The New SaaS Mendoza Line - Growth Expectations for a SaaS IPO

The SaaS Mendoza line highlights the slope of the long term growth rate that investors expect and operators should target on a path to IPO. Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike break down the updated expectations.

Veteran software VC, Rory O’Driscoll of Scale Venture Partners proposed a theory to identify the growth rate below which a company may not be on the VC-to-IPO trajectory.

In 2018, Rory started with an analysis of SaaS companies at the time of IPO. In 2018, SaaS companies going public had a minimum run rate ARR of $100M and at least a 25% forward growth rate. He then examined growth rates over time and observed that the growth persistence - which represents the rate of growth decay year over year, that public SaaS companies grew at 80-85% of their previous year’s growth. This metric is commonly known as "Growth Endurance".

Dave and Ray discuss the new reality of the SaaS Mendoza line, with the most recent data in 2023-2024 suggesting that a SaaS company must have at least $400M - $500M" in revenue before they can IPO as evidenced by the recent Klaviyo, OneStream and Rubrik initial pubic offerings.

CAC and Growth highlight other common "growth expectation" models including the T2D3 (Triple, Triple, Double, Double Double) and 56789 models.

If you are evaluating what it takes for early stage company to attract new investors as your growth on a path to IPO - this conversation is full of great insights and perspective on investor expectations.