Top all-time · #109
Tomasz Tunguz
Personal blog · tomtunguz.comstartupsbusiness
Tomasz Tunguz's personal blog at tomtunguz.com covers startups and business. Since 2012, 333 different Hacker News readers have linked it 947 times, most often “Cloud PREM Architecture – The Hub and Spoke Way of Serving the Enterprise”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 11 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Tunguz's blog for SaaS finance and benchmarks: valuations, churn, sales and marketing spend, pricing, and public SaaS filings.
- Recommended for · 11 comments
- Called a favourite on churn, a great article, a nice piece on pricing, and a blog to share with founders.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Venture capitalist and former Google PM sharing data-driven insights on building successful startups. Join 100K+ founders and investors learning about tech & SaaS.
Most-linked posts?
- Cloud PREM Architecture – The Hub and Spoke Way of Serving the Enterprise4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-01-30
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-07-07
- Benchmarking Box's S-1: How 7 Key SaaS Metrics Stack Up3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-03-27
- Benchmarking Atlassian's S-1 – How 7 Key SaaS Metrics Stack Up3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-11-11
- Has VC Become So Big IT Must Be Disrupted?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-01-27
- The SaaS Valuation Bubble3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-10-22
- SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs: A $3T Stress Test3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-23
- Ratio Of Engineers To Sales People In Billion Dollar SaaS Startups3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-11-11
- The Mininum Size Seed Round to Maximize Series A Follow On Investment2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-02-06
- Implications of Monoclouds for As-A-Service Startups2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-12-05
What Hacker News says?
This is the most levelheaded comment I've see in this thread. Not least because I have literally never seen an ad run on either the Zoom website or the app. Moreover, Zoom is one of the most successful SaaS companies in the world because their unit economics on their basic business model (of selling premium subsriptions) is literally better than almost any other SaaS company out there: https://tomtunguz.com/benchmar…
Comment linking /benchmarking-zoom-s-s-1-how-7-key-metrics-stack-up/
on “Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act”Submitted The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups as a story · 255 points
HN discussionSimilar advice was given by a famous VC, Tomasz Tunguz, a few years ago: https://tomtunguz.com/writing-separate-lines/
Comment linking /writing-separate-lines/
on “Writing one sentence per line”Submitted Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble? as a story · 249 points
HN discussionWell said. Very common scenario when it comes to retail, grocery stores, import/export businesses. Great article on this topic by Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Capital: http://tomtunguz.com/timing-sales-cashflows/
Comment linking /timing-sales-cashflows/
on “Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?”Submitted Ten Years' Worth of Learning About Pricing as a story · 247 points
HN discussionFirst, the fact that we use USD as the denomination for these hacks is hilarious in itsetf. > they need “$320 million” in crypto which is easy enough to create out of thin air Second, this is an illustration of basically what you've just articulated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149241 Not a perfect analysis but there's about $114B circulating in crypto: https://tomtunguz.com/how-much-money-flowing-into-cr…
Comment linking /how-much-money-flowing-into-crypto/
on “In second largest DeFi hack, Blockchain Bridge loses $320M Ether”Submitted Repeat Yourself, a Lot as a story · 235 points
HN discussionInteresting that 600 employees sounds like a lot, but it works out that revenue/employee p.a is $230k+ - which is above average for enterprise SaaS[0] - and you have the 25%+ annual growth on that That said, they should be doing better margin-wise since they would have relatively lower customer acquisition costs compared to the market since they have so much developer recognition. [0] http://tomtunguz.com/revenue-pe…
Comment linking /revenue-per-employee-trends/
on “GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016”Submitted Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A as a story · 217 points
HN discussionIf you're trying to maximize your chances of raising a Series A (which may not be the ideal metric), then $600k+ is pretty good and $900k+ is great. (Based on this post: http://tomtunguz.com/seed-followon-rates/ )
Comment linking /seed-followon-rates/
on “The Fatal Pinch”Submitted My Surreal UberX Experience as a story · 185 points
HN discussionAgreed. Here's some data that backs up what you're saying: http://tomtunguz.com/seed-followon-rates/ . This is probably the blog post that I share most often with founders I talk to.
Comment linking /seed-followon-rates/
on “The Fatal Pinch”Submitted How To Take Exceptional Notes and Be Productive with Paper as a story · 153 points
HN discussionSays who? For tech companies, S&M is usually first to go. You don't need your growth engine during recessions, you need profit. https://tomtunguz.com/sales-marketing-spend-model/
Comment linking /sales-marketing-spend-model/
on “Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs”Submitted Trust Is at the Core of Software Marketing as a story · 151 points
HN discussionAn article by Tom Tungz that relates SAAS co marketing budgets to to annuity grabs helps me contextualize this S1. Asana's gross margin is ~85%! Their net retention is tracking @ 120% in 2020. So every $1.00 dollar of sales to a customer last year turned into $1.20 this year. AKA negative churn. Which explains the reason you see them spending $105m in sales & marketing to generate $142m in topline. Obviously this ru…
Comment linking /does-better-ndr-imply-greater-tolerance-for-higher-cac/
on “Asana S-1”Submitted Where Have All the Angels Gone? as a story · 150 points
HN discussion> There are a lot of industries with a much higher COGS that do fine. But not many that have such a ridiculously high PE ratio. One of the main reasons tech businesses (specifically SaaS) can command such a high valuation is because their gross margins are amazingly high (some up to 90%, on average around 70-80%), which means 90% of their revenue can be reinvested back into growth (S&M and R&D). I think it's certain…
Comment linking /not-all-revenue-dollars-are-created-equal/
on “Twilio opens trading at $23.99 per share”Submitted Which Categories of Seed Startups Are Thriving? Which Aren't? as a story · 126 points
HN discussionI'd guess a 6x multiple of revenue, considering their sales, staffing and acquisition models. (I.e. no-touch, low-overhead, referral/word of mouth.) [Addendum] Perhaps 6x was extremely low given the current market. Need to update my priors: http://tomtunguz.com/saas-valuation-bubble/
Comment linking /saas-valuation-bubble/
on “Two big announcements”Submitted How will the correction in the stock market impact startup fundraising? as a story · 110 points
HN discussion> They are called that not because they don't hire HR, IT, finance or other professionals, they are called "big X" because specific professions (lawyers, accountants, software engineers) dominate their hiring. Except that's fundamentally not true: http://tomtunguz.com/saas-spend-allocation-benchmarks/ Should we just call them "sales companies"?
Comment linking /saas-spend-allocation-benchmarks/
on “P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads”Submitted Ratio Of Engineers To Sales People In Billion Dollar SaaS Startups as a story · 94 points
HN discussionhttp://tomtunguz.com/cost-challenges-facing-the-valley/ New article uploaded and it seems we are not only a startup benefit from 'Labor Arbitrage' by having our development team back in South Korea
Comment linking /cost-challenges-facing-the-valley/
on “The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups”Submitted State of the Seed Market in 2017 as a story · 87 points
HN discussionIt's all dummy data which makes the metrics sometimes look a little wacky, but I tried to model everything based on real-world examples I've seen. The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is high, but so is the ARPC (Average Revenue per Customer), so you can't just look at the one number in isolation to see if it's realistic or not. In this case, I'd look at the CAC Payback time and the CAC:LTV ratio to see if these acqu…
Comment linking /payback_period_cash/
on “SaaS Financial Model”Submitted Is compensation stagnation to blame for the great resignation? as a story · 81 points
HN discussionYeah, valuation seems low... Look at marketo for a good comp: 21x EV/TTV - http://tomtunguz.com/marketo-vista-ma/
Comment linking /marketo-vista-ma/
on “The New Atlanta Billionaires Behind the Unlikely Tech Unicorn MailChimp”Submitted Your Startup’s Most Important Metrics as a story · 81 points
HN discussion
