👋 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.
“You Can’t Win”
That’s how Freshworks Founder & CEO Girish Mathrubootham started out his opening letter in the company’s recent S-1 filing.
From a traditional SaaS growth perspective, it’s hard to see how Freshworks - the help desk, CRM & IT service management company - could possibly break through:
How could they differentiate in (extremely) crowded markets?
How could they compete against far larger, better funded competitors?
How could they build a global SaaS company from India?
Fast forward to today. Freshworks set IPO terms on Monday, September 13 that would value the company at $8.9 billion. Some quick stats:
$308M in LTM (last 12 months) revenue
49% LTM growth rate
$35M LTM cash from operations
118% NDR
Two products - Freshdesk & Freshservice - each generate >$100M in ARR
Girish attributes Freshworks’ success to being unconventional from the beginning. A big piece of that was pioneering a product-led growth (PLG) strategy targeted at an underserved part of a large market.
Let’s dive in.
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