The Cloud Quarterly: A Founder’s Almanac

Today, we’re excited to launch a new report series focused on cloud software: “The Cloud Quarterly: A Founder’s Almanac.”

For years, we’ve released an annual Software Report (last year’s edition here) filled with data about operational and fundraising trends, IPOs and hot new software sectors, among other data. We sat down to write this year’s version . . . but then found we kept re-writing it. With the market so volatile these days, we had the sense that any report we put together would become immediately stale. By refreshing this data quarterly, we hope that you will find it much more useful.

The report contains three sections, all pertaining to cloud companies: public-market data, venture-market data, and key product themes that our team is focused on.

We are subtitling the report “A Founder’s Almanac” because, like the Farmers’ Almanac, we hope that this report can serve as reference material for cloud founders as they make decisions around business planning. Our report contains only one animal pun (the ARR per employee, or “APE” metric); we will try to avoid the temptation going forward, but we offer no promises.

Some of the main topics we discuss include:

• Covid “pull-forward” and the durability of growth reacceleration for SaaS companies;
• The “Four Zones” of the Rule of 40 and what they tell us about the value of growth vs. profitability;
• Understanding the 2021 class of IPOs;
• The state of various venture funding, for all round sizes, and VC investment across geographies;
• Key themes we’re investing behind, including the “Employee Software Stack.”

In the report (which you can find here), we provide “blue box” commentary on most of our slides, but we wish we had the space to give more context to the data.

A huge thanks to Jack Mattei, Olivia Henkoff, Matt Klineman and Isabel von Stauffenberg for their assistance in putting this report together. This project would not be possible without them.

Further analysis of the report in TechCrunch here. 

This material is provided for informational purposes, and it is not, and may not be relied on in any manner as, legal, tax or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by Battery Ventures or any other Battery entity. 

The information and data are as of the publication date unless otherwise noted.

Content obtained from third-party sources, although believed to be reliable, has not been independently verified as to its accuracy or completeness and cannot be guaranteed. Battery Ventures has no obligation to update, modify or amend the content of this post nor notify its readers in the event that any information, opinion, projection, forecast or estimate included, changes or subsequently becomes inaccurate.

The information above may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or expectations. Predictions, opinions and other information discussed in this video are subject to change continually and without notice of any kind and may no longer be true after the date indicated. Battery Ventures assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update forward-looking statements.

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