Chris Ho

Rubrik’s IPO Signals Venture Capital Optimism and Growth Opportunities Rubrik’s recent IPO triumph serves as a powerful signal for venture capital investors. The company’s valuation surge provides hope for reasonably priced growth financing rounds. However, many companies still find themselves below the valuation of their last funding round, patiently awaiting brighter days. Here’s a closer look at Rubrik’s journey: Successful IPO: Rubrik’s stock price soared 17% on its debut day, closing at $37. The firm’s valuation now stands at approximately $6.49 billion. Upsized Offering: The IPO raised a whopping $752 million, fueling Rubrik’s expansion plans and valuing the company at $5.6 billion. Steady Growth: Rubrik’s valuation has steadily climbed. In January, a Series E round valued the company at $3.3 billion, up from $1.8 billion in 2017. Investment Backing: Microsoft, Greylock, and Lightspeed have all backed Rubrik, reinforcing its potential. #IPO #VentureCapital #TechCompanies #GrowthOpportunities #DataSecurity #CloudComputing #Cybersecurity

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Clari just passed $4 trillion in revenue under management. That’s how much revenue is flowing through the Clari Revenue Platform. And thanks to our customers, we know more about how to run revenue than any company on earth. Here are 5 unexpected learnings to help you capture more revenue this year. #Clari #Revenue #AI

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As part of a recent #SaaSTalks session, I had the pleasure of speaking to two seasoned #GTM experts, Girish and Charanyan, and we had a very engaging discussion on GTM for SaaS firms focused on SMBs. Our discussion inspired me to put down a few thoughts of my own to guide startup founders venturing into the SMB space. If you’re a SaaS founder looking to get started on GTM, here are some suggestions! Arpit Maheshwari Sayantan Sarkar Naman Jain

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Looking forward to tomorrow's PeakSpan Capital Master Class with Rashaqa Rahman and Karen A Chiang from Ibbaka. In a difficult economic environment for SaaS companies (see Kyle Poyar's recent post of SFDC's results) being able to measure value is a core skill. Karen and Rahaqa do this every day and have built the value models used by many otp companies. They will show how it is really done. https://lnkd.in/gjsAWhSq #SaaS #pricing #growth #valuemodeling #valuebasedpricing

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Growth Strategy Advisors is a boutique consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Our mission is to empower startup founders and early-stage companies as they navigate the complex landscape of Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies and sales acceleration. Here’s how we do it: Founder-Led Sales: We recognize that founders often play a pivotal role in the initial sales process. However, as companies scale and GTM motions become more intricate, a strategic shift is necessary. Our team steps in to guide founders through this transition, ensuring seamless growth without the typical pains associated with siloed teams and fragmented data1. GTM Strategy Definition: We work closely with founders to define their GTM strategy. This involves identifying target markets, customer segments, pricing models, and distribution channels. By aligning these elements, we create a cohesive plan that maximizes revenue potential. Sales Enablement: Our experts equip founders with the tools, training, and processes needed to build a high-performing sales engine. From lead generation to closing deals, we optimize every step of the sales cycle. Performance Tracking: Metrics matter! We help founders establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and track progress against them. Whether it’s pipeline growth, conversion rates, or customer lifetime value, we ensure data-driven decision-making. Cross-Functional Alignment: Effective GTM requires collaboration across departments. We bridge the gap between marketing, sales, finance, and legal teams, ensuring everyone is on the same page and working toward shared revenue goals.

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from a CPO chat today, we were strategizing ways to explain to CFOs/finance folks why investors value real subscription revenue 10x higher than implementation and professional services revenue... https://lnkd.in/gxZs5CyE Of note, they tend to be less interested in the HOW: agile, backlogs, WIP, interrupts, SW architecture, bugs vs features... #leadership #executives #money #WhenDoWeIPO

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Moats - Competitive Advantage Morningstar lists top competitive moats: 1. Intangible Assets: Brand recognition, patents, and regulatory licenses that give companies a competitive edge. Example: Coca-Cola 2. Switching Costs: Costs incurred by customers when switching from one product or service to another. Example: Oracle 3. Network Effect: The value of a product or service increases as more people use it. Example: CME Group 4. Cost Advantage: Companies that can produce goods or services at a lower cost than their competitors. Example: UPS 5. Efficient Scale: Markets where a company serves demand more efficiently than competitors, deterring new entrants. Example: Kinder Morgan --- These moats are among the most commonly recognized but not exhaustive. Other potential competitive moats or sources of competitive advantage include: - Technological Innovation: Advancements in technology that lead to superior products or processes. Example: NVIDIA (i.e. advancements in GPU technology, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence and gaming, which have set new standards for performance and capabilities) - Freemium Models: Offering a free version of the software with limited features to attract users, then converting them to paying customers with premium features. Example: Slack, Dropbox - Data Advantage: Leveraging large datasets to improve products and services through machine learning and AI, providing better customer experiences and insights. Example: Google, Palantir - Developer Community and Open Source Contributions: Building a strong community of developers who contribute to the software, improving it and increasing its adoption. Example: Red Hat, GitHub - Scalability & Performance: Offering a highly scalable and reliable platform that can handle increasing user loads and demands without compromising performance. Example: AWS, Google Cloud Platform - Platform Integrations: Building integrations with other popular software platforms to enhance functionality and make the software more indispensable. Example: Zapier, HubSpot - Innovative Features and Continuous Improvement: Regularly updating the software with new and innovative features that keep it ahead of competitors. Example: Tesla’s continuous updates to its software for cars - Ecosystem Lock-in: Creating a suite of interconnected products that work seamlessly together, making it difficult for customers to switch to competitors. Example: Microsoft Office Suite - Customer Support and Service: Providing exceptional customer service and support to create strong customer loyalty and satisfaction. Example: Zendesk - Customer Loyalty: Strong customer relationships that result in repeat business. Example: Amazon Prime - Selling (how you sell is just as important as what you sell). Example: Hubspot, Zoom, Atlassian, Salesforce P.S. What are some of the other moats you've seen especially in tech? #pe #privateequity #business #markets #investing #ceo

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Transformation of this scale necessitates a fair amount of clarifying. We’re actively working to identify and answer these questions out in the market. Here is the latest on our Go-to-Market Strategy: https://lnkd.in/gy-sXcrd

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Board of Directors - insights from "The Essays of Warren Buffett" Buffett’s principles for Boards of Directors emphasize the importance of independence, accountability, and a focus on long-term shareholder value: - Long-Term Focus: Boards should act in the long-term interest of shareholders - Board Composition: Boards with mostly outside directors and select members for business savvy, not prominence or diversity (PE insight: CROs on the Board) - Regular Evaluation: Outside directors should meet without the CEO to assess performance True Independence: Directors must have equity in the company to align with shareholders' interests P.S. This is a very insightful book structuring Warren Buffett's shareholder letters by specific categories - here are the top summary takeaways from the rest of the book: Investment Discipline – Maintain patience and discipline, avoiding speculative investments and market timing Business Quality – Seek businesses with a durable competitive advantage Management – High-quality, trustworthy management & look for managers who think like owners Corporate Governance – Transparent communication and fair treatment of all stakeholders Risk Management – Avoid excessive leverage and maintain a margin of safety to minimize risk and preserve capital Fundamentals – Focus on fundamentals rather than market trends Economic Earnings – Focus on economic earnings and free cash flow rather than accounting profits for a true picture of financial health Long-Term Focus – Long-term investments and value creation vs. short-term gains Capital Allocation – Efficient capital allocation is key - reinvest earnings wisely Market Irrationality – Recognize and capitalize on irrationality as "Mr.Market" can be inefficient in the short term #investing #markets #business #stocks #finance #pe #ceo

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** This is not Financial Advice, so do your own due diligence ** I have been a long time Cisco bull --like forever -- but I was disappointed by CSCO's latest earnings call. I fear, Street is over-modeling FY26 rev growth of >5% Y/Y.. if the past is any indicator, CSCO just cannot sustain over 1% CAGR growth, let alone the 5+% CAGR over a 3 year period. Opinions aside, facts are CSCO 3 yr CAGR is ~1% (70bps to be exact) vs the 5 - 7% CAGR it guided, which btw the company lowered after first offering 7 - 9% CAGR they guided to--even with the backdrop of COVID-led enterprise refresh. Hard to see CSCO's campus opportunity growing here, I'd rather argue we just went through a peak cycle as is evident from the Peak Gross Margins for both CSCO and SPLK. Plus Jayshree Ullal and team at Arista Networks are eating away share in the Fortune-100. $PANW's pjatformization play will likely take a bite out of CSCO's security story, which frankly took too long for CSCO to right! integrating point solutions and stitching them together just doesnt work in security-- CSCO should borrow a page from $FTNT on how to organically grow in security. CSCO has a lot of work ahead of them, SPLK had been on the block for so long, its previous mgmt. significantly under-invested in SPLK and so now CSCO has to step up and drive incremental Opex. Beyond incremental opex, the higher interest rate expense is gonna eat away the EPS.. Streets ~$3.70 FY26 EPS is too high.. would be lucky if they get to $3.50. You know CSCO is in trouble when they got out of their comfort zone of tuck-in acquisitions (typically less than $3B) and bought SPLK for $28B! Remember, Harvard Business School wrote a case study on CSCO's "innovation through acquisition" untill John Chambers disastrous acquisition of Linksys (to expand into consumer market). History is clear the Linksys acquisition was a disaster. Look M&A is hard, Tech M&A is even harder and large tech M&A is next to impossible to be successful. To be fair, CSCO has out executed in the past, its track record in M&A is simply outstanding, one of the reasons why CSCO is still as relevant today as it was during the hight of the "dot com" bubble. CSCO rightfully belonged in the tech leader with the likes of $MSFT, $ORCL. But with the SPLK deal odds are against them -- i suspect this deal was dont by "financial heads" vs the "product leaders". Sure SPLK was big enough to drive a step function improvement in CSCO's software revenue story.. but it also comes with a set of challenges that CSCO is not accustomed to. Odds are against CSCO this time.

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In April, OpenAI Controller Sowmya Ranganathan walked me through how her accounting team leverages ChatGPT to revolutionize the close process. I instantly knew we needed to share her story with the broader finance community. Accuracy and process are core to accounting workflow, so it can be intimidating to stray from traditional approaches. In our webinar last week, Sowmya walked through some brilliant demos, illuminating how you can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks with ease. I’d *highly* recommend watching a replay of our webinar if you weren’t able to join live – it’s linked in the comments. We’ve also distilled her advice into a how-to guide: https://lnkd.in/gbheYKf2 Here are some of the pro tips she shared: ⚫ Seek out ways to automate. When you’re repeating a task that takes more than a few minutes in Excel - or something you hate about the close process, rewire your brain to find a way to automate it. Those minutes quickly add up to streamline your day-to-day workflow. This works with the close process, but also many other projects in finance and beyond. ⚫ Be curious about code. While she’s not a trained programmer, Sowmya uses ChatGPT to create Python scripts to build pivot tables and parse through massive CSVs. Her team can categorize a full month of OpenAI’s Azure usage data 👀 in 10 seconds 👀, whereas before they’d have to manually process the data every few days to avoid hitting Excel’s row limits. ⚫ Train ChatGPT on your company’s specific guidelines. After Sowmya ran a prompt to recognize revenue from a transaction file, she asked ChatGPT to cross-check it against their audit firm’s ASC 606 guidelines, which she uploaded as a PDF. The result was nearly the same, but it added an extra step to protect against hallucinations. And, she always triple-checks the results. ⚫ Don’t fear the error message. Pre-ChatGPT, if she was working on an automation project and received a technical error message, she might have given up. Today, Sowmya dumps the message back into ChatGPT, where it can diagnose and resolve any issues. You can see this problem-solving in action during her demo! A big thank you to Sowmya for sharing this hands-on demo and giving finance leaders the confidence to test it out themselves. Now that you have inspiration, how will you use ChatGPT and AI to revolutionize operations at your company?

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Great analysis by the AGC team on SaaS public company comps. It's worth a look as we recalibrate mid-way through earnings season. The analysis aligns with the broader Nasdaq equity performance, where the Mag 7 (or fab 4 now :-)) have shown more resilience than the rest of the market. #AGC #SaaS #EarningsSeason #Nasdaq #EquityPerformance

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Seismic leads the way in G2's Spring 2024 Grid® Report for Sales Enablement for Enterprise Businesses — for the ninth year in a row! 🏆 The best part? Rankings are based solely on real reviews from real customers. If you're curious about how we stack up against the competition, check out the G2 Enterprise Spring 2024 Grid® Report at the link below.

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How companies purchase software is rapidly evolving, with cloud marketplaces expected to reach $100B in 2026, up from $15B in 2023. Simply put, if you are building and selling cloud software today, it's imperative that you can sell through a cloud marketplace. The journey, however, can be a little confusing, and management can be even harder. With 3x growth last year and 3/4th of our business now flowing through a cloud marketplace, CloudZero switched to Clazar earlier this year to handle our rapid growth, and I couldn't be more thrilled. Trunal B. and Aayush Bahuguna have a big vision for how cloud marketplaces will evolve and how software will be bought and sold in the future. No matter where you are on your journey, learning from them what's coming next is worth your time.

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A few thoughts on the SalesTech. I think we're heading towards a "buyer-led" era, where sellers no longer hold all power to close deals. Both founders and investors should move away from a seller-centric approach and focus on the buyer (classic example Hetz Ventures PortCo: Aligned).

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AI-native companies need to embrace new pricing paradigms (price based on work done, on outcome vs hours, etc). Inevitably, new pricing models are accompanied by new workflows, new ways of invoicing, and new challenges around billing. This makes Sequence's modern billing platform particularly relevant: Sequence helps finance and commercial teams automate manual billing and stop revenue leakage. Sequence has just launched their CPQ Product for B2B software businesses with hybrid pricing, designed specifically for AI, B2B SaaS and Fintech startups. This release empowers B2B teams to create flexible pricing proposals or contracts, including teams selling custom deals with usage tiers, minimum commitments, or ramped pricing, Sequence CPQ works for any pricing model or deal term. As a customer says: "Sequence is like a notion page supercharged with pricing tools." Excited for Sequence to build the critical infrastructure needed to enable new, flexible paradigms that are critical for the AI revolution.

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A few Friday thoughts... After several days in Chicago surrounded by 200+ LPs at the ILPA Members' Conference covering everything from AI to NAV facilities, I'm headed into the weekend energized by what's to come. That may come at a surprise after the week we've had as an industry. The decision from the U.S. Fifth Circuit on the SEC's Private Fund Advisers rules was handed down just moments before we kicked off ILPA’s AGM on Wednesday. All along, ILPA has viewed the PFA as addressing areas that pose risks to both LPs and the industry around transparency, governance and alignment of interest. It was disappointing—albeit not a shock—to see the PFA vacated. But ILPA is choosing to turn our energy to the compelling opportunity before us as an industry. Together, we can chart the path for how we'll work better together, on our own terms. Particularly around transparency. Just days prior to the ruling, we had debuted the next evolution of ILPA reporting templates on fees and expenses and performance for industry feedback. The templates were developed by a broad industry coalition over a three-month period, partly to comply with the PFA quarterly statements rule implementation deadline, but largely because this work needed to be done. We've temporarily paused the comment period. Now we have the benefit of more time to ensure that these minimum reporting standards have cross-industry buy-in to ensure wide support and adoption. Will you join us in this effort, in paving the way forward as an industry? https://lnkd.in/e-6hspU4

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