So Braze is a great SaaS IPO you make have missed
It's a next-generation marketing platform built mobile-first, with a focus on bigger deals and enterprise
It took off almost immediately
It's at $260m in ARR, growing 63% YoY
5 Interesting Learnings: 🔽🔽🔽🔽🔽
#1. $500k+ deals make up half their revenue, and $1m deals 37%
Big deals fuel the growth at Braze. Still, Braze isn’t overly concentrated, with no customer being over 5% of their revenue. A classic “going more and more upmarket” enterprise playbook.
#2. 126% NRR Overall, and 135% in their $500k+ customers.
What you’d expect, and it’s helpful to see this segmented. The Really Big Customers have 135% NRR. You should aim for the same with similar-sized B2B customers.
#3. >Accelerating< after $200m ARR.
Braze is yet another SaaS leader growing even faster past $200m ARR. After a dip to a still very impressive 50%-55% growth at IPO, Braze is now growing even faster, at 62.5% a year at $250M+ ARR. Woah.
#4. Dramatically accelerating its new customer count at scale.
This is super impressive. You might expect much of Braze’s growth to be from its base. And it has been. But the past several quarters Braze has also doubled its new customer growth, from 22%-29% to 48% today.
#5. 2016 customer cohort spends 3.2x more today.
This is a great way to see high NRR presented. Blaze’s 2016 customers spend 3.2x more today than they did in 2016. Invest in customers for life.
And a few bonus learnings:
#6. 40% of Revenue from Outside U.S.
What to expect from B2B apps that work equally well everywhere, and are localized. Aim for that too if your are B2B enterprise and can work well anywhere.
#7. 60% Gross Margins at IPO, 66% Today. A bit lower than many B2B SaaS players due to their messaging costs, in part. Bull Wall Street is fine with it. 60%+ still “counts” as software
#8. 1,000 employees at $250m in ARR. A good yardstick for more enterprise-focused SaaS.
#9. CEO/co-founder Bill Magnuson was CTO until 2017, then took over as CEO from a co-founder, and owns 4.5%.
Dilution added up over the years, with Magnuson owning 4.5% at IPO. That’s still $300m in net worth, but a good reminder that going big can involve material dilution.
What an incredible run for Braze!!
More here:
saastr.com/5-interesting-…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.