This Week in SaaS: Should Wiz Have Accepted Google's $23BN Acquisition Offer, Crowdstrike: WTF Happens From Here: The Bull and the Bear Case & $1BN into Legal Tech in a Day with Clio and Harvey with Jason Lemkin

24 Jul 2024 · 51 min

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Podcast Summary: The Twenty Minute VC - This Week in SaaS with Jason Lemkin

Episode Overview In this episode, host Harry Stebbings is joined by Jason Lemkin, a renowned SaaS investor and founder of SaaStr. They discuss significant developments in the SaaS landscape, including Wiz's rejection of Google's $23 billion acquisition offer, the implications of CrowdStrike's recent crisis, and a surge of investment in legal tech.

Key Topics Discussed

  1. Wiz Rejects Google's $23 Billion Acquisition Offer
  2. Valuation Considerations:
  3. Wiz, with $500 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and a growth rate of 120% YoY, was offered 46x ARR.
  4. Jason emphasizes that the valuation is not excessive, suggesting a forward-looking approach to revenue multiples.
  • Reasons for Google’s Interest:
  • Google Cloud seeks to enhance its offerings, particularly in the competitive landscape of cloud security. Wiz could provide a significant edge in enterprise solutions.
  • Regulatory Concerns:
  • Potential antitrust challenges could arise, similar to previous high-profile tech acquisitions, complicating the merger process.
  • Wiz's Decision to Decline:
  • Jason believes that Wiz's board likely assessed the risks of regulatory scrutiny and opted to pursue an IPO instead, anticipating the company's growth trajectory.
  • Implications for M&A Market:
  • The episode raises questions about future M&A activity, particularly how setbacks like CrowdStrike’s might influence company decisions to accept acquisition offers.
  1. CrowdStrike: Future Prospects
  2. Crisis Management:
  3. CrowdStrike faced a significant operational failure that grounded global travel, raising questions about their crisis management.
  4. Jason criticized the company’s communication strategy, suggesting it lacked sufficient transparency regarding the failure.
  • Bull and Bear Cases:
  • Bull Case: CrowdStrike remains a leading SaaS and cloud security provider. Their growth remains robust, and they maintain a strong market presence despite this setback.
  • Bear Case: The incident could trigger legal repercussions and negatively affect customer trust, leading to churn and a decrease in future sales.
  1. Surge in Legal Tech Investments
  2. Clio and Harvey's Investments:
  3. Clio raised $900 million at a $3 billion valuation, while Harvey secured $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation.
  4. This substantial investment indicates strong market interest and growth potential in the legal tech space.
  • SaaS AI Parity:
  • Jason forecasts that by 2025, most SaaS products will achieve similar AI capabilities, raising concerns about differentiation among competitors in the legal tech space.
  • Long-Term Outlook:
  • Founders are encouraged to persevere, as demonstrated by Clio’s long journey to success after being founded in 2007. Jason emphasizes that commitment often pays off in the long run.

Key Takeaways

  • Valuation and M&A: The decision to accept or reject acquisition offers hinges on growth potential and regulatory landscape.
  • Crisis Management: Effective communication is critical during operational failures to maintain customer trust.
  • Investment Trends: Legal tech is rapidly evolving, with significant capital flowing into AI-driven solutions.
  • Future Market Landscape: As AI becomes standardized across SaaS products, companies must find unique selling propositions to stand out.

Conclusion Jason Lemkin provides valuable insights into the complexities of SaaS investments, the implications of recent market events, and the evolving landscape of legal tech. The discussions highlight the importance of strategic decision-making in venture capital and the potential for long-term success through persistence and innovation.

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*For more information on the podcast, including show notes and resources, visit [The Twenty Minute VC](https://www.20vc.com).*

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Transcript

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0:00Honestly, Harry, I think in venture we're all pretending. I think we're all pretending today. The early stage folks are just, you know, early stage folks have never worried about liquidity. And the late stage guys, we got to deploy money. The time's ticking on these funds, so you got to deploy them. We're praying, we're hoping liquidity comes back. We're investing, Harry. Like there's almost as much liquidity as 2021. Welcome back to this weekend's Sass with me, Harry Stebings. Now, this weekend's Sass is the show where me and Jason Lemkin, the godfather of sat sit down to discuss the biggest news items in SAS of the day.

0:32Today, three topics. Wiz turning down Google's 23 billion acquisition offer in their Chase2Go IPO and Go Public. CrowdStrike bringing global travel to its knees, the bull and the bear case for CrowdStrike moving forward. And then finally, in a single day, a billion dollars of new investment into legal tech in the form of Cleo, doing a $900 million round and Harvey doing a $100 million round. What a discussion this is today. But before we dive in today, all of you listening use tons of software every day. Sometimes it fills us with rage. You can't figure something out. The chatbot in the bottom right is useless.

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3:44You have now arrived at your destination. Jason, I am so excited for this, dude. When I told the team that we were going to do this today, they were like, oh yes, Jason episodes are our favorite. So thank you so much for doing this with me, dude. It is so great. It's such a... I feel like we went through a time when the news was trivial and now it's all over the place, right? I guess that's the way it works, right? We're gonna start with item one on the agenda, okay? Okay. I'm gonna read the title, Wiz Rejects Google's 23 billion dollar offer, eyes IPO. First off, what do you think of the acquisition price?

4:2123 billion, 500 million error growing 120 % year on year. It's a 46x error on multiple. Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's not expensive, a couple things. First, it's not expensive. And what I mean is this is a company that has gone from nothing to 500 million in four years. Look, in the old days of SaaS, we all kind of grew at the same rate. So we used error multiples. But now you have to use forward error multiples, forward revenue multiples. This company will be at a billion in a blink of an eye. So let's just value it at a billion. It's going to be there in 12 months, 14 months, nine months.

4:53It's a billion forward. Until this little issue of crowd strike grounding the world's air fleet and a few other issues which we'll get to, you know, crowd strike traded at almost 30X in today's world. Well over 20X. So 20X times a billion for whiz and you can't buy crowd strike, right? I mean, maybe you can today, but I don't think it was overpriced. I do think it might have been a good deal for the investors because you avoid so much delusion and risk. 22, I think, is 30 for the investors. I think it's 30 billion to the investors in a sense because of delusion. But I don't think it was as over -priced as you...

5:27This growth rate, 0 to 500 million in four years, you got to draw a line and say, this is the top of the top of the public comps. But I had... Again, until CrowdStrike had a little bit of an implosion and dropped almost 40%, it was consistent with CrowdStrikes' forward growth and growing much, much, much faster. So I don't think it's crazy. It sounds like nothing was that expensive. And I think that's why they could comfortably say no Because it was a very good deal, but it wasn't it wasn't insane before we dive into like the actual decision Say no from people's perspective and making the offer Why do you think it was so attractive to them?

6:05It's the almost two exercise of their largest acquisition state, which was Nokia for 12 and a half billion and knowing the strong antitrust pressure on the Magnificent 7. Why do you think they pursued it? I think you don't totally get it until you've worked at a big tech company, which I did as an SUV for a little while, which is that when times are tough, everyone's hyper conservative. Doing an M &A north of 100 million was almost impossible in tougher times. When times are good, and Google Cloud is the fastest growing of the three biggies, but it's also number three. It's the fastest growing, but number three, things are so good at Google Cloud right now.

6:40They're so good. They're the best ever. We saw growth to celebrate through 2021 and then boom, like the amount of acceleration we've seen that Google Cloud and Azure is breathtaking. And so what do you do as a leader? You get a chip. And this is literally when I was an SVP at a big tech company, each divisional head had a chip, had a big chip and a small chip. Okay. Now if your Thomas Curry and you probably get a couple chips, but I think 23 billion would eat up all your chips. Okay. But you go around the room and you say, what do you want to buy that's big and what do you so that good times don't rest in peace.

7:12It is natural. And I think they went around the room and they may well have said HubSpot six months ago, right? If that actually happened, we don't know. But it would make sense to me that it was a chip. It was a big chip. But this is AI and the growth of Google Cloud is generate. Like it's awesome. And so yeah, it's a big number, but it's much bigger than Nest. The opportunity here is much bigger. And it's fueling Google Cloud. So it's chips. And I honestly think someone who's incredibly smart experience like Thomas Green has done so much M &A. They know exactly what they're doing. They want scale and they want to keep the good times going and these were their two best ideas.

7:45Maybe HubSpot, maybe not. We don't know. And obviously with best idea and you've got to do it. It's fuel for the engine and worst case you ride off 11 billion in 11 or 12 years from good will. It doesn't even cost you anything if you can afford the cash. If they've had it progressed, do you think it would have faced pressure from antitrust? given Google's lack of dominance in security already is that cool business. Honestly, it has to, because Figma wasn't even competitive with Adobe. You'd have to have never used either product or understand it to think Figma was competitive with Adobe. No, Adobe should not be blocked from buying Canva arguably.

8:23Okay, I'm not a big anti -tret blocker, but Canva is directly destroying Creative Cloud. Okay, Figma was directly destroying a $30 million dollar product line that Adobe had abandoned, okay, with XD sketch or whatever it's called. This is the problem with tech. We all talk about things. We don't understand cyber security. We talk out of our rears. And so if Figma could be blocked, I actually think Wiz is more competitive. There's more antitrust. Even though I don't think it should be blocked remotely, security is a big deal as part of the cloud providers. Google has already done a $5 billion acquisition here, okay?

8:54They're all competing with each other. And this is a way to go to an enterprise. when you have three slightly fungible products, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, they're all different, but they're slightly fungible. And now you can say we've got Wiz as part of this package, the dominant next -generation cloud security player, you might just pick Google Cloud just for that. Why does Karen do that? That's small people. I think what we read is usually about 80 % true in this situation, right? Especially since we saw a SOPS email to his team at Wiz and TechCrunch, so we can put the pieces together. Look, again, he's got a chip.

9:24Maybe he went HubSpot first, maybe not, right? Maybe there was even another one before we don't know about it, but he's got to go big. Google Cloud is so big. And so the next shot is Wiz, the press that he reached out directly on his own, okay? And it all makes sense. What was the last round at 11 and a half? Okay, well, if we're going to do this, it has to be at least two extra round folks. That's how you get to 23. It's always that way in these deals. Okay, so there's no issue on price. And then he says, well, we want to do this. And we want to lock you up. And then they say, no, and he's like, fine.

9:51And then it's real. And it becomes a one paragraph term sheet at this size. And then they've got to sit down and say, okay, the price cleared. So it's not about it. It's not about price anymore. We'd have to IPO well north of $30 billion, which you can believe. But then you look and you're like, man, if there's even more than a 10%, 20 % antitrust rate, putting that in the distraction is so heavy. And I remember Ben Chestnut from Mailchump came to Saster Annual a couple of years ago, right after into it. And he said it was the most distracting year he'd ever seen. And he said, Ben said, whatever you do, whatever you do, if you do M &A commit a 110%, and they had a deal before MailChamp, he said, I mean, before into it, and it fell apart.

10:31And he said, it wrecked his management team. It almost destroyed his company whoever was going to buy him before. So they waited, and the into it deal took a year of dancing, not a week like Wiz and Google took a year of dancing until he was sure it would happen because he didn't want to wreck his team. And this could easily, this could be the biggest distraction in the world for the team. How do you keep my men up when you've got to deal with this too? I think unless you're like 90 % sure it can close to the two billion what let's assume There was a two or three billion dollar termination fee who cares?

10:58They don't need the money So do you believe that was walked away because they did not think that it would go through? Yes I think the offer was real like in the press I think Thomas Currim called them up I think he probably offered 10 billion there was a quick back and forth and it quickly became two X the last round Right, I mean literally when I saw my first startup the acquire went got our certificate of corrugation and Delaware and offered us 3x last round before we even met. He's like, this is the clearing price. 3x your last round, so they offered it before the first meeting, okay? So that took like four to eight hours because you have to offer last or you'll look like he's not the CEO of Google.

11:29He's just running Google Cloud. They offered 22 Bill, 23 Billion. It's interesting. They talk about it with the team. And then this was over in a week and a half, I think because it wasn't worth the risk. I don't think it was worth the risk. Not for founders that are already wanted to go IPO with the growth they've had. And guys that have already made eight figures, it wasn't worth the risk. I think it was a quick no. I think it was actually a quick note was what I think happened. Do you think CrowdStrike impacted their opinion to say no? Look, I think they had some interest because they got a price.

11:55I just think they realized it was just too risky to close, too risky on the journey, too risky. Like, I don't think it would be fun to run a company for 18 months hoping you get through not just US any trust anymore. You gotta get through London and Europe, but I don't think that's the journey that the team wanted to go on. Like this, this just trapped for 18 to 24 months. And I bet he called Dylan at Figma and he said, Dylan, how was it? And Dylan said, it was terrible. That was the worst 24 -month waiting for that Adobe. Like it made sense at the time, but if I could do it over again, of course I wouldn't do it.

12:26I'd just go raise two billion from Tiger in a week. Okay, but this makes me think of this old test in the UK to just tell him whether you were a witch in the medieval times. He'll throw you in a lake and tie your hands to your feet. If you drowned, you weren't a witch and you were free, but you were obviously dead. And if you rose, you were a witch we're burning with the stake. It makes me think of that because do you want to go through the worst regulatory antitrust process that could kill your company with distractions? Or do you want to go through a long road to IPO, IPO, and then be under the intense scrutiny of public markets, have lock -up periods, have short sellers, activist funds, and all the shit that comes with being public.

13:08Is this not too equally shit options? Well, listen, I think it's the right question. I'm sure they had that discussion last week. As successful repeat founding team, a successful repeat team, it's hard, but probably having their times there are lives at a personal level. It's an incredible run. But yeah, is it worth it? Is it worth going public and seeing the variability and things and just dealing with the headaches and the stresses? Is it worth it or should we, should we leave the keys on the table? And I think 99 .99 % of us should leave the keys on the table. And that's why I've decided for ever, I've changed my mind.

13:38We talked about this before since 2021. Every founder with a decent exit, I tell them to take it now 100%. I tell them to take it for this reason. And listen, if they don't, if they push back, that's great. Then I just help them get to the right conclusion. But I no longer have neutral. The CEO called me and I say take it. Not because I think it's zero to 500 million. There's any need to. That's how I challenge founders now. Because look, it's just that this distress of dealing with these activists and the drama. And the other stressful thing we're finally seeing is we never believed 10 years ago that so many SaaS companies could get to a billion or even.

14:09We didn't believe there was enough market for cloud software. or it turns out there is. But now we're seeing that folks are eventually exhausting these markets, right? It's not that fun to be at Dropbox at 2 .5 billion growing 6%. It's not that fun to see Salesforce now decelerating to 7%. So if I was looking at a song, and listen, was this the next generation, it would give me pause in a way in 2021 it didn't. But I don't think, listen, going IPO for them, I think it'll be no big deal. They can go IPO anytime, they can go IPO in 90 days if their financials are clean and they'll get a good valuation, it'll be fun.

14:43It'll be a non -event. It's just all the years of hitting the numbers, right? Question for you. You're on the way to board while done in grants. Would you have voted to do it or to not do it? The boards are funny. If you're an earlier stage investor, you can almost be neutral because this will create another secondary round at $23 billion. And anyone that wanted to do it will be able to sell at the exact price. This is the old Groupon play when they said no to Google, then there was very dramatic back in the day for six billion. They created a secondary round when it was harder back then, and everyone that wanted out got out, except probably poor Andrew Mason, you know, founder of the script, but everyone got out that wanted out.

15:19And I think everyone that wants to get out. And look, if you and I Harry invested from a small fund at six, even there wasn't out, these are second -time founders, but if it was early, we might say there's no difference between another two X. If I'm a late -stage investor, the next card is the good card, right? It's the next card's the good card. So, or frankly, if we were early -stage investors, Because you know what I would do with Wiz Harry, I would actually distribute, if I can get stocks somehow, I would distribute to my shareholders, but keep my personal stock as a GP is what I would do.

15:46I would go long, but book the book, the 20 or 30 X fund and call it a day because it's enough. But I think the late stage guys, they have a strong incentive to double down, right? They're even trying to X on that last round in four or five X. It's huge, right? You gotta do it. I do think it's important in time to just liquidity in the Venture ecosystem. I know a lot of LPs and institutions who had a lot of money either in funds that are in ways or actually direct him with through SPVs or direct themselves. They were suddenly getting quite excited about liquidity. There's no liquidity adventure today.

16:17It's a disaster. It's three years of no liquidity. There's none. It's dried up. There's a little oasis out in the desert from these random deals. You can't, you know, Brian Halligan, I think, right when Figma struggled set on Twitter that this is the end of Big M &A, right? And I thought he was being a little dramatic, but he was right. You know, it really is. And so if this big M &A is blocked, the majority of the liquidity is blocked. It's not even, it's not even as multiples. It's just blocked. But that liquidity bulge has to, it has to bust in some way. Honestly, Harry, I think in venture we're all pretending.

16:49I think we're all pretending today. The early stage folks are just, you know, early stage folks have never worried about liquidity. It'll come in the next 18 years of the fund. And the late stage guys, it's been said many times on 20 VC, but I've heard it many times from others. and it's year three, we got it, we got it to play money. Logan from Red Point did our little workshop. I think he's doing, they were doing like 10 growth deals this year already, three of the year before and one of the year before. And he's like, some of it is we're seeing great deals, right? And he's like, but across the industry, the time's taking on these funds.

17:18So you got to deploy them. So I wonder if we're pretending that we're praying, we're hoping liquidity comes back, but we're investing, we're investing, Harry, like there's almost as much liquidity as 2021. And arguably it makes no sense, right? You can go through a year and venture with no liquidity, no one cares, no LP cares, no GP cares, a year. We're on liquidity ended December 2021. You're saying you have to deploy. You don't have to deploy. Your LPs are not pressuring you to deploy. If you've managed your capital -based well, where you're outgoing, well, and don't have ridiculous teams, you can draw fees for many years and pay those out goings sufficiently.

17:51It is not a game of getting cash out of the door. It's, true to some extent. I think it's true, but at the end of the day, mega funds are all in the business of raising funds every two to three years. And can you stretch it to four? Sure, right? And these are funds that get 40 to 50 % of their revenue from fees. And also, you have to maintain momentum and venture. You've done an incredible job, Harry, of maintaining momentum and building it. If you go five years without raising a new fund, and Andreessen's raised three, even if it's totally logical, right? People forget about you, right? You may, your insiders won't forget about like your existing LPs may say, good job, Jason Harry, but the new guys will be like, you're out of the game, right?

18:32But I genuinely think we have a cheat with the content business because actually we're able to sustain momentum without doing deals where our competitors have to do deals to sustain momentum, right? You know, I think that's all true, but here's the thing, Harry, is the, in some ways, this is the hardest times of my entire career in some ways, in tech. Multiple are down the But then you look at a whiz and you know what the job adventure is Harry there's only one job it's to find whiz. And you know that when the whiz founders had their second at bat in 2020 they didn't care there was 2020, 2024 they're going to found whiz the same whether whatever whether was an upturned down turn left turn right turn and your only your job in venture is not to modulate your pace your job is to step up the game there is a whiz every year there's a whiz every year why weren't you in whiz.

19:17That's the question every LP should ask every GP. Why weren't you in Whiz? I was with one of the founders of the greatest firms in the world the other day. How do you think about this world of venture? How do you navigate it? Just help me. And he said, Harry, Harry. The venture game is the same as it's always been. There are one or two entrepreneurs that will change an industry every year. Your job is to invest in them. It's very simple. It's very hard. Your job's to find them. Venture is so well established as an industry now. You know when you find the 100x entrepreneur, like you want to invest the next hour.

19:55Like that's not the, investing is not, that's investing used to be the hard part when I started. Now it's finding, because you know you want to invest. The best founders start the company when they're ready. They don't up down liquidity, shimitities. So on the one hand, it makes sense to slow down your investing pace. And the other hand, it's an excuse. It's an excuse. If I was an LP, I would be asking every manager to this jerky question, why aren't you in Whiz from the air earlier? Why aren't you in Whiz? The last one on Whiz. So we're going to have a secondary now or in the next month or so.

20:24The IPO in 12 months, 36 months, what do you think and what do they go out of? When I look at my own portfolio, this debate of do you need 500 million to go public? I do think it's true. This really is one of the canvas at 2 .5 billion and Databricks at 2 .5 billion and wherever Stripe is, how them optimizing the IPO path is super interesting because they all could have IPOed a long time ago, right? Even Canvas has been profitable, right? So it's not even, it's not, Databricks is probably managing their bottom line, right? On the way to IPO, I don't think Canvas has to care. So there's this next level game of everybody trying to perfectly optimize this in a world where for the best, there appears to be infinite secondaries, right?

21:04For the moment, right? So there really is an incentive. of everyone on the cap table can optimize what's best for them. When the CEO's in the letter to the team says, we're gonna go public, instead you got to do it in the next 18 months or so, I think. You mentioned, I think you need 500 million in revenue to go public. That is against what Bill Gully, Braggus, and I say before, why do you believe you need 500 million? Just so honest. Okay, so let me be nuanced. The public market folks will say you can't get analyst attention and the markets are too thin and bubble it, I'm sure that's all true, right?

21:35I think the real reason, and I think you need 500 million growing 30%. The problem is everyone at 200 million for the most part is not growing the 50 to 60 % you need to land at 30 % at 500 million. And so the next one's one stream, right? They're gonna IPO at 500 million in revenue, growing 30 some odd percent, 34%. And so I absolutely think you can IPO and today's rolled at 200 million, but you probably have to be growing north of 50 to 60 % and there's just not enough of those candidates. Really tough part in SaaS is there's so many folks that 100 to 200 million growing less than 30%. This is one I don't have the answer to.

22:12I never thought this would happen when I started in SaaS. I just didn't think this, you could get to this level of scale and then see the type of deceleration we're seeing in so many unicorns, 100 million plus companies. And probably if you're 200 million growing 60%, you're probably gonna wait to IPO a little longer in today's world, that's all, right? You're probably gonna wait. Imagine crowds try that. they have had more impact on international travel than the Taylor Swift World Tour. So I first want to start on CEOKMout, I actually had them on the show, but CEOKMout and did a little video.

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22:45Was the situation managed well? Well look, no, of course it wasn't. We did not. It's even not, in my opinion, like I was literally looking on their on Krautsike website, they have a page called the Falcon content update. This morning didn't even have an update from today. It was still yesterday. Now I check it does have an update. There still isn't a great root cause analysis on their website that says what really happened. Listen, we get you did this content update, we get that it failed. But why? Like, why do we not have a root cause analysis up on their website today? And it is great that he went on, he was clearly exhausted, right?

23:18Couldn't even talk, needed the water. But you've got to come up with a real root cause analysis, not a technical one, right? We did a content patch in the morning and it brought down the world. Know what happened at a human level. And so many cloud leaders don't do much better than this. Okay, they don't. They may do worse. But for CrowdStrike at its $100 billion valuation and even worse being, here's the thing about CrowdStrike that is so obvious now, it's a sole source solution. So, Sylvander, single point of failure. If you're a single point of failure, I think you owe more root cause analysis and transparency than we've gotten.

23:53So I give them a C plus. We're gonna have a fun case study to watch. I don't think anyone's gonna churn. I thought, listen, if it shows one thing, it shows that it's incredibly important to global security and infrastructure, and the numbers are still fucking amazing. Amazing. I'm wondering. I'm growing 33%, it almost 4 billion in revenue. And you said it won't churn. So I use that. Yeah, but it's not as good as it sounds, okay? Because the amount of energy in time it takes to deploy crowd strike is so huge that it would take three to five years to turn out for real. Okay, you have to test Sentinel -1 or whatever you're gonna do.

24:27In a small group, you have to do it on staging. You have to make sure it doesn't bring you up to one off. Like that is a three to five year initiative to move a core infrastructure, okay? If it happens at all, so even if there is churn, it's gonna be so far out we're not gonna see it. But, and talk is cheap. People talk about churn, but then we're on to the next thing, right? The airlines were terrible. Like this is a destructive brand moment, but not everyone was impacted the same way or the same extent. If it didn't really bring down my business, it's IT's problem to deal with, right? So we don't know.

24:54But here's the Prong CrowdStrike relies on selling 30 products, talking about multi -brack. They have 30 products. When CrowdStrike brought my company down, Harry, how's the sales team gonna, how the upsell's gonna go this week? Hi, Harry, it's Jason from CrowdStrike. I've got a couple more security modules to sell you, and you're gonna get the call, and you're just gonna get your head cut off for an hour, right? So I think almost upsells are gonna have to go on hold for like, you know, three quarters, right? It's not just going multi -product hairy, what it is. This is what DataDog perfected.

25:26It's having folks love your products so much that they want to buy more products from you. It's not just, multi -products not enough. Multi -product when they don't like you, you know, it can work, but it's brute forcing. It's, I mean, I would say 2018, 2019, no one loved a product more than DataDog, and now it's an eight or 10 product company, right? So how CrowdStrike has benefited, I believe, from some of that. So it's gonna be a rough NRR year. The GERR is going to stay high, the logo retention, but the upstale is going to be just brutal. Okay, so I just wanted to kind of separate as you can.

25:55Yeah. If we move forward then and we think about a bull case and a bare case for CrowdStrike, if we start on the bull case, that's start up to Mystic, what is the bull case for CrowdStrike from here? Well, two things. First of all, even with CrowdStrike, arguably the most attractive SaaS and Cloud company through last week in terms of multiples, everything full package, Everything cash flow. So your hell to the highest standard. Having said that everyone gets one pass And I do think what CrowdStrike kept saying is very important even though no one was listening at the time Which was this was not a security incident?

26:27Everything was this is not a security incident. We screwed up. We did this upload this release that was bad This content release whatever it was, but it would our security was not breached. You have 200 SaaS apps running your company So many threat vectors in security. There's so much threat if CrowdStrike has been knocked down a peg on your list But you still believe it is the best solution, including effort and work to rip them apart and do something. You get one pass, you don't get three, and it wasn't a security incident. So the cost to send an angry tweet is so low. It's so low to be outraged on Twitter, right?

27:00We're all onto new things. There's, you know, we can see it in politics. We stop carrying a week, you know? And so how much the Delta is gonna care? I mean, Delta's gonna be upset for quite some time, right? I was at my gym yesterday, Harry. It's still down for CrowdStrike. I put it on Twitter. It's still down. My gym is down for crowd striking. It's so hilarious. Half the monitors are the blue screen of death across this huge gym. But you've got to give folks a pass and the fact that it wasn't a security breach is important. It is important. And so do I think more folks are going to buy more modules this week?

27:30No. Do I think the sales team's going to have a tough go of it for a little while? Yes. Do I think the existing base will give them a puckered pass? Yes, because everyone's got one. OK, so it wasn't a security breach. There's different people in patched in different magnitudes a lot is impacted as deltors, for example. And then people get a pass for a mistake or two. And this is one of the first that they've made severely. That's why I think the communications is so bad because it was a nominal apology, but they weren't asking for a pass. They weren't explaining that this is why it happened and why Harry will never happen again.

28:04That's what we need to hear. To really get a pass, you need to hear that. I think if they have no issues for a year, nothing. nothing. They will get delta aside, they will get a pass. You've got to let your vendors screw up once every five years. Again, if this was a material security breach, I think it's existential for this company, right? And that's why they also subtly said, be alert, threats are going to be higher. Folks are going to be trying to take advantage of the situation. Like they were carefully placing their words to talk about what really matters, which comes to the other side of this equation, which is the back case.

28:34Should this be the end crowd strike, they have fines, there's going to be legals, there's going to be subsequent security attacks. It could snowball. Yeah, there is. The irony is, you know, some folks are saying this is exactly what happened with McAfee when George Kurtz was CEO there that they had such a meltdown they had to sell the company they were unable to recover. I guess it could happen. That's top of mind, right, is making sure that the company sustains. There's so many great people working on this issue that I think maybe the bigger issue is they just become too conservative after this.

29:07They may become too conservative. We do need crowds, right? It's done a pretty incredible service since 2011. That's 13 years in. It went and 13 years it built a $4 billion business growing 33%. It's it is a service and we'll give them one pass. I don't think it will bring them down. Final element on crowds. Yeah. Crowds try to smoke it camp today is 66 billion. Yeah, it was 100 last week. Forget about the drama. This this may be the most the only rational thing I've seen in the stock market. If growth is going to be cut 40 % because of upsell because of lengthening sales cycles. Maybe that sounds about right.

29:38We're going to have this chat at Christmas time. Yeah. Where it's crowned straight then. I'll tell you why it may rebound. They have extremely conservative projections for next year. They said they're only going to grow in the teens from 33 % this year. Super conservative is what they already told Wall Street. So they have a big buffer. All the analysts downgraded them. I'm sure you saw it, right? They all downgraded them and said growth's going to be lower. But they had such a big buffer because as they projected sex to sell their growth, that they may well be able to still make their number even with all these issues.

30:09It's a little thing. So like, I would be careful to bet against them because they just put such a buffer in hitting the numbers. So you've got to give it a number, and I'll give it a number two. I've just had it 66 today. I'm gonna guess it bridges 50 % of the gap. So was it a hundred? Today it's at 66, so I'm gonna guess it makes back 17 % half of that. I'll go 83. I'm gonna get it for 75. I don't think it'll take such a rebound. I think the Eagles and fines are gonna be real and I think it's gonna be an interesting enough story It's touched enough to consume lives. Yeah, actually it's had serious negative brown down It's true the legal and fines you take a reserve and the truth is it doesn't really matter because it's not a forward impact It doesn't really tell you where crowds likes gonna be in five years so the markets usually strike it off even though It's a lot of drama.

30:54Can you imagine when this shit happens? You're like you know having dinner with your family and you're like you what we're down? You know, Harry was the number one thing. Reason I wanted to sell my startup was for these issues. Every outage, it took so much out of me. It just killed me. Every single one just killed me trying to align the team around it, being always being on the front line on Page of Duty, the first one up all night long when there were issues, whenever we would like making sure no matter what, we were up by 5 a .m. Pacific right before any issues came up. But we were big in the UK, so we had other issues.

31:28So we would see back in the day, we would see waves of issues because we had so many customers in the UK because of BT and G Europe. Would they would be our canary in the coal mine? When we had an issue, we would go down in Europe before we could see it in the US. And I was up at 3 a .m. It's not that I needed the sleep. It's just never being able to sleep. I was never able to sleep as a founder because of these issues. I don't know if I'm happier today, but that was the number one thing I was so glad to have behind me. I still have these flashbacks when I saw George on the Fruggan Twitter, like couldn't breathe in his hair and he had to drink the water.

31:59I'm like, that was me in 2010, the worst feeling. And you just watch time tick and you're like, okay, if we can go back up in five minutes, and then it's 10 minutes, then your entire support is just lit up and then you go into half an hour. And then people don't believe you're ever coming back, a half an hour in, right? It's just the worst feeling in SAS, is that feeling? Now listen, final segment before we wrap up. But we saw two today, a billion dollars going into legal tax. Clio raises 900 million hits 3 billion valuation. First off, it's quite a lot of dilution I thought for around at that scale.

32:34Most of it is secondary. It's 300, 3 billion post, so let's call that 2 .5 billion, whatever, I mean, a lot of it's secondary. And they're at 200 million revenue and accelerating, 200 million ARR. So it's a 10X ARR deal, 2 billion ish pre. Hi for today's world, but not out of line. Let's assume they're growing more than 30 % today, right? This whole payments fintech thing is their big accelerant, right? This is company founded in 2007 with a great CEO. Everyone in legal tech loves this guy Jack noon He never quits since 2007 But if they were doing a hundred million two year they're doing it said they went from a hundred million to two million two years Okay, which is why they raised the money.

33:09That's pretty good growth in today's world But if they're they're founded in 2007 got to a hundred million two years ago That was 15 years to a hundred million that's not a rocket ship is it? I think the fun one about this one this one will be like bill .com that took forever to get to 100 million. And then when the stars aligned, just like Bill didn't really align until they got into payments and payment management, the same thing happened with Theo. Now that they're managing legal payments, they were able to double in two years and when it took them 15 years to get to 100 million, it was not a rocket ship.

33:39So I think the number is the growth and the number is justify it. And I do believe the majority, I don't think it's that much. I bet it's 100 million of delusion, 200 million, the majority, I know a lot of the early guys sold their positions, maybe in their entirety. Sorry, the second reason why to early investors early operators someone told me this an LP told me this comment the other day I didn't realize it was Cleo but then it was that one of their LPs it sold all their stake in the round one of their GPs So it's a question on liquidity that you had earlier? No, I'm not really yeah, but there's not enough of these there were one of these a week in 2021 Harry Here's the problem with venture.

34:10This is a plus CEO. I love them The company was founded in 2007 So let's imagine you the VCs came in later, but imagine messing 2007 and now it's 2024 How many years do you have to wait for liquidity? 17 years for liquidity. How long does the nominal fund life 10 years it doesn't match up? Yeah, you get two one -year extensions. As a founder in a way, there's nothing more heartening than these ones that accelerate late in life, right? The Clio's, the Bills, even drama side, the UI paths, right? These late blossomers give us all hope that if you're 110 committed to the space, right? Like Clio was really early into in web practice management for lawyers.

34:44Like, let me tell you, trying to sell the legal back in 2007 was impossible. they didn't trust the internet for a signature, for a document, I'm out of here. Eric, I'm not to forget it. I'm out of here. To the fact that he could commit as the founder for this long and finally hit it, it is just heartening because we want to believe this as founders that we don't all have to be whizzed to have a great outcome, right? It's a great, it's a better story in some ways than whizz in some ways, right? Because we can't, most of us can't be whizz, but Clio is to us as like, listen, if we're great founders and we never quit for 20 years, maybe we can be Clio.

35:14I agree. I'm going back to a couple of different points that I'd be like, who would have thought actually that you could get this big company in purely legal tech and practice management in legals? Yeah. Well, maybe you can't without managing the payments. Fintech's going through some tough times right now because of low margins and fraud and other issues. But when you combine payments and software just right like a Shopify, man, it's powerful. But you got to do it. There's too many cynical, there are too many cynical folks bolting payments onto software with 0 % margin and claiming it was SaaS revenue.

35:42That was at the edge of fraud, but doing the high margin version like Cleo and Bill and it's epic if it works, right? I mean 70 % of Spotify's revenue is from payments and merchant services and not from SaaS. 70%. I sent you the Germany deal that we did, Aloe, because I wanted your thoughts on it, which incorporate the POS provider for ethnic rationales under a certain size. That's exactly the thesis there. So totally agree. But when we look at that in context, Jason, we then have Harvey AI for lawyers, which raised 100 million at a 1 .5 billion valuation. They say they triple AIR off from December, implying that they are 30 million AIR today two years from founding.

36:23Yes. What are the thoughts on that? Sustainability of revenue, how that just compares, compared to maybe Cleo in the same space. What are your thoughts when you hear that? You know, the rate at which some folks can grow in AI today, it really is breathtaking. It breaks the models. But then, when I talk with folks in legal tech that I know, the objection, and I don't think it's totally the harbours, it's with a lot of folks in the groups in the category which is that, look, we're all going to do the same stuff. We're all going to review NDAs and we all can do basic document review and we all can even do eDiscovery and stuff that is big categories.

37:03we're all going to have parity on this. Like, it's hard to really break out. And I think 2025 will be the year of SaaS AI parity. Everything's going to be parity in 2025. Not total parity, but close to parity, right? What do you mean by that, Jason? Every legal tech product will have the same AI features. It's already happening in context, and where I've done a lot of investing. If you look at the, if you look at Zendesk, Gorgeous Intercom, Front, customer, look at their website, their homepage is all the same thing, and they basically, now they're all very different, okay? like Gorgeous Ram on the board, it owns e -commerce context center, okay?

37:34But they'll basically do the same thing. They automate 30 % of your context center issues with AI. Again, they do it different ways. How could you have a, what? How could you have a context center product with 0 % AI today? You'll lose every deal. But in the other hand, you can't say 30 % is game -changing because they all can do 30%. Now, is Zendest as good as Gorgeous? Maybe Roman will tell you not. You know, is Intercom the best? You know, Owen's gonna tell you shouting from the rooftops that there's as their fin is the best. From a check the box perspective, they're all hitting that 30 % to 40 % level.

38:04And so I remember when legal started to blow up, and I asked Andy from Logical, that was my first legal tech investment that sold for 300 million last year. I'm like, wow, my mind was just blown with all this NDA review and document review. He's like, man, like everyone, it's all gonna be the same. Give it six months, yeah, it's great. But I know 20 legal tech CEOs who all just bolting this in. Now, I'm not saying someone won't break out and it might not be Harvey, right? But this, I do think when we get excited and venture, there's one issue which is this experimentation budget, right, will this stuff stick, which people talk about, right, especially in the CEO's office.

38:37The other question I really think is AI parity. And that's why I think in B2B, AI is going to really calm down in a year, right? Like you invested in this German company, right? I invested an owner, right, which is adjacent, right? Owner builds these like incredibly powerful websites through using AI for restaurants now, okay? And they're not the only one, but when it came out, But it was, it's jaw dropping, how good it is. But in 2025, everyone's gonna have this feature, and the owner's gonna have to have 20 more features, because everyone's gonna copy. It's like, we're back to copying. We fell away from copying for a while in SAS, right?

39:11And now we're all back to everybody quickly copying each other in AI. And I think in a way, when I say that AI parody, I actually think the more vertical you are in SAS, and the more niche you are, actually the more differentiated it'll be, right? Because when you're still competing with spreadsheets and paper, Automating workflows great, but then automating humans out is next level. It's just in the most competitive spaces, you know, Outrage, Gong, Sales, Off, all these, you're not going to be able to tell the difference between any of their AI products next year. At a detailed level, you can, but superficially, you're not going to be able to tell the difference.

39:41And Andy's point from logical is legal, legal gets it. There's no question this is the first thing that's been disruptive in legal tech in a long time, right? But here's the point about AI. Everyone gets it. You didn't figure this out on your own. You're not the only legal tech company who said in 2024, wow, what if we had an AI to this, right? And I'm not saying Harvey didn't get 30 million of revenue. The rest didn't. But is that sustainable and I hate the defensible word in VC? But it does matter. Is that defensible when the entire industry is doing that in 2025? We'll see. We'll just see. That's a great far around my friend.

40:14What is no one saying that you're willing to say? Like you said earlier, we're all pretending. What other thing is no one saying that we're all feeling? This one isn't like a Epic, but I just think we're sitting on a ton of one X funds in venture just so many one X funds They'll never get out of one X a whole generation and listen I barely saw I when I was when I first joined venture I could see the tail end of the 2000 funds I mean I wasn't there in venture But I could see what they looked like 14 15 years out and just doing one X in a 2000 vintage fund was like top -design I think I'm not saying we're going through that But there are so many funds that will end up a whole generation of one X funds I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of funds from the last few years are one X funds.

40:55Tell me, what is the most underappreciated public company, Jason? I'm still going to say Clavio for a variety of reasons, and I'll tell you why. Clavio for folks that don't know is basically the HubSpot free commerce. Okay? They are coming up on a billion in revenue. In fact, they are bigger in marketing revenue than HubSpot. They're actually bigger. But they're very specialized on Shopify. 77 % of the revenue comes from Shopify. This is a company that was almost bootstrapped, right? As you talked with Andrew. But here's what's interesting. Here's just like I did everyone love day to dog back in the day, right?

41:23People love whizz, look at it. I know a bit about the B2B commerce space until there was a little bit hiccup recently when they increased prices at Clavio, but until then this was a grab you on the street and tell you how much you love the company coming up on a billion in ARR, growing, approaching 40 to 50 % growth. It's a magical story that's not understood well enough. I don't think anyone outside to be commerce had even heard of this company before it filed to go public, right? Everyone in Ecommerce, it's the giant. That 150 million ARR CEO is talking about that I talked with yesterday like oh half the conversation was about I wish I was clavier or clavier This needs it 150 million, but the fact that that isn't a 20x ARR company like CrowdStrike was it worries a lot of us the multiple there There's there's nothing but love for clavier nothing but great I mean you could you know you could say all the revenue is to celebrate in a little bit But it's you know it's to sell rating for a lot.

42:11This is still a top 5 % public company It's only worth 6 .9 billion these the kind of stories that whiz obscure. In my mind, should be 12 to 13 billion dollar company minimum. Penaltimate one for you, my friend. Yes. The most overappreciated public company today. The most overappreciated public company today. I mean, I don't want to pick on anybody, but I think the one we're trying to understand is how was Snowflake vulnerable when it appeared in vulnerable? Snowflake was, you know, the whiz of its day, right? All the way through. Like, it would just, we'd never, not only had we never seen metrics like this, It was sucking up data, sucking up budget, like we'd never seen before.

42:48Then it became mortal. Now the most legendary CEO of SaaS Quit. Quit. I mean, it's pretty bad that Frank Slootman quit. We're in a quitter culture. Everyone's quitting now, Harry. It's not just the kids. Everyone's quitting. And I, listen, I mean, the man deserves his rest, okay? But it's now a mortal company. It is now a mortal company. It is growing, but it's just as good as CrowdStrike now. Same ARR, same growth basically, right? It's almost the same ARR, almost the same growth. Well, that is a buy because it's priced at $40. It's a buy, but it's mortal. It seemed like Snowflake was going to be the next great platform, but is Databricks?

43:30I know it's not completely fungible product, but it's growing even faster at $2 .5 billion, right? It's just mortal. Databricks, I think, proves Snowflake was mortal. And no one ever talked about Clavio until a couple of months ago, we all talked about Snowflake. Snowflake, Snowflake, right? It was just, it could, it could do, and it still has done no wrong. It is now merely one of the best. I agree with you. I interviewed Arra from service Titan recently. Incredible. Yes. Incredible. That is a fucking far business. Farib, one of the, I told you that would be the first IPO of the year I was wrong, but it might be the best, right?

44:03Yeah. Final five. Final one. What private company are you not in that you would most like to be in. So you tweeted earlier about Ravolute and Tygon. I would most like to be in Ravolute of all private companies right now. I would take Wiz and Service Titan. And if I were my LP's, I'd be very critical. I'm like, these are two CEOs that were Sassar Super fans from day zero. They know Sassar well, wire and chew an investor. I would beat myself up as an LP too. These are great CEOs. These are salt of the earth folks that will go forever. These are both great humans. The thing, one thing I learned from Mamoon Hamid is if you can, maybe don't invest in jerks because it just burns you out.

44:39Why aren't you invested in those two if they are both super fans? Yeah, no, they didn't ask me to. Why would have invested? Do you not think you should chase? I think that it would be a good idea.

44:54I think it would be a good idea. I think I'll do okay. I think if I'd been more of an outbound guy than an inbound guy, I think I'd get a good idea. If you've been in 10 times more money investing. Oh my God, I don't remember that, you know, that we, I mentioned it, tag wolf, incredible business and I invest $6 million. And the founders, like, I just wanted Jason. I just wanted Jason lost around the round before. These are my 10 messages to him. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I got to do more. Well, it's all, you know what the meta thing is? It's all, it's, it's a good criticism. And I have shared that with some like, I think it'll be the reason.

45:31In my failing, listen, some of it's my DNA, right? I spend 99 % of my time trying to help and hope that a few things come in that bounce the right way. It's probably a mistake. But the other thing is, you know, I like, and this is why I've written about this constantly for more than a decade. I wish I was a better recruiter, Harry. It's my number one regret in life. In tech, it's not being a better recruiter. Of investing, Colin? Of. Yes. Whatever version of it is. It's not like I'm a bat out of the world's worst recruiter, But you have you should spend all of you you should spend 20 % of your time I know you have like three partners Harry or whatever you should spend 20 % of you I'm finding the one that that will get you these deals that you weren't in relentless and as executive You should just be relentless about building your manager team were relentless like stop wasting your time on this other thing Find the guy that will make sure that you don't have the outage across Stop trying to fix the issues yourself founders and go find the person to fix it and I should have built I should have built a better set of folks under me investing so that I didn't have to be full stack You're right.

46:29I mean not to spend all the time with it But it's the right question and so you know again I was talking with another CEO the other day north of a hundred million and we were criticizing the friend of our company I in a friendly way we were just we were both know this company well that that's a stage behind them But doing well and we're tired of them like the biggest this is such a great founder But they're just so slow to hire their management team is like this guy to hundred is like well You can't find anybody good these days. I'm like and a hundred you can't find anybody good You know, growing almost 50%.

46:53I'm like, that's ultimately it's your only job after you have product market fit is finding the best people for the team, right? And so I think as an investor, I have failed to expand my surface area and it does haunt me a bit. I wish I had an answer to being a better recruiter than I am. Thank you so much for doing this. I always love doing these shows. Listen, we had some bumps with crowd strike between whizz and Cleo and even the Harvey stuff. These are still good times in Sass and Cloud. They're still good times. Do let me know what you think of this week in SAS. I want to make it the best format for you.

47:26So if you have improvements or if you have any additions that you'd like us to make, then let us know on Twitter at Harry's Debbings. We always love to hear your thoughts and you can check it out on YouTube by watching the full video there by searching for 20 VEC. But before we leave you today, all of you listening use tons of software every day. Sometimes it fills us with rage. You can't figure something out. The chatbot in the bottom right is useless, you keep getting bombarded with these useless pop -ups, and for those of you who build products, no one wants their product to feel like this.

47:55Thankfully, a company exists to help users without annoying them. Command bar. It does a couple of very helpful things. First, it's a chatbot that uses AI to give users extremely personalized responses and deflect tickets. But it can be beyond just text. It can also co -brows with the user, and show them how to do things inside the UI. Magic. But it can also detect when users would benefit from a proactive nudge, like a helpful hint, or an invitation to start a free trial. Command Bar is already used by world -class companies like Gusto, HaschaCorp, Yachtpo, and Angelist. If you're a product CX or marketing leader, check them out at commandbar .com slash Harry.

48:32And talking about incredible companies with Command Bar, I want to talk to you about a new venture fund making waves by taking a very different approach. It's a public venture fund anyone one can invest in, not just institutions and accredited investors. The Fundri's Innovation Fund is democratizing venture capital, which could have big consequences for the industry. The fund is already off to a good start with $100 million into some of the largest most in -demand AI and data infrastructure companies, companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks. Check out the Innovation Fund's impressive list of investments for yourself by visiting Fundrise .com slash 2 .0 VC.

49:11Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risk charges and expenses. This another information can be found in the innovation funds prospectus at Fundrise .com slash innovation. This is a paid sponsorship. And finally let's talk about Squarespace. Squarespace is the all -in -one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products to content, all in one place, all on your terms.

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50:23As always, I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible episode of 20 growth this coming Friday with the head of product and the former head of growth at TransferWise.

From the publisher

Jason Lemkin is one of the OG SaaS investors with all of his first five investments turning into unicorns with Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, Salesloft and RevenueCat all in his portfolio. SaaStr is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com.

In Our Second Episode of This Week in SaaS:

1. Wiz Rejects Google's $23BN Acquisition Offer:

  • How does Jason analyse the price of the offer? $23BN for a $500M ARR business growing 120% YoY?
  • What is the reasoning for Google in pursuing the acquisition?
  • If Wiz had of proceeded in the process, what are the chances it would have made it through regulators?
  • Why did Wiz walk away from the offer? If Jason were on the board, what would he have done?
  • Is there a correlation between the downfall of Crowdstrike and Wiz turning down the offer?
  • What does this mean for the M&A market moving forward?
  • Will there be a secondary round now in place for Wiz at $23BN?

2. Crowdstrike: WTF Happens from Here:

  • Did Crowdstrike manage the crisis in the right way? What would Jason have done differently?
  • What is the bull case for Crowdstrike moving forward from this point?
  • What are the bear case for the company? Could this snowball and be the end?
  • What will this do to company requirements on having single point of failure solutions?
  • Where will the market cap of Crowdstrike be at the end of 2024?

3. LegalTech: Show Me the Money: $1BN in a Single Day:

  • Clio announced a $900M round at a $3BN valuation. How does Jason analyse this?
  • What does Jason make of Harvey's $100M raise at a $1.5BN valuation?
  • Why does Jason think 2025 will be the year for AI parity? Why will we see the majority of SaaS features be commoditised in 2025?
  • What is the single biggest regret that Jason has in his investing career?

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This Week in SaaS: Should Wiz Have Accepted Google's $23BN Acquisition Offer, Crowdstrike: WTF Happens From Here: The Bull and the Bear Case & $1BN into Legal Tech in a Day with Clio and Harvey with Jason LemkinThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · 51 min
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