Dear SaaStr: How Much Money Does a VC Make If Their Investment Sells for One Billion?
Dear SaaStr: How Much Money Does a VC Make If Their Investment Sells for One Billion? Often not as much as you’d think. Each general partner might make $5m here on a $1B exit. And a non-true general partner might make quite a bit less. Let’s say: The fund owns 10% at...
Dear SaaStr: What Happens if a VC Loses All Their Money on an Investment?
Dear SaaStr: What Happens if a VC Loses All Their Money on an Investment? It’s OK — if it’s not too much. As long as the founders did everything they possibly could to make it work. Everything. And were honest. There are two types of losses for VCs...
Dear SaaStr: How Do I Deal With Investors That are Unhappy With The Company?
Dear SaaStr: How Do I Deal With Investors That are Unhappy With The Company? Be transparent. And show them an honest, data-driven path to a better future. First, investors get most upset when founders hide things. And founders tend to hide things more when times are...
Dear SaaStr: When Bootstrapping a SaaS Product, What Should You Be Aware Of?
Dear SaaStr: When Bootstrapping a SaaS Product, What Should You Be Aware Of? Just a few observations from bootstrapped B2B companies I’ve had some involvement with: It probably will take 1–4 years longer to get to $10m ARR or so. I don’t fully have the data to support...
What 2,835 VC Funds and $118 Billion Tells Us About Venture Returns Right Now. The Latest Data.
The Real Truth About VC Fund Returns in 2025: 7 Things Every Founder (and LP) Needs to Know Carta just released their Q3 2025 VC Fund Performance Report, analyzing 2,835 funds with $118 billion in commitments. It’s the most comprehensive look at how venture...
Dear SaaStr: Should Both Founders Come to VC Pitches?
Dear SaaStr: Should both founders be at investor pitches, or just one is one? Both own 50% BTW. The CEO should always be at every VC pitch. The other founder? It is nice to have them there, especially if she or he can answer certain questions (e.g., product,...
The Real State of Seed Today: The Top 10 Learnings from 50,000 Startups, Per Carta’s Latest Data
Carta just dropped their Winter 2025 State of Seed report, and it’s packed with data every founder and investor needs to understand. Here are the 10 most important takeaways for B2B founders: #1. Solo Founders Are on the Rise—But VCs Still Don’t Love Them:...
4 Reasons to Send Investor Updates Even When Times Are Tough
When things aren’t going well, the last thing you want to do is write that monthly or quarterly investor update. Your metrics are down. That big partnership fell through. You’re three months behind on the product roadmap. Maybe you’re thinking,...
Dear SaaStr: Our VC Is Encouraging Us to Hire Aggressively and Increase the Burn Rate. Should We Listen to Them?
Dear SaaStr: Our VC Is Encouraging Us to Hire Aggressively and Increase the Burn Rate. Should We Listen to Them? In my experience, about 66-70% of the time this is bad advice, especially if it is coming from a Very Large VC. Not always — but more often than...
The Hard Truth About Fundability: What 2,000+ Pitch Decks on SaaStr AI VC Taught Us
61% of Founders Think They’re Fundable. The Data Says Otherwise. We’ve now processed over 2,000 pitch decks through SaaStr.ai VC’s FREE AI-powered analysis engine. Try it here. And the data tells a story that every founder needs to hear. Only 12.1%...
You Can Hide From a Lot of Things as a Founder. Cash Burn Isn’t One of Them.
I’ve been doing this long enough now – 8 years on some boards, 100+ investments across two funds – to have seen every flavor of founder challenge at least 10 times. The VP Sales that isn’t working out. The product roadmap that’s six...
Dear SaaStr: A Co-Founder is Asking for More Equity Post Fundraising. What Should I Do?
Dear SaaStr: A Co-Founder is Asking for More Equity Post Fundraising. What Should I Do? Listen. It usually means something is wrong. Or at least, off: If you got the equity splits right at first, usually, big issues don’t come up later. This may be a sign you need to...
The Problem(s) With T3D2 Venture Deals. They’re Still Great. But They Might Get You Fired.
Is Triple Triple Double Double good enough in B2B venture deals anymore? You know the path: $1m ARR → $3m ARR → $9m ARR → $18M ARR → $36m ARR → rocketship. Here’s the thing. On the one hand, of course it is. That compounds to 50%+ growth at $100m+ ARR....
Why The Top Quartile in Venture is Brutal Today: When “Doing Great” Isn’t Enough to Raise Money
We’ve been running SaaStr’s AI-powered pitch deck analyzer for a few months now, and we’ve graded and analyzed over 1,600 (!) pitch decks. The pattern is clear and honestly pretty brutal: founders are building fundamentally strong companies that...
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