Allocators and venture capitalists need to differentiate between high and low quality tech startups, analyzing their balance sheets for sufficient cash and path to profitability, and considering changes to public market multiples and risk premiums. Free cash flow growth is a critical metric in evaluating a company's potential for future success.
Choosing a less competitive space in SaaS can result in a profitable, small business, while entering a more saturated market can lead to faster growth and scale. Roughly 20-25% of tiny seed companies are bootstrapped with no technical founders.
The podcast discusses the explosive growth of SaaS companies, with some going from zero to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue within a few years.
The due diligence process for investing in bloated software businesses now includes questions about net dollar retention, long term operating margin, and free cash flow as crude price to revenue multiples are no longer sufficient metrics.
The venture market is a power law market where good companies attract more competition from VCs, leading to higher percentage ownership for founders and lower returns for those who missed out on the best deals. This is likely to continue in a cycle of capital investment and withdrawal over several decades.
Startups need to prepare for high logo churn rates in the post-pandemic era and focus on free cash flow conversion to survive. They also need to take into account the high graduation rates from C to series A to series B that were inflated during the boom times.