The Twenty Minute VCJason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160
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150 min read · 30,416 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Salesforce lost $50 billion…
- JLJason Lemkin
Salesforce lost $50 billion in market cap. The issue is that Salesforce said, "We have fallen to single digit growth and we're not coming back." (guitar music plays) Ready to go?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Jason, I am so excited for this, dude. First, this is the first one we've ever done in person.
- JLJason Lemkin
I- I am so excited. Uh, it- it is great. The studio's great. Um, this is better. I'm- I'm just so proud of the team, everything at 20VC. It's great. So it's great to be here.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Dude, it is so lovely to make it happen in person.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Now, this is, like, a new show in the way that we're calling it This Week in SaaS. I want to do a-
- JLJason Lemkin
Yes. You're gonna do it 52 weeks for this?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Oh, we're gonna do 52 weeks, and you are too.
- JLJason Lemkin
Okay, very good.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah. No, you didn't... You didn't get the memo? (laughs)
- JLJason Lemkin
(laughs) I did not. I- the- the Google Doc share did not work properly, but okay.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Oh, right. Okay, well, so basically it's like This Week in SaaS.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
We go through the biggest stories from the prior week in SaaS-
- JLJason Lemkin
Okay.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... and unpack them. Okay?
- JLJason Lemkin
All right. You picked a heck of a week.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I picked one hell of a week.
- JLJason Lemkin
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
And so we're gonna start at, like, all positivity in mind.
- JLJason Lemkin
Go ahead.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Pluralsight, right?
- JLJason Lemkin
Pluralsight.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah. Uh, so-
- JLJason Lemkin
Okay. (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
So the Pluralsight news was that Vista wrote down their three and a half billion dollar buyout of Pluralsight last week to zero.
- JLJason Lemkin
Crazy. Crazy.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Crazy.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can you unpack just what actually happened, for those that didn't hear about it?
- 15:00 – 30:00
Yeah. …
- JLJason Lemkin
predicting like 4 or 5% growth, and for the full year, single-digit growth. People misunderstood. It was not the miss. No one really... I mean, missing this quarter is minor. The- these, these devastating falls from Salesforce and Mongo and, and Workday and others are about th- that they're all ratcheting down where they think things are going the next year. That's kind of the discouraging thing, that we haven't come out of it. We haven't come out of... Salesforce is saying it's getting, it is not getting any better. And because of that, we are falling to single-digit growth. And, you know, why does that matter? First of all, it's not a growth stock with single digits, right? Yes, they're at 30-something percent margin. That's why the market crashed and, and, and created this whole cascading effect. Um, Mongo said growth's gonna be in the teens from like 40, 40% 18 months ago, right? Huge, huge change. Trying to get tech companies. They're tech customers. But the troubling thing, Harry, is that in B2B and SaaS, um, for more enterprise stuff, we kind of rely on this 115, 120% NRR to carry us.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- JLJason Lemkin
Like, Fastly last year grew 15% with no new, zero new customers. So (laughs) not a- they didn't close a single net new customer. Now, how'd they do that? 115% NRR. (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
They didn't close a single new customer? (laughs)
- JLJason Lemkin
Not mad. I mean, it's not one of the top performing ones, but it's, it's not-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Not one of the top per- I hold it and it was... (laughs) sh-
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah. It's a- on the one hand, it shows that the market is passing them by. On the other hand, it shows the power of, of what you're supposed to do with mid-market enterprise deals, which is have the triple-digit NRR. Salesforce is the most enterprise there is, right? That, that, and, you know, I mean, ServiceNow is more enterprise. But why isn't the 115% NRR playbook working for them? Right? That's a s- that's the troubling thing to unpack, right?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Well, why, why isn't it?
- JLJason Lemkin
Bet- well, the short-term reason is everyone is cutting seats. Everyone is cutting seats, right? And what Mark said on the earnings call, what the team said is, and also because of that, so many deals that have closed are a fraction of the size that they were projecting. Much smaller deals, much smaller deals. And so, they say that it's layoffs and stuff, but it's not really layoffs. Again, th- unemployment's pretty low, but it, but tech is very specific. Te- layoffs have been tougher in tech. But now people are like, "Maybe we can get by with 100 seats, maybe 200 seats. Maybe we don't need as much Slack or as much Mulesoft or other pieces." And they're just rationalizing, rationalizing, rationalizing. And I don't know what the effective NRR is for Salesforce, but it's crummy. They c- you know, people s- people kind of fake NRR, net revenue retention, like how much d- how much recurs. And people, people, like, they'll, they'll cut out their smallest customers, they'll cut out segments. But how, how could the enterprise leader grow 7%? It shouldn't be possible. It should, it should, could happen with an SMB1 that stumbles. It could hap-... But it sh- this wasn't supposed to be possible with enterprise SaaS, just because NRR should last forever. So, that is troubling. And a- again, that's also kind of the engine behind PE and everything is that, you know, traditionally, a lot of these PE firms have not done SMB stuff, right? When, when Vista bought Pipedrive, I wasn't there, but a lot of discussion was how unusual it was because it was a high churn, very small business. They're like, "That's not the playbook." The playbook is, "Look, we're gonna go in and buy Marketo," which was Vista's-... first big deal, um, peer of mine and, you know, what- what we want to add a feature for four years, but it won't matter because of 120% RR, right? We'll go in, we'll buy it at 200 million, then it'll be 240 and then it'll be 300. And like as... You know, yeah, maybe in 10 years it'll fall apart, but- but- but if why isn't that not working at Salesforce? It is... It should worry all of us, right? It should worry all of us.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is there not a direct correlation though between that and HubSpot's growth? Like when you look at actually HubSpot's growth of CRM-
- JLJason Lemkin
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... and compare that to Salesforce's zero rating ARR, is that not combined?
- JLJason Lemkin
You know, for sure. And- and HubSpot is still growing almost 30%, right? Uh, at two and a half billion. But HubSpot's ARR is down too. It's down from 110 to 100. So they're seeing pressures too. It's not any early- easier than. For sure, the fact that HubSpot is coming up, I think on 700 million in revenue from CRM is a dent for Salesforce, but there's always competition, right? And Salesforce has five clouds, and sales is not their... Is- is I think their third biggest cloud. It's not even their top product.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What happens if these companies are no longer growth stocks? What happens if we just accept the new norm-
- JLJason Lemkin
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... that they are growing at 5 to 7%?
- JLJason Lemkin
You know, it feels like Dropbox has settled into that.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- JLJason Lemkin
It feels like Dro- And maybe even-
- HSHarry Stebbings
At two and a half billion in ARR.
- JLJason Lemkin
As much as I love them, maybe even Aaron Levie settled into that too, right? I love Aaron's very aggressive in Builder, but I think they have such high saturation of the market. I think we are seeing some great companies like Dropbox and Box settle into that and just feel that they... Without... Unless they have a huge market cap and they can go buy something, then it- it is- it is- it is the world, right? It is the world.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, yeah. I- I don't know. I had Aaron Levie on the show and he was like-
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... "We're gonna go from 1 billion ARR to 2 billion ARR."
- JLJason Lemkin
He will.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And, "As fast as possible. That is my goal."
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah, but at 6% growth, it's still gonna take him, how long? Ten years? Or I'm doing my compounding wrong. Eight to ten years, right? And he'll get there. He'll get there, right? But- but... And I don't think Aaron settles for anything. I think he's one of the best founders that I know, but- but he's not saying we're going to get back to 30% growth.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Just help me understand what, why we have seen the tapering of growth though. Is it like just incredible saturation of market? Is it lack of growth in market? Like why, why is this?
- JLJason Lemkin
Everyone on Twitter thinks there's one root cause. Again, if Canva's at 2.4 billion growing 40%, if Samsara is growing over 40% at 1.3 billion in revenue, okay? Um, if Zscaler, I think, is growing 40% at two billion in revenue on the security side, it's not like we're in a downturn, Harry.
- HSHarry Stebbings
No.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Right.…
- JLJason Lemkin
push of Google Cloud, but maybe that type of automation is not really where they want to be. If they want to go SMB, if they want to combine with G Suite...
- HSHarry Stebbings
Right.
- JLJason Lemkin
... then it's a good, it's a good fit, right? Because they have this, a great footprint. So when I first saw it, I thought this was stupid. It was like, yeah, it's on someone's slide and so are 40 other companies, but maybe it's possible. The only reason I say this, and listen, if I knew anything, of course, I would not say anything. I, it feels like people are a little quiet at HubSpot. (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JLJason Lemkin
When you see the executives go a little quiet, yeah. That's my tell, right? Not like s- just like, so, you know, a l- that's the only reason why I-
- HSHarry Stebbings
But there's a genuine question of, like, from a regulatory standpoint-
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... could it go through? At 33 billion, that passes the bar of, uh, meaningful to regulators. You know, we, we-
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I was gonna ask you about, um, Clearbit, which was acquired for $150 and just what you thought about that. Respectfully, it's too small for regulators to give a shit really, I think, bluntly, but 33 billion? Oh, they care.
- JLJason Lemkin
I don't think Figma deserved the antitrust, uh, ding that it got. I think if Adobe bought Canva, that'd be a much bigger issue. I think Canva's an existential threat to the whole Creative Cloud, whole Creative Cloud. Uh, Figma is adjacent. Um, if antitrust looks at Google and says, "Hey, Google is arguably the number one marketing platform on planet Earth," and HubSpot is a marketing company, I'd block it. If you slowed it down and said, "Listen, this is a CRM with support with all these other pieces and it does some email automation," you're like, "This is not... This is fine." Bl- this, you're s- this, this is, this, this should be... So I think, so I do think it's risky because a lot of folks do think that HubSpot is primarily a marketing company, which is no longer really the majority of the revenue. So I think it is a crapshoot. So I don't know. I don't know that they would agree to it. It'll, it'll be interesting to see. Antitrust is a bummer too. It's like PE.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JLJason Lemkin
Like, it's a bummer for SaaS that it's hard to get acquired because it just creates a, a, a, it creates a cloud across M&A, and the PE stuff's a cloud. These are like double clouds.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, they are double clouds.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You've said to me before about kind of Figma and Adobe being seen as competitive.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And you said, "Eh, actually Canva is more competitive in that respect."
- JLJason Lemkin
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You just said it's a threat to the whole Creative Cloud. Why do you think that is?
- JLJason Lemkin
Well, it's what, it's what... I mean, Adobe, the majority of Adobe's revenue is still from designers (laughs) designing assets in Creative Cloud, and that is exactly what Canva does. It's not prototyping products, which is what Figma is great at. Uh, Adobe had, I forget what it's called, is it XD or something? Adobe had a trivial product doing like $50 million in revenue out of what, $5 billion or so. Maybe Adobe's more bigger today. But, but, but Creative Cloud is the bulk of, it's, it's still the majority. It's either the majority or the plurality of their revenue, and it's exactly what Canva did, and Canva snuck up on Adobe, I think, right? So, I mean, we, when I, I think every company uses Canva, even if your designers are using Creative Cloud. So it's, it's much bigger deal. I think, I do think the regulators got this one wrong, and maybe even they got it wrong, who knows, because of... And this is why the, the Google-HubSpot thing might be worse, and maybe it's how they were lobbied or manipulated, 'cause I don't think it's competitive.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can you just-
- JLJason Lemkin
Nor would do I think they would have done the deal if they genuinely believed it was competitive. They wanted to expand their surface area. Scott wanted to... Scott Belsky, I mean, he's great. You've had him, right? They wanted to expand their surface area. They didn't want to take out a competitor. That would be trying to buy Canva would be taking out a competitor. They wanted to expand what Adobe did.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can you just help me out on the question of liquidity?
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
'Cause we've just mentioned obviously Pluralsight and what I think that could do to PE and their willingness to buy. We've mentioned their regulators and their withdrawal or their kind of intrusion, meaning, uh, less M&A, uh, the lack of IPOs with Rubrik and HashiCorp being the last ones as you said.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do we solve the problem of liquidity? How do you explain that to LPs who ask?
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah, look. You gotta either... Again, I, I think you either... It's tough. You've gotta be, you've gotta decide if your glass f- half full or glass half empty. If you're like, listen, there's been essentially no liquidity since 2021. You had two IPOs. Two IPOs. Um, you can't even get liquid on Figma. The big stuff's blocked. So that's the easy way to get cash, right? Is just someone write you a check the day a big deal closes. If y- if I can't get liquid on, you know, billion dollar plus deals and the multiples for the best companies are at 6X. And even worse, I, I think... Now, listen. This is, this, I don't... You know, it's hard to say 'cause one of these IPOs hasn't happened in years, but basic- folks that are close about the market say, "Look, for sure you can IPO at $200 million in ARR, in ARR, but there's no liquidity." If you can't distribute your stock, if you can't sell your stock, it doesn't matter much for venture.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you think you can IPO at $200 in ARR? Yeah, you can-
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
What do you mean…
- JLJason Lemkin
should it be discounted or do we account for TV... I don't think we, we, we account for it properly, that's my criticism of TVPI. But you gotta use-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What do you mean we don't-
- JLJason Lemkin
... you gotta use a KPI.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What do you mean?
- JLJason Lemkin
You have to use a KPI.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What do you mean we don't account for it properly?
- JLJason Lemkin
I think markups are corrupt behavior. But you need something, right? You need something. But they do corrupt behavior. Are they mark to... Should, should we have mark to market? Not to get down the venture road versus This Week in SaaS. Should we force people, like, you know, crossover funds who would have to- to have to revalue their investments every quarter? Maybe just a little bit? Maybe that would be better.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Are you very reflective of your book? Like, do you mark down your book very proactively?
- JLJason Lemkin
At the end of 1231, I marked... I took a big red marker and I went overboard. I cut everything that needed to be cut. In fact, I just had a liquidity... I mean, an extremely minor liquidity event, and w- it's no- and it's three times what I marked it down to in December. It ain't much, but it is three times (laughs) I marked the investment down.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How did LPs respond to the rab pan to the portfolio?
- JLJason Lemkin
They didn't care. They didn't care. I, I didn't get any feedback. I mean, the, the, the fund's still fine, um, but I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get any fee- maybe I didn't ask, right? Um, I... My sense though, my sense is that that was unusual last year. My sense is people were still holding on to valuations. But I'm like, listen, I'm gonna cut everything back to the bone so that there... again, so there's only upside. (laughs) I don't want anything, I don't want anything to only go up. There's only, there's only upside, so-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I think people are still holding on structured rounds, inside rounds. They're continuing to keep prices high.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah. So that's why it is... TVPI is corrupting for this, because it... you wouldn't... If, if, if you didn't value companies like this, no one would do endless extensions on unicorn rounds to, to prop up valuation. That's bad. That's bad. Um, should you have no markups at all? Uh, I, I actually think that's not the dumbest idea, but it's too exhausting for LPs.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What happens to companies-
- JLJason Lemkin
It's too exhausting.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... like Retool, who was super hot and then kind of just continued, but lose the heat over time, and it's... What happens there?
- JLJason Lemkin
On This Week in SaaS, one of the more discouraging... Okay, so the, the, the multiples are discouraging. The lack of any I- (laughs) only two IPOs since 2021 is discouraging.
- HSHarry Stebbings
We're gonna get to the positives soon.
- JLJason Lemkin
Um, we're gonna get to the positives. Uh, again-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you, do you have-
- JLJason Lemkin
Camp is growing four-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you have a-
- JLJason Lemkin
Camp is growing 40% at 2.3 billion and mo- monstrously profitable, and it'll be a great... That... There's gonna be some great IPOs coming, which we could talk about. Um, one of the most discouraging things I- I- I saw was Thomas Tunges did a- uh, something a couple weeks ago, I put it up on SaaStr, you can search for him, and that the number of 50 million plus software exits in the US that can be tracked, and some aren't tracked for a variety of reasons, it's averaged about 57 or so for a decade, and it's stuck at 57. So the problem is we have so many Retools now, so many great c- Like, it's... the number of... So that's a decade... I saw it a decade ago, okay? And it seemed rare. If you think about it for a minute, if the number of 50 million plus exits is constant for a decade, and startups, SaaS, all startups have exploded, what, 20X, 30X? It has to mean it's harder to get acquired. That's... Forget about Hart Scott Rodino and Figma, it has to be harder if it's still only 57 deals. And how many deals are VCs doing, like M&A? And so this, I think, quietly was the most discouraging thing I saw, which is getting acquired is hard as F.... it's hard as F. And we all think like, "Hey, you know, we'll get, well, let's just get the company to five million or 10 million and someone will buy it and HubSpot will buy it." Or it's- it's 57? 57? I think it needs to be 570 for venture math to pencil out. It's worrisome. It's worrisome.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When do SaaS companies' micro brands get to a stage where you start to see reduction in CACs because of micro brands? You've said before, like when you get to 10 million an hour, I think it was 10 million an hour-
- JLJason Lemkin
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... you get a micro brand maybe in a vertical and-
- JLJason Lemkin
Maybe early, maybe a couple million.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Maybe a couple million?
- JLJason Lemkin
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When do you start, I, uh, but this, I really think to this quote of yours often when I'm investing-
- 1:00:00 – 1:08:16
This is unpopular. I…
- JLJason Lemkin
going, you know what I'm gonna con- con- 'cause how many ... I mean, you know, you get, what do we get, 40 or 50 of these emails a week. It's just easier to not respond or to be kind, right? Now, if that same company, uh, with similar, I mean, similar metrics says, we're, I wanna raise like 4 to 5 million, or even they do something dumb like 2 to 5, it's okay even if it doesn't make sense, then I'll take the meeting if the rest looks good. But I'm not, I'm not, if it, they're asking for 10 or 20 or crazy things, it's just not ... Once in a while I'll do the meeting when it's so amazing, right? When it literally leaps ... But, but you have to check every single box. It's easier to just say, "Listen, this founder doesn't get it. Like, I'm just the wrong match for that," right?
- HSHarry Stebbings
This is unpopular. I don't like big ranges. Two to five? What you do with two is completely different to what you do with five.
- JLJason Lemkin
Well, I said it intentionally, like, that wasn't a great answer, but I, I'll still engage.... I'll just say, listen, if it's a- if it's a third time founder and they're asking for two to five, I'm skeptical.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm.
- JLJason Lemkin
If it's the first time they've raised any capital and they don't know, you gotta cut people a little bit of slack, right?
- HSHarry Stebbings
You do.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah. So, you know, uh, I mean, yeah, four to five is better, four to six is a good answer, right?
- HSHarry Stebbings
How many founder meetings do you take a week?
- JLJason Lemkin
True meet- true meet- like, true Zooms?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- JLJason Lemkin
Try to do two.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Two a week?
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah. I try to interact for real with every single good email. Like for real, that's good. Um, but I try to do as much as I can-
- HSHarry Stebbings
How many good emails do you get a week? 3D.
- JLJason Lemkin
You know, it's prob- it should be more than ever because there's more good startups than ever, but I... What is super great or good? (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you're like, "Really, this is good."
- JLJason Lemkin
You know, you get... T- I would say you get two good ones, really good ones a week, and if you're lucky if you get an insane one a month. You're lucky if you get an insane one. If you're lucky-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Was Talkdesk an insane one?
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah, yeah. That was, that, that... I mean, there were some quirks in it, but that... Yeah, that one was a- an instant investment.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Was there ever a good deal that you did that had a, eh, email?
- JLJason Lemkin
No, but that might be my flaw. 'Cause I just want-
- HSHarry Stebbings
You've missed quite a... Sorry.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
'Cause you've had, like, the best of the best in SaaS emailly.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah, when the emails are bad. Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Well, it's like, they... I remember there's a founder that I did the deal in, and after the round that you saw.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And I sent it to you 'cause you were like his hero.
- JLJason Lemkin
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And you were like, "Oh, he emailed me years ago." (laughs)
Episode duration: 1:20:50
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