Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Can High Growth Businesses Become Profitable? I went back and looked at the last ~50 software IPOs and benchmarked them across a number of metrics. One chart I found interesting was tracking how each business grew from the time they hit ~$75m ARR. The below chart shows the top decile, top quartile, and bottom quartile ARR growth, where Q1 represents the first quarter each company was ~$75m ARR.
Hey Jamin - excellent job on the weekly newsletters. Couple suggestions (may be a once-every-six month) on analysis that you may find compelling and add to a future edition
- Dec 20 vs Dec 21 vs Dec 21: Market cap changes for the top, middle and bottom..I believe we still have some ways to go down on valuations and 2 years ago may be a good enough compare.. also, a gentle reminders to founders out there that their valuation anchors from 2021 may need some adjustments from data from not too long ago.. i am resisting the urge to go back to dec'19 just because many industries have fundamentally changed after the March 2020 lockdown..
- Some insights into possible PE activity: Given the dry powder is huge with PE firms & they likely will be the ones making a move (while VCs wait out, eg Permira's $6B acquisition of Mimecast), if your valuation is down 75-80% or more (eg 8x8 down from $4B to $0.5B, CEO fired last week), you are cash flow positive and are mid-size ($1-5B) and in the right sector, there is no better time for PE firms to come buy you out.. i can scan through your companies list and guess who is vulnerable!
Would like to get your take on the highest growth cohort and the comment about no operating leverage for that group. I realize the context here is focus on trend to profitability.
However, do you see any correlation between the much worse operating margin in Q3-Q9 for the top decile cohort and the Q10-Q12 revenue growth for that cohort?
Could simply be that it is intentional to reinvest in S&M and R&D to keep accelerating growth and pull away from the pack in term of revenue growth, win more share, etc while then later working to normalize their operating margins?
Would love to get your thoughts on this aspect of the top decile cohort.
Hey Jamin - excellent job on the weekly newsletters. Couple suggestions (may be a once-every-six month) on analysis that you may find compelling and add to a future edition
- Dec 20 vs Dec 21 vs Dec 21: Market cap changes for the top, middle and bottom..I believe we still have some ways to go down on valuations and 2 years ago may be a good enough compare.. also, a gentle reminders to founders out there that their valuation anchors from 2021 may need some adjustments from data from not too long ago.. i am resisting the urge to go back to dec'19 just because many industries have fundamentally changed after the March 2020 lockdown..
- Some insights into possible PE activity: Given the dry powder is huge with PE firms & they likely will be the ones making a move (while VCs wait out, eg Permira's $6B acquisition of Mimecast), if your valuation is down 75-80% or more (eg 8x8 down from $4B to $0.5B, CEO fired last week), you are cash flow positive and are mid-size ($1-5B) and in the right sector, there is no better time for PE firms to come buy you out.. i can scan through your companies list and guess who is vulnerable!
Jamin, thanks for the updates- always insightful.
Would like to get your take on the highest growth cohort and the comment about no operating leverage for that group. I realize the context here is focus on trend to profitability.
However, do you see any correlation between the much worse operating margin in Q3-Q9 for the top decile cohort and the Q10-Q12 revenue growth for that cohort?
Could simply be that it is intentional to reinvest in S&M and R&D to keep accelerating growth and pull away from the pack in term of revenue growth, win more share, etc while then later working to normalize their operating margins?
Would love to get your thoughts on this aspect of the top decile cohort.