Founders

It’s not obvious what drives them

Capital deployment remains depressed, sitting about 50% below trend

Investors have lost faith in Series A as a sign of product-market fit. In other words, they expect more but believe less.

Measuring the state of the venture "business cycle"

Valuations are 60% too high relative to the volume of venture funding

It's Jay Powell's world. We're just living in it.

Where did the explosive growth in venture activity come from?

Private valuations substantially lag public tech valuations

Venture funding hasn't grown as much as you think

Revenue surprises permanently shift the trajectory of SaaS companies

Hiring freezes matter more than layoffs

COVID put software companies on a permanently lower growth trajectory.

Exploring the vast "dark matter" of the software universe

A frothy funding environment means more competition for talent. Funding gets easier; hiring gets harder.

Rules are meant to be broken, and the Rule of 40 is no exception

Preferred equity exists in a constant state of quantum superposition. It's neither equity nor debt, until it is.

ACV isn't as useful a concept as people think. We need a different SaaS monetization metric.

Companies don't catch up to their valuations; their valuations catch up to them.

In startup land, we talk way too much about relative growth. We'd do better to ground our thinking in absolute growth.