Kyle Poyar’s Post

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Operating Partner @ OpenView | Growth Unhinged 🚀

What's a "normal" burn rate for a startup? ⤵ Here are benchmarks from 700+ SaaS companies. A few observations: 1. There is no optimal burn rate. - What's healthy for one business might lead another startup to run out of cash. - Consider the level of cash on hand & confidence that any investments will leave the business better off. 2. What's "normal" today looks wildly different from 2021/2022. - Median burn rates are down materially year-over-year. - The biggest decreases are among SaaS companies with $5M+ ARR & especially those with $20M+ ARR. - The median monthly burn rate for a $20-$50M ARR biz fell from $1.5M (2022) to only ~$100-150k (2023). 3. "Normal" depends on your size and growth rate. - Higher growth SaaS companies with $20M+ ARR are still burning an average of ~$1M per month. Only ~5% of these companies are breakeven or profitable. - On the flip side, a lower growth SaaS company with $1-5M ARR is now only burning ~$50k per month. About ~25% of these companies are breakeven or profitable. 4. Be prepared for potential layoffs if burn starts to diverge from growth. According to layoffs.fyi, tech layoffs increased again in January to ~31,000 people. The silver lining is that this is down by almost 70% from the peak in January 2023 (~90,000 people). Let me know what you think: is this level of burn "healthy" or are we going to see even more cuts in 2024? -- 🎁 PS - Tap "view my blog" below my name for more data & stories about growing a SaaS startup. #saas #finance #startupfunding

  • Cash burn benchmarks

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