The reality is in SaaS it isn’t that hard.
Companies like Atlassian and Qualtrics have gotten to nine-figures in ARR (and IPO’d in the case of Atlassian) without needing any venture capital.
There are generally a handful of common characteristics:
- First, it takes much longer, usually, to get to to Initial Scale ($10m ARR). Usually 4 years longer when you are bootstrapping. THEN, they seem to basically scale at the same rate as venture-backed peers. This makes sense. At $10m ARR, you can begin to aggressively fund hiring from incoming cash flow. Much earlier, you will be capital constained on aggressive hiring.
- Second, usually, bootstrapped SaaS companies start at the bottom of the market (SMBs and silos-in-the-enterprise). It’s not that six figure deals are more expensive to close … they aren’t. But the sales cycles are longer, and generally, you need more experienced sales and marketing talent to acquire and close these deals. So usually you have to start at “the bottom” of the market and slowly go upmarket.
- Third, it’s important to be in a segment where competition can’t kill you. Because it will take you 4 years >longer< to get to $10m ARR, it’s important to be in a market segment where direct competition is weak. This doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Just that in your sweet spot of deals … you usually win. If you are competing head on with 3 other super-talented start-ups with $10m in venture capital doing the same thing, and you aren’t at $1m in ARR yet … odds are, you lose. You have to do something not just different, but sufficiently different that you can withstand competition until you are big enough to stand on your own two feet.
- Fourth, you need a capital-efficient way to hire your dev team. Engineers in the Bay Area are incredible expensive. 2x more than London or Paris. If you need 5 Bay Area ex-Google engineers to get your start-up going, it will be impossible without capital. Atlassian was started in Australia. Qualtrics in Utah. Etc. etc. Perhaps not a coincidence.
Again, the #1 more important thing to understand in SaaS is you can totally do it without external funding. It will be HARD. But so is everything. But you need to budget an extra 2 years to get to Initial Traction ($1.5m or so in ARR), and then, an extra 2 years to get to Initial Scale ($10m in ARR or so). Both stages will likely take longer.
