2023 Private SaaS Company Growth Rate Benchmarks
It’s not difficult to benchmark your SaaS company’s performance against that of public SaaS companies, but it’s also only slightly useful. The sheer scale of public companies makes for an apples-to-oranges comparison to smaller, private companies that do not reveal actionable performance insights.
In the Research Brief linked below, SaaS Capital provides growth rate data from our 12th annual survey of more than 1,500 private B2B SaaS companies. Top takeaways include:
- The median growth rate for all companies in the survey registered 35.0%. This is down from a population median of 40.0% in 2021 and puts growth closer to the pandemic levels seen in 2020. Overall, only 3.1% of the companies reported flat or negative growth in 2022. That is only marginally higher than the 2.7% of the companies that reported flat or negative growth in 2021 and well below the 13% reported in 2020.
- Bootstrapped companies report median growth of 32%, up from 30% in the 2022 survey. Equity-backed companies reported median growth of 35%, down from 45% in the 2022 survey.
- Growth rate is positively and exponentially correlated with net revenue retention. Increasing Net Revenue Retention (NRR) from the 90% to 100% range to the 100% to 110% range improves growth rate by 9 percentage points. Companies with the highest NRR report median growth that is double the population median.
- There is no correlation between Annual Contract Value (ACV) and growth rates, but interestingly, companies that were increasing their ACV had higher growth rates than companies with flat or declining ACVs over time. This corroborates the bullet point above and confirms that price increases and expanding your existing accounts are powerful and important engines of revenue growth.