SaaS company growth, customer counts, churn, ARR & more
Start new thread
Nathan Latka

Latka100 - 2017's fastest growing private SaaS companies

by

Over 1000+ B2B SaaS CEO's share how much they grew revenue by in 2017 (Dec 16 ARR vs Dec 17 ARR).

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Nathan Latka
Maker
Hey Hunters! Over the past 30 months or so, I've interviewed over 1000 B2B SaaS CEO’s and asked them to share datapoint like: - ARR (Annual recurring revenue) - CAC (customer acquisition cost - fully weighted) - ARPU (average revenue per user per month) - LTV (lifetime value) - Churn (Logo and Revenue) - Payback period (w/ gross margin multiplier included)
 I published some of these interviews on my podcast, The Top Entrepreneurs but many of you started asking for a way to “search” the episodes by metrics like: - Growth - Company age - Industry - Revenue So Charlie and I decided to build a tool that tags all of the data, puts it in a big spreadsheet at GetLatka.com, and allows you to search. Today, we’re publishing this report which compares Dec 2016 ARR with Dec 2017 ARR to measure growth rates of these public B2B SaaS companies. In the report, you can choose to look at growth rates by company size (so smaller companies don’t monopolize rankings, $1 to $2 is 100% growth!): - More than $100k in ARR - More than $1m in ARR - More than $10m in ARR Additionally if you click on a company you are curious about, you’ll see full company page with unit economics, revenue per employee, and other unique metrics. Here’s the key: All the data points are clickable. When you click them, we’ll jump to the part of the recorded interview where the CEO revealed that data point so you know its coming straight from them. No other data source was used in the creation of this report other than the CEO’s mouth, and then a followup email we sent to all the CEO’s confirming the ARR (Screenshot above).
Mike Ritchie
@nathanlatka @nathanlatka You might want to reconfigure your Intercom settings... it's sort of spammy (e.g. I got the message "just spoke with bootstrapped CEO consider a raise or sale (hes doing $12m+ in ARR)."... not sure why you'd want to push that in a chat message, but it dissuades me from signing up).
Nathan Latka
Maker
@mike_seekwell weird.. where/what screen did you see that on?
Mike Ritchie
@nathanlatka Seems like it's on every page https://ibb.co/jzwU9n
Mike Ritchie
@nathanlatka By the way, signed up anyway to hear the interview with Looker's CEO. You're great at this man, keep it up. It's incredible you're able to get these interviews and the level of transparency you pull out.
Davis Baer
Required signup just to take a look... :(
Nathan Latka
Maker
@daviswbaer i changed my mind here - going to remove this signup alltogether. give me a bit to update code!
Nathan Latka
Maker
@daviswbaer the signup pop-up has been removed. everyone can view the entire report now without having to put in name and email.
Davis Baer
@nathanlatka awesome :)
Charlie Coppinger
@daviswbaer @nathanlatka Doesn't seem to be the case — did you reintroduce the sign-in requirement?
Nathan Latka
Maker
@daviswbaer @thecoppinger nope. you can see this report without setting up a username. once you dive deeper into the database (company pages for example), then you'll have to create a username.
Vinoth

For those who listen to Nathan's podcasts, you'll have a daily dose of what's happening with in the SaaS world across geographies. For founders who aren't based out of US, information of these kinds helps to benchmark your growth.

Pros:

Hard to impossible to get your hands on a data of this kind.

Cons:

None.

Nathan Latka
Maker
Thanks Vinoth - did you start with the podcast or the database?
Charlie Coppinger
Great concept, but I can't help but question the authenticity of the data - do you do any due diligence to ensure the integrity of the reported revenue?
Nathan Latka
Maker
@thecoppinger it's all taken directly from the CEO's mouth. If you click on the revenue number, it'll start playing the interview I did with the CEO right when they said "My revenue was XYZ". Hope that helps!
Charlie Coppinger
@nathanlatka Thanks for taking the time to reply Nathan, much appreciated. I would highly recommend considering some sort of verification process to make it, at the very least, a little more difficult to just make up numbers.
Nathan Latka
Maker
@thecoppinger CEO's come on my show and say the numbers publicly. I have zero interest in being in the business of asking them "Are you lying?" after they say every data point. I push hard and verify (ex if they say 1000 customers and $20 ARPU but MRR is $500k, somethins is off because 1000 customers*$20 is 20k MRR not $500k) but if a CEO wants to come on the show and blatantly lie, thats their own choice. It'll all come out eventually :) Again, not a business I want to be in.
Charlie Coppinger
@nathanlatka Entirely fair, I get that. I'm just worried on your behalf that posts could be manipulated pretty easily to try and garner investor attention with falsified self-reporting of growth metrics, and free eyeballs by being put towards the top of the list. Pushing hard and verifying is probably a great place to start, so good on you. All the best, and great work.
Nathan Latka
Maker
@thecoppinger would be pretty stupid strategy for a CEO to lie about numbers to get investor attention. Those investors will eventually look at the books and see how badly the CEO lied which would kill any deal. Totally get where you're coming from though!
Aaron Watson

Latka's interviews are great. I learn so much from these interviews and the perspective on Saas industry.

Pros:

Completely Unique data source with voice of CEO embedded

Cons:

Want more editorial content

Nathan Latka
Maker
Thanks Aaron!
Conrad Wadowski
Great work Nathan and Charlie! Really valuable resource. Outside of keeping it updated, do you have any plans on where to take the product next?
Nathan Latka
Maker
@conradwa few things: 1) We add about 30 new companies to the database every month (B2B Marketing and Sales tech SaaS only) 2) CEO's have asked for a way to update their profiles without coming live on the show - so launching some sort of admin feature for that is in the works 3) We've helped about 50 companies raise capital or sell - figuring out how we scale this. We're also considering how we editorialize more of the data! You have any ideas of where we should take it? Big fan of what you're building too!
Conrad Wadowski
@nathanlatka - I see a lot of potential in #3, but I wouldn't think *too* much about trying to scale or automate. These transactions are inherently high touch -- but there's nothing wrong with that if your LTV measures up and there isn't a significant competitive risk coming from the bottom end of the market. Once you've got your own process locked down, you could later find others to manage the investment process completely too (like an AngelList syndicate would). You've already helped raise capital and sell -- however, I don't yet see a clear focus on the buy-side persona. One persona you could test could be PEs who have access to capital, but less access to great niche SaaS or marketplace deals (or ability to help these companies with growth outside of providing capital). At a high-level, the agreements you could structure could involve (1) you and the (2) talent you bring in to manage the deals to share in the profit. This could offer a more compelling value prop to attracting top talent who are used to a fixed salary and a highly uncertain equity payout.
Sandeep Periwal

As a founder when you're going thru' the lows, some of these metrics are good a good motivator. Great work!!

Pros:

Single source for a lot of relevant data

Cons:

nothing much

Andrew Berkowitz
Great stuff Nathan!
Nathan Latka
Maker
@thewitzcarlton thanks Andrew!
Aaron Watson
As an outsider looking in on the big names in Saas, it's hard to distinguish between bluster and hard data. This tool makes it pretty easy. I just spent 2+ hours scrolling through this list and learning about the companies in a position to succeed over the next few years.
Saravana Kumar
Great curation, I regularly check on the website and definitely open and read the newsletter I receive from GetLatka It's almost like truth from horse's mouth directly.
Nathan Latka
Maker
@saravanamv thanks Saravana! Are you competing w/ docusign, rightsignature, etc?
Saravana Kumar
@nathanlatka no, we are going to compete with knowledge base side of ZenDesk, Intercom, Helpscot etc. We feel that market is currently dominated by help desk providers and they do not give the same importance ( they focus on ticketing/messaging/chat etc) and pretty much all of them are basic. We wanted to create a "Knowledge base offering focused on SaaS products" addressing limitations like versioning, backup, team collaboration etc.
Shane Barker
I've always loved your approach on how you interview (pull information out of) CEO's! Great resource for sure! Thanks for sharing Nathan!
Nathan Latka
Maker
@shane_barker thanks shane! did you find the podcast first or the database first out of curiosity?
Shane Barker
@nathanlatka I found the podcast first.
Matt Harney
Awesome resource.
Nathan Latka
Maker
@matthew_harney thanks Matt!
Vinoth
The amount of data in one sheet is incredible and extremely difficult to find otherwise. Thanks for taking the time to compile and keeping the data real, Nathan. Your podcasts makes my drive bearable every morning. Cheers!
Hervé Muyal

I've been using Nathan's data since August last year.

Very useful information on SaaS metrics.

Pros:

Very useful source of SaaS data

Cons:

Hum...not a big fan of the black background :)

Jimmy Kim
Awesome list - lots of inspiration not to mention a great resource for all aspiring SaaS owners. Thanks for the share!
Pat
Amazing data getting better all the time. LOVE the links to the podcasts.
Elke Fleing

Would like to have much more companies in there - so: grow fast please :-)

Pros:

Great insights, realllly nice design, great tool for market research.

Cons:

Doesn't work in my chrome browser everything just grey...

Nathan Latka
Maker
Working on it! :D
Jordan Hosmer

I've been a long time listener of the podcast and use the site to compare our own SaaS metrics. Super helpful data and Nathan always pushes his guests for answers and in turn gets great useful content. Thanks!

Pros:

METRICS and DATA and NUMBERS - OH MY!

Cons:

None

Nathan Latka
Maker
Thanks Jordan!!
Tonya Parker
Nathan takes the time to talk to founders and CEOs to get the most up to date numbers possible. I was surprised to see several companies who I follow and a few whose products I use on the list. (Shoutout to SalesFlare!) If you aren't fully aware of the size and scope of the SaaS ecosystem, this list will catch you up fast.
Doc Turner
business statistic data app.