So Emergence Capital put together a great report here on B2B startups, “Beyond Benchmarks 2024”, with a ton of great data across 664 software startups.
One piece I loved is how 2023 growth rates compared to 2022 for Top Quartile Software Startups:
Now to be clear, and I know this is a bit brutal — “Top Quartile” isn’t in general enough to get funded by VCs. They’re looking for Top Decile, or more specifically, startups that can at least Triple Triple Double Double from $1m ARR on. They’re looking for 100% growth or better at $10m ARR. Maybe 80% if they really believe things are taking off. And certainly > 100% annual growth at $1m ARR. More on that here.
But top quartile is still a great benchmark to compare and learn from your peers:
- From $1m-$5m ARR, top quartile startups are growing 100% still. But the median is only growing 53%. A huge gap.
- From $5m-$20m ARR, top quartile startups are growing 58%. The media is 29%. Not fundable, but still a growth rate that can compound to something awesome over time.
- Things get tough from $20m-$50m. Top quartile still are growing 38% — but the bottom are shrinking at -7%. The wall many in SaaS hit if they don’t push through it. When new entrants and change pass them by.
And if the top-quartile at $5m-$20m are only growing 58%, and the bar there is 100% growth to raise a VC round … only a subset of the top-quartile can even raise right now.
The report is data from 800 venture-backed startups. From top VC funds. So what percent of venture-backed start-ups … are still fundable? Maybe just 10%-15% or so of VC-backed startups still have the growth rates to raise another round.
This ties to updated data on the Top Decline. The top decline is fundable through $20m ARR … but perhaps not even after that. You may have to be better than Top Decile of all venture-backed software companies to raise a late stage round:
A few other interesting data points:
- 60% of B2B startups have already integrated GenAI into their products
- It takes 22 months now to raise a Series A, and 25 months to raise a Series B
- NRR is down across the board, but top quartile startups all still have 100%+ NRR on average
- As startups cross $50m ARR, 40% of their new bookings come from upsell
- True CACs on average are still at 20+ months across all categories
- Startups at $5m+ ARR are already crossing $200,000 in revenue per employee
- Actually, 79% of startups did not increase pricing last year
Lots more good stuff in the report here.
Screenshot
And a related deep dive on great data on similar topic from Redpoint here:
