SaaShimi Aznaur Midov
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- Business
Discussion of SaaS, cloud and software in general with "who is who" of the industry.
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Season C - Ep. 1: Matt Lynch, Founder and Managing Director of DCP and Sundance Partners, on SaaS M&A
Matt discusses M&A the environment, SaaS valuation and its drivers, and what buyers and sellers of software companies need to know.
BIO
Matt Lynch is a Managing Director of District Capital Partners and Sundance Partners. Prior to founding DCP, Matt led Corporate Development at Blackboard, where he managed the successful completion and integration of 9 acquisitions, as well as Blackboard's sale process and $1.7 billion take-private transaction in 2011.
Matt began his career at Salomon Smith Barney (now Citi), advising on M&A transactions in the technology sector, with a specific focus on software. Over the course of his 11 years at Citi, Matt advised on over $300 billion of M&A transactions.
TIMESTAMPS
01:30 Matt Lynch
05:50 Market Environment
08:20 Valuations in 2021
11:40 Main Drivers of Valuation
14:10 Rule Of X
16:50 Customer Success and Gross Margin
20:20 Shift to Platforms
22:20 Consolidating verticals
26:20 Preferred verticals
29:35 Working with Sellers
31:20 Size of Companies that hire Investment banks
34:510Most common issues with Bootstrapped companies
36:00 Strategic vs Sponsor -
Season B - Ep. 10: Dave Salvant, Co-Founder and President of Squire Technologies, on taking advantage of challenging times
Dave discusses Squire’s product, the history of the company, how Squire successfully navigated through the early days of COVID, and the role institutional and celebrity angel investors play in the Company.
BIO
Dave Salvant is a Co-Founder and President of Squire Technologies, a provider of an all-in-one barbershop management platform. Prior to Suire, Dave was a sales associate at AXA and private banking at JP Morgan. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University at Albany (SUNY) and MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
TIMESTAMPS
00:50 Dave and Squire
03:40 Go-To-Market
07:32 Marketing in Squire
08:16 Company size / Global Remote-first company
08:57 Quick product release help barbers navigate COVID (incredible response to COVID)
11:00 Creating new products
12:15 First Investors
14:45 Celebrity Investors
16:11 Involvement of investors
16:44 Vision for Squire Technologies -
Season B - Ep. 9: Barb Hyman, Founder and CEO of Sapia, on Hiring using AI
Barb discussed Sapia’s unique product, the role of artificial intelligence in unbiased hiring, the Sapia data set based on a billion words and 2 million candidate profiles, the initial dataset that Sapia utilized, its first client, go-to-market strategy, and many other things.
TIMESTAMPS
01:00 Barb and Sapia
04:20 Five questions to select a candidate
07:50 Artificial Intelligence vs. Machine Learning
10:25 Getting the initial data set
13:25 When your first client is Enterprise…
17:30 Pricing model
24:00 Sapia’s Go-To-Market strategy
29:30 Hiring on values
33:30 KPIs
35:00 Raising capital
37:50 On biases
Season B is Sponsored by CELIGO, IPaaS for Mid-Market companies.
SIGN UP at https://www.saashimi.cloud to receive transcripts of the interviews and news about upcoming guests and events. -
Season B - Ep. 8: Sean St. Germain, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, on financial diligence of SaaS companies
Sean discussed the financial diligence process of SaaS companies, common mistakes in ARR, Gross Profit, and EBITDA calculations, the effects capitalized software and capitalized commissions have on cash EBITDA, and many other things.
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Season B - Ep. 7: Francois Laborie, President at Cognite North America, on bringing a European SaaS to the US market
Francois shared his experience of bringing the Norway-based Cognite to the US market, discussed the most significant challenges he has faced along the way, and compared corporate cultures in the US and Europe.
BIO
Dr. Francois Laborie is the President of Cognite North America, overseeing Cognite’s expansion and operations in the US, Canada, and Latin America. He has had an extensive career in the technology industry, serving in both research and executive roles. Francois has been at the heart of the transformation of the media industry through technology. He spent 11 years as COO and CCO of Vizrt, where he focused on disrupting journalism by empowering media content creators with visual storytelling tools. Before that, Francois managed research projects on collective decision-making and human-computer interfaces at the Airbus Group Corporate Research Center.
TIMESTAMPS
01:00 Francois and Cognite
06:15 Competition with internally built systems
08:40 Go-To-Market Strategy
11:40 Reception of Cognite by US and EU clients
15:35 Selecting sales personnel
19:30 Comparing corporate cultures in the US and Europe
20:20 Involvements of investors
23:30 Long-term vision for Cognite
Season B is Sponsored by CELIGO, IPaaS for Mid-Market companies.
SIGN UP at https://www.saashimi.cloud to receive transcripts of the interviews and news about upcoming guests and events. -
Season B - Ep. 6: Diamond Innabi, Vice President at Software Equity Group, on SaaS Valuation and M&A
Diamond discussed SaaS valuation and how multiples have changed over the past several years, the main drivers of multiples, and M&A market trends.
BIO
Diamond Innabi is a Vice President at Software Equity Group, a boutique investment bank focused on B2B software companies. Over her nearly a decade career at SEG, she was instrumental in numerous M&A transactions involving public and private companies as well as private equity funds.
TIMESTAMPS
1:45 Why are SaaS companies valued at a multiple of revenue or ARR?
4:00 Drivers of SaaS Valuation and how they have changed in the current environment
6:30 Mission-critical software
7:50 Multiples over 5 years
9:05 SaaS valuation during COVID
10:00 Comps contribution to assigning multiples
11:25 On-prem vs cloud valuation
14:20 Buyers and Sellers
16:20 Most durable SaaS categories
17:15 Recommendation to sellers
19:30 Calculation of Gross Margins
Click the following links to "double-click" on Diamond's comments about M&A Update, The Rule of 40, Gross Margin impact, and COGS
Season B is Sponsored by CELIGO, IPaaS for Mid-Market companies.
SIGN UP at https://www.saashimi.cloud to receive transcripts of the interviews and news about upcoming guests and events.