitch decks.
Check out sample essential pitch deck slides for: .
- Mission/Vision
- Problem/Solution
- Market size
- IP
- Financial projections
- Management team
- and more!
Sponsored by Early Growth Financial Services and Cooley.
2. My background
• Built 5 startups in last 20+ years. 2 exits, 2 shut downs and 1 continuing.
• Started Seeders in 2010 during early days of angel investing in India. Put our money,
not OPM. Had different stages and thesis of investment across this timeline.
• Actively invested in 2010-15 across industries (26 deals). Slowed down in 2016-19
with primarily SaaS focus (8 deals). Since 2020 (75+ deals) active again with focus
on SaaS, mixed with some D2C, health-tech & fintech invested through syndicates.
• Varied cheque sizes from $10K-500K. Now do between $10-50K with follow-ons (for
the good ones).
• Have invested in 100+ companies till now, of which 16 have shut down. 8 have exited
(1 at ~75x, rest between 3x-15x). Some investments are looking great on paper
(100x+ returns). Expecting conservative IRR of 20%+ since first investment in 2011.
• Now look at it as an asset class, with ~10% of overall portfolio allocation. Some
allocation in funds / pre-IPO companies.
3. What is SaaS and evolution of business software?
• Software as a service. Essentially a method for delivery of software through Internet
(cloud) via a subscription model.
• Back in day, software was installed on local servers through client-server window. You
had to manage, install, upgrade software on local servers or computers. Earlier was
called Application Server Provider (ASP).
• Anything subscription is NOT SaaS. Has to be a software or tool, delivered as a web
interface or mobile app.
• 3 main categories of cloud computing: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
• SalesForce is the one credited for leading the SaaS revolution.
• Valuations are 5-20x top-line revenue (in some cases even more).
(For ref: Restaurant is 1x, services 0.75-2x as most of them focus on EBITDA multiple)
4. Benefits of SaaS as a customer
• Opex vs capex.
• Time value of money. Better use of capital.
• Speed of deployment
• Lower risk of it not working (Onus of providing success shifts to vendor)
• Permissionless adoption - Bottom up adoption in many categories
• No headache of management of data centres, network/firewalls, servers/storage,
operating systems, security, developer tools and applications etc.
• Near zero IT overhead cost (apart from provisioning and governance)
5. Why is SaaS growing?
• High gross margins
• Subscription. Top-lien. Predictable revenue.
• Metered pricing. Expansion revenue.
• Global, automated, credit-card based
• Same code based served to all customers (multi-tenant).
Vendor hosts servers, provides security, scaling up/down.
“Software is eating the world" - Marc Andreessen.
9. SaaS in India and where they are
• Over 1000 SaaS companies in India across all stages,
with ~$50B in value today.
• ~$2.6B combined ARR of pure-play SaaS companies
from India. 30% CAGR since 2018. Could reach $50-
$70B by 2030.
• 16 SaaS Unicorns
• 150+ companies having >$1M in ARR
• $4B total VC money invested in Indian SaaS
companies in last 5 years
• 40K people employed
• Potential to create ~$1T in value and half a million jobs
by 2030, with 100+ SaaS Unicorns and 3,500+ SaaS
companies
Source: https://saasboomi.com/saas-landscape-report/
(and some more…)
11. B2B vs B2C SaaS
• B2B SaaS solves an existing business problem. Existing JTBD.
• Comes in multiple avatars: Vertical vs horizontal, SMB/Mid-market/Enterprise
segments, Category creators vs Inspired, SoR (Systems of record) vs SoE
(Systems of Engagement) vs SoD (Systems of decision)
• Could be Mission critical to ops vs peripheral layers (e.g., productivity, silo
tools)
• Big space in devTools / System Infra / Data / API tools companies with India
advantage as 3M+ developers in India.
• Productivity tools (e.g., Notion, Zoom etc.)
12. Broad evaluation criteria for B2B SaaS
• Why now: What has changed? Behaviour, technology, societal, regulatory shifts.
• TAM: Is the opportunity size leading to $100M ARR? ($1B+ markets)?
• Differentiation: What's unique about the product?
• Competitive landscape: How is it positioned compared to others?
• Team: Why is this the best team to do this?
• GTM: What's the sales strategy and sales cycle?
• Moats: How is the business defensible?
• Traction: What's the evidence that the idea is working?
• Unit economics: What's the business model & LTV/CAC?
13. What stage are you investing in and what to
look at in each one?
3 journeys:
0-1 stage:
Pre-PMF
(idea/early
product/some
initial customers)
1-10 stage:
PMF achieved
and figuring
GTM channels
that scale
10-100 stage:
Growth
14. Pre-PMF (0-1 stage) -
What are you evaluating? [1/2]
● Why now, what’s different (cheaper/ better/faster), what are you replacing. “Why now?”
question and explains why it’s a fresh opportunity that should be tried. [If your new startup
could have been built 15 years ago, perhaps the idea’s already been tried and just isn’t
that good] What behaviour / technology / regulatory / societal shift are you banking on?
● Urgent + important problem to be solved. Even better, if in the line of money.
● Why is this founder suitable for this business?
● Is there an unfair advantage? (India delivery, CS, some secret sauce etc.)
● What company, department, budget is the company selling to? Is it a SoR, SoE, SoD?
● What GTM model is required? Does it align with the core strengths of founder. Broad idea
of what channels may work.
15. • Market size. Products don’t matter, markets do. Can this become a $100M ARR
company
• Category / Competitive landscape and differentiator + Multiples / investors
• Past exit multiples, if available, for comparison.
• What does graveyard look like? And what has changed since then?
• Problem value / frequency of usage
• Onboarding / aha moment
Pre-PMF (0-1 stage) -
What are you evaluating? [2/2]
17. Try to find a small market that’s growing quickly,
enabled by a technology or behavior shift
18.
19. PMF stage [1-10] –
What are you evaluating?
• Early Metrics (Product engagement, GTM) and North Star definition.
• ICP / JTBD well defined
• Unit economics: LTV/CAC
• Cohort charts
• Distribution: how to how many? Right channels found?
• Pricing iterations and alignment with value.
• Sales motions: PLG, Inside sales led, Outbound / ABM, Feet on the
street, Partnerships driven
• Who’ll fund next?
20.
21. Growth Stage -
what are you evaluating?
• Repeatable phases in GTM (sales velocity). What’s the distribution mix, blended
CAC/LTV, effective channels/campaigns?
• Further metrics e.g., Burn multiple
• Category leadership plan (how to be in top 3)
• Team / org building capabilities. Hiring for scale.
• OKRs / KPIs or some org alignment framework
• NRR / NDR
• Churn
• Partnerships / piggybacking
• What moats would work? Network, data, business model, distribution, what?
• Where will growth capital come from?
22. Diligence
• Angel DD is very light, most decisions are made within 1
to 3 meetings with founder. Unlike institutional money,
which requires diligence.
• Lead vs syndicate. Lead needs legal.
Others can follow, as long as it’s same agreement.
23. Common early stage valuation frameworks:
• Ownership – focus on owning at least X% of the business for $Y
• Discounted Cash Flow analysis – extremely unreliable with hyper growth startups given
the unknowns of input variables
• Multiple – e.g. 10x Forward ARR, 25x ebitda
• Precedent transactions or comparables
• Scenario analysis: considers plausible scenarios that could take place and the likelihood
of those outcomes coming to pass. It is a way of thinking in probabilities. Bessemer
releases this publicly for its portfolio companies e.g., https://www.bvp.com/memos/
pinterest
• Could this be the next SalesForce / Atlassian? If so, pay anything
• Finger in the air
24. Valuation drivers
• Valuation is part art + part science. It’s a collective lie the ecosystem
tells to each other :)
• Early stage is more qualitative than quantitative. But a benchmark to
use is existing ARR multiple for funding rounds that has happened in
similar categories. Premium for 2nd time founders (with past success)
+ high growth categories.
• High growth public software companies are valued based on forward
revenue multiples.
[Side note: Currently, it’s net income. Inflation and Fed Funds rates
expectations have influenced these preferences. As interest rates
increase, investors discount the large future revenue & profit streams
of high growth companies more heavily. They are valued on a
combination of: Growth %, Net income, Sales efficiency, Gross
Margin, Cash Flow, Category leadership premium]
25. Deal sourcing: Identifying, Validation,
Enabling.
• Your direct network. Colleagues / workers starting a company.
• Online platforms / Syndicates (AngelList, LetsVenture etc.)
• Investor networks (Indian angel, Mumbai angels etc)
• Incubators, Accelerators, Funds
• Ecosystem activities (SaaSBoomi, NASSCOM, TiE etc.)
• Friends of Founders who you’ve already invested in
• Get listed on list of angel investors (UnicornBaba, Media publications etc.)
• Informal meet-ups/parties/industry round tables
• Cold reach out
26. Structures & Logistics
SAFE notes /
convertibles
Priced
rounds
India vs US/Singapore:
Overseas structuring
& flips
LRS
limits
27. What value add can you bring for the
founder to take money from you?
• Industry knowhow / domain knowledge
• Play books that you have applied in a similar setup (sales, marketing, product)
• Network access (customers, hiring, investors)
• Be a customer yourself
• Help with downstream funding
• Cheerleading the company & products
28. Red Flags to look for
• Solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
• Bloated / wrong revenue recognition (booked, billed, accrued). ARR???
• Very small market size: as an investor, you’re looking for exit. So next round,
M&A, IPO etc.
• Non revenue/north-star metrics being highlighted. Chasing vanity metrics.
• Extremely high burn multiple
• High Churn (prevalent in SMB markets)
• No land & expand opportunities
• No clear ICP. "The world is my market"
• Product selling only to other startups.
• High distribution costs, low pricing.
• Signaling problems if institutions come in angel and don’t follow on.
• Too much dilution at early stage.
• Personal opinion: Avoid SaaS purely focussed for Indian markets. Markets
are not deep enough.
29. Your portfolio construction [1/2]
• While B2B is more stable than B2C, if you invest in early stages, power law
distribution still applies.
• Highly illiquid asset class. With extremely high risk.
• Money that you can afford to lose. Know what % of your financial portfolio you are
going to invest in angel
• Don’t invest in the first company you see
• Isn’t about investing in what’s hot today. Is about figuring what will be interesting 3-5
years down the line. The current hot companies are already VC funded, so you have
missed the bus; unless you see a niche or a fundamentally good opportunity
• Don’t do all investments in one year itself. As sectors change with herd mentality.
Also you need to think of recycling of money, seasonality of valuations, and building
your own framework/thesis. e.g., missed out India consumption story 2011-2014 and
have an anti-portfolio of a lot of very good companies.
30. • Spread your bets (10 or more). Small cheques multiple
companies.
• Then do pro rata follow ons. Do at least 10
investments, ideally 25+ for predictable returns.
• Focus on fundamentals - team, market, timing
Your portfolio construction [2/2]
31. Exit strategy
• Know your exit - value driven (2-10x), Asymmetric risk-reward ratio (0 or 100)
• How do you get exits?
○ M&A: different kinds of buyers (financial, rollup, strategic)
○ Secondary (VC, other investors). Typically during series B/C, sometimes at a
discount. Though, not a well defined market for secondary in India, unlike US.
○ IPO: $100M ARR required
• Do partial exits for recycling.
• Pitfalls:
○ Not all acquisitions actually return money to investors. Acqui-hires are also
marketed as acquisitions.
○ Don’t rely on buybacks as an exit mechanism
○ Dividend payout isn’t a strategy. That is more like a debt instrument. Plus you
need high ownership.
32. The fun parts:
• Vicariously enjoying the journey of that company, without being in
driver’s seats
• Learning so many different aspects at different scales and setups
• Amazing founders to talk to, and hang out with
• Learning about newer areas of innovation happening in the world
• The financial outcome
33. The non fun parts:
• You don’t own any KPI and you’re not involved in execution role.
• Your advice to founders may or may not be followed. And the founders
aren’t obliged to.
• It’s slow. It’s like watching a cactus grow.
• Each round of fund raise means note documents to review, to protect
your rights
• When things don’t go well (and most likely it won’t). Co-founder issues,
fund issues, competition etc.
• When you start, you won’t get the cream deal flow, as now that’s mostly
oversubscribed
34. Closing comments:
• Being in angel investment or venture capital is about being in the “exceptions” business.
But, SaaS is not a winner take all market. 20% market share of leader in most SaaS
segments globally.
• Much bigger element of “luck” than people choose to believe.
• Truly a global opportunity for Indian companies. Digital GTM, post-sale CSM, domain
expertise etc.
• It takes time for big exits. 2 of my biggest returns are from vintage of 2011.
• Rules are made to be broken and ‘non-consensus’ business models are constantly
challenging the status quo. You could argue that this is where true investor ‘alpha’ is
made, but being non-consensus has its challenges, including finding investor support.
• Startups typically don’t fail because of technology issues, given open source, AWS, lots
of collaboration tools, a network of smart people, etc. This used to be the case decades
ago, but these days, startups fail because they don’t get traction in the market.
36. Let’s do an exercise
Would you have invested in
early days of say Canva, Notion,
Zoom, Slack, Freshworks?
Let’s pick 2 companies and do
an evaluation on the parameters
we talked about.
38. Know why you are doing it.
• Start-ups is a conviction game. Not a speculative game.
• Passionate about a company / space
• Want to learn vicariously
• Treating it as an asset class in your financial portfolio
• Want to be a fund manager sometime in future and this is
your proof of pudding
• Bragging rights