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

1. From Mice to Whales
5 Ways to Build a $100 Million SaaS Company
Christoph Janz
Partner
Point Nine Capital
@chrija

3. ARPA
(Average Revenue Per Account per year)
$1,000 $10,000 $100,000 $1,000,000
100
1,000
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
$100
# of customers
10x 10x 10x 10x
10x
10x
10x
10x
$100 million
ARR

4. What animals are the leading SaaS
companies hunting?

5. ARPA of 74 SaaS companies at or around IPO*
* Average Revenue per Account at the time the company went public, usually at around $75-200 million in ARR. With the exception of UiPath, all data is based on S1 filings.
See next slide for further notes.

6. A few things to keep in mind before we proceed…
● With the exception of UiPath, all data is based on S1 filings.
● Most companies were around $75-200M in ARR at the time they filed to go
public, but there are some exceptions.
● There are minor inconsistencies based on the way companies report revenue
and customer numbers.
● Some companies sell to a very broad range of customers with very
different ACVs. In these cases, the blended ARPA can be highly
misleading.

7. Companies are categorized based on their ARPA using this logic:
A few things to keep in mind before we proceed…
< $333
$333 - $3.3k
$3.3k - $33k
$33k - $333k
> $333k

8. < $333 $333 - $3.3k $3.3k - $33k $33k - $333k > $333k
So …
3
12
27 26
6

9. Most $100M+ ARR SaaS companies are
going after deer or elephants …

10. … but there are successful role models
for each type of animal.

11. However, …

12. … you have to align your CACs with your ARPA/LTV …
LTV
CACs

13. … or you’ll end up in the graveyard quadrant.
LTV
CACs

14. Acceptable CACs for different types of animals
ARPA $100 $1,000 $10,000 $100,000 $1,000,000
Annual churn
rate
LTV
(assuming a 85% Gross Profit
Margin)
CACs
(assuming lower of ¼ LTV and
18 months of Gross Profit)
~ $40 ~ $700 ~ $13,000 ~ $130,000 ~ $1,300,000
~ 50% ~ 30% ~ 15% ~ 10% ~ 7%
~ $170 ~ $2,800 ~ $57,000 ~ $850,000 ~ $12,000,000

15. What does that mean for your sales &
marketing strategy?

16. What does it take to acquire
● With a 10% trial-to-paid conversion you need 10
million trial signups.
● You can spend $4 per trial signup on marketing if you
have zero sales CACs.
Most leads need to come organically.
You probably need a viral loop.
Conversion must be completely self-service.
No sale team.
1,000,000 mice?

17. ● With a 10% trial-to-paid conversion you need 1 million
trial signups.
● If your CACs are 50/50 sales/marketing, you can spend
$35 per trial signup on marketing and $350 per
customer on sales.
● At $80k OTE your AEs have to close ~ 230 customers
per year, almost 1 per working day.
A large part of your leads should be inbound.
Sales must be ”One Call Close”.
What does it take to acquire 100,000 rabbits?

18. What does it take to acquire 10,000 deer?
● With a 5% MQL-to-Win conversion you need 200,000
MQLs.
● LTV is big enough to spend significantly on marketing
and to build an inside sales team.
Biggest challenge is to find ways to scale lead
generation at more or less stable costs per MQL.
Outbound may or may not work.

19. What does it take to acquire 1,000 elephants or 100 whales?
● With a $1-10M LTV you can spend a ton of money on
customer acquisition.
● Outbound, field sales, field marketing, account-based
marketing, events. Steak dinners.
For elephant and whale hunters, the scaling
playbook is clearer.
The challenge is that you have to raise a lot of money
upfront and have to survive “pilot hell” long enough!

20. Some companies broke some of these “rules”.

21. What can we learn
from the ”Rule Breakers”?

22. Canva got to 20 million active users without paid
advertising and without an inherently viral
product.
How?
● Awesome product. Painkiller for a universal need.
● Product isn’t inherently viral but creates a ton of
WOM.
● Long-tail SEO.

23. Clio is a rabbit-hunter who’s on track to reach
$100M in ARR without an inherently viral product.
How?
● Super high NPS.
● Big investment in content, customer
conferences, partnerships.
● Vertical focus.
● Timing and patience. 

24. Contentful built an enterprise SaaS business with less
than €700k in Seed and ca. €2.2M in Series A funding.
How?
● Started as a developer tool with a tiny ARPA
● Gradually moved up-market over years (completely
rebuilding the product along the way)
● Continuously built out the product and increased
ACVs – from mice to rabbits, to deer, elephants, and
eventually whales.

25. Docplanner uses field sales to acquire rabbits.
How?
● Vertical focus enables perfect targeting
● Marketplace / leadgen element makes it a simpler
sale
● Patient demand drives doctor awareness
● Lower sales salaries in lower-income countries

26. New Relic morphed from a deer hunter into an
elephant hunter.
How?
● Added several new products.
● Aggressively went upmarket and started focusing
on $100k+ ACV customers.
● 56% of ARR now comes from enterprises with
1,000+ employees … and they’re closing more and
more whales.

27. Xero built a $500+ million ARR business with an
ARPA of ca. $250.
How?
● Invoice portal provides some virality
(don’t know how much)
● 60-90% of Xero’s customers come from
accounting partners

28. Take-aways
● Most $100M+ ARR SaaS companies go after deer or elephants, where you
have more proven playbooks to scale customer acquisition.
● Getting to $100M+ ARR with mice or rabbits usually requires a viral
product.
● Some companies managed to break the rules and created their own
playbooks.
(e.g. Docplanner using field sales; Canva massively leveraging SEO)
● If you’re struggling to grow, consider going upmarket.
(like e.g. New Relic did it)

29. Take-aways continued
● You don’t need $10M+ in seed funding to start an enterprise SaaS company.
(but it might make things easier)
● You don’t have to be at $100M ARR in 5-8 years. Persistence pays off.
(e.g. Clio)

30. THANK YOU