👋 Hi, I’m Kyle and welcome to my newsletter, Growth Unhinged. Every other week I take a closer look at what drives a SaaS company’s growth. Expect deep dive takes on SaaS pricing, product-led growth, public company benchmarks, and much more.

In 2021 the ‘Rule of 40’ died, according to our latest 2021 Financial & Operating Benchmarks report that launched last week.

Today growth appears to be all that matters. And there’s more and more bifurcation between the ‘haves’ – the fast growers – and the ‘have nots’ of SaaS than ever before.

The ‘haves’, defined by growing quickly out of the gate and then maintaining 50% or faster revenue growth at significant scale, have seen their valuations skyrocket over the years. This is most visible among publicly traded companies.

For publicly traded companies that are growing 50% or faster, median valuation multiples have increased by an incredible 649% between 2015 and August 2021. Those growing by 10-30%, by comparison, have only seen multiples increase by 102% over that time period. 

The new data reveals a similar picture for private SaaS startups.