We look back on the go-go days of the second half of 2020 and 2021 like it was a time of fools and silliness. Of 1,000 unicorns we didn’t need, of products that in end no one quite really had to have.
Fair enough.
But if you’re trying to figure out what’s really going on in 2024, let’s take a calm look back at how the top leaders were growing even just in 2022, when the markets were crashing but growth was still epic:
Your daily jaw-dropper:
The average public SaaS company at $1B ARR …
was growing 67% a year pic.twitter.com/nd2vJ3QAZM
— Jason ✨🇬🇧SaaStr LDN June 4-5✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) April 28, 2022
Just crazy, even in early 2022.
Then growth just plummeted. Let’s look at the same leaders today, just 2 years later:
Overall growth has slowed to under 20% for the public SaaS companies. The 9 leaders we looked at in 2022? Even there, their growth has been cut dramatically from 67% to 23%
They are still growing. Buyers are still buying.
But that’s how much harder it is than even in 2022.
