#SaaS week, Ep1⃣.

Not that SaaS needs anymore cheerleaders, but wanted to do one week of tweets related to SaaS resources and investing.

Starting with a list of my fav SaaS blogs.👇
The last 5 yrs have been incredible for good SaaS companies in Public Markets (excluding which spoils the party with it's 6000% return since debut).

Below is just a quick but not exhaustive list. Image
Few things to note

1) 2014 to mid-2016 wasn't exactly a smooth ride up for Tech/SaaS (like 2017, 2019, & post March 2020). Although Private investors were familiar with the SaaS model & benefits, the wider public haven't caught on to it. Early Feb 2016 was like GFC for SaaS.
2) Last 6 months have been incredibly rewarding for this space (maybe a little too much too fast, time will tell...) as investors pull out of (COVID related) problematic sectors and gravitate towards the secular growth and high Revenue visibility sectors.
3) Although the next 5 yrs might not look as great on a broad level, there will be many good Co's in this space that can get a lot bigger as they leverage the SaaS model while innovating, broadening their Portfolio and building some moats around them.
4) There might be many other Co's which are currently trading at high multiples , but are too narrow in their offerings, cannot innovate fast enough and fall behind competition or the next wave of Tech disruption, seeing their growth rate & multiple disappear.
Keeping aside the stock prices discussion, this space is incredibly interesting to know the terminology, make sense of their Fin statements (huge S&M/SBC/losses, moderate R&D/G&A, low debt, high cash..) and trying to discern whether the story is getting stronger or weaker.
There are many good accounts on Medium and Substack also for SaaS, which I plan to compile and share at a later time.

So the next few tweets this week will be to highlight some good SaaS docs and resources I came across. Hope you find them useful. 👍
Disc :

My current SaaS holdings 💼: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wishlist 👀: , , , , , , , ,

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More from @RamBhupatiraju

16 Oct
#SaaS week, Ep5⃣. My SaaS journey, scorecard & lessons learnt. Oh yeah! My original & current thesis for my SaaS holdings too.

Sharing with few (SaaS) friends🙂.
@TMFJMo @saxena_puru @FromValue @richard_chu97 @BrianFeroldi @adventuresinfi @7Innovator @dhaval_kotecha

Scorecard⬇️ Image
SaaS Journey ⬇️

2008 : The first Cloud/SaaS company I came across in the Market was (obviously), back in Dec'08 when it was at split adjusted $6.
Cloud has been a buzz word in Media for 2 years by then, but being a new investor, I didn't want to research a new trend when pretty much everything else (many strong/stable/profitable co's) was available for very low prices due to GFC .
Read 24 tweets
15 Oct
#SaaS week, Ep4⃣. Nice presentation by @saasoptics on SaaS KPIs.👍

Although the presentation is geared towards SaaS Companies, it goes thru the purpose & definitions of some key SaaS metrics and why investors care about them.

saasoptics.com/wp-content/upl… Image
On Revenue growth metrics. Image
On the precursor to Revenue -> Lead Generation and Pipeline Conversion. Image
Read 5 tweets
14 Oct
#SaaS week, Ep3⃣.

Excellent presentation by @AlbionVC👏on framework for evaluating SaaS companies. Goes thru some of the qualitative criteria and the related metrics/analysis. Lot of useful info for Public market investors also.

albion.vc/sites/default/… Image
1. Does the company provide a valuable service to its customers? Image
2. Is the business model sustainable? Image
Read 12 tweets
13 Oct
#SaaS week, Ep2⃣.

Excellent White paper by @jwangARK👏@ARKInvest about the journey of SaaS so far, reasons for recent acceleration and the outlook for next decade. (I missed this when it came out in Aug).

@saxena_puru @Gautam__Baid

research.ark-invest.com/hubfs/1_Downlo… Image
One of the clearest explanations I've seen of the SaaS model benefits to the Customers and the operating Companies. Image
Nice detailed explanation on these 5 reasons for accelerating SaaS adoption. Image
Read 5 tweets
11 Oct
Some Excellent articles by Harvard Business School on Financial Statement Analysis (h/t Tim Stobierski).

@dmuthuk @Gautam__Baid

The beginner’s guide to reading & understanding Financial Statements. 👇

online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-…
How to quickly and effectively read an Annual Report.

online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-…
How to read and understand an Income Statement

online.hbs.edu/blog/post/inco…
Read 5 tweets
8 Oct
The @IntrinsicInv blog by the Ensemble Team is such a gold mine for nuanced explanations of many fundamental investing concepts. 👏

I learned a lot over the years from the wonderful writings of Sean, @ToddWenning, Paul and Arif. 🙏

intrinsicinvesting.com
Last December, I went binge reading on their entire blog posts starting from Dec 2015 (for any articles I missed reading before that)

Below are some of my favorite posts (along with my notes).

1. VALUE, GROWTH & INTRINSIC INVESTING

intrinsicinvesting.com/2016/01/05/val…
2. FINDING THE RIGHT MIX OF VISIONARIES AND OPTIMIZERS (CEOs)

intrinsicinvesting.com/2018/10/04/rig…
Read 7 tweets

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