In January, venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote “Surviving is thriving in 2023” and I think he couldn’t have been more right.
This year has been tough, and the whole SaaS industry has experienced a delayed hangover effect. In these challenging market conditions we’ve had to partner closer than ever with our customers to understand their needs and deliver value.
Reflecting on the year, I’m proud of how ChartMogul evolved, and the success we worked hard to achieve and more than ever I’m thankful to the team members, customers and supporters who’ve made this all happen.
Here are the highlights that stick out for me when looking back on 2023, the best year* yet for ChartMogul.
*Of course…we do say that every year, as you can see in our 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016 posts.
Launching ChartMogul CRM
On April 4th, after months of stealth work, we launched ChartMogul CRM into the world. We had spent the previous year watching our users do more and more CRM-like activities in their ChartMogul accounts, and had asked ourselves, what would it mean if we built a CRM in ChartMogul? You can read more about our CRM story here.
The launch was a success, with the entire company rallying together to get the word out. We had the 5th Product of the Day on Product Hunt, over 330 free trials started within a matter of days, and were flooded with notes of encouragement, excitement and a healthy dose of skepticism.
Sure, there are a lot of CRMs on the market, but our unique ability to combine subscription data with sales opportunities and customer communication all in one place has proven powerful.
Eight months later, we’re learning what functionality matters most to our end users, and as the first customer, our sales team have been fundamental to developing the product. Almost 10% of our customer base has tried it out, and over $4m in pipeline has been created in ChartMogul CRM.
Feeding the SaaS Industry with Powerful Insights
This year our research went viral. We published a series of data-backed insight reports looking at how SaaS companies were performing across the market in comparison to previous quarters, and dug deeply into questions around growth.
Our SaaS Retention Report exposed that companies with best-in-class retention grow at least 1.5 to 3 times faster than their peers. Then our 2023 SaaS Benchmarks Report brought light to how performance trends were reacting to a changing economic context. Finally, our SaaS Growth Report told the story of how companies scale from zero to $30m ARR and beyond.
This year we welcomed over 20 SaaS industry leaders to share their experiences in panel discussions covering everything from product-led sales, to go-to-market efficiency.
Recently we went back to all the experts who participated in our 2023 panel season and asked them what they predict 2024 will bring for the SaaS industry. TLDR:
- AI will be everywhere,
- capital will return to SaaS markets,
- M&A activity will increase,
- SaaS buyers will start to come back,
- pricing experimentation will soar, and;
- marketing will switch back to growth-mode.
Lastly, we spent a lot of time meeting with customers in-person this year, hosting events in London, San Francisco, New York and Dublin. Thanks to those of you who stopped by our booths this year! And if you missed us, we’ll be back in 2024 in a city near you.
A Year of Incredible Product Development
We moved mountains in 2023; some which were visible and highly anticipated by customers, as well as some large under the hood projects to sure-up our long-term platform stability.
The highlights include:
- Send normalized subscription data to your warehouse
- Isolate MRR movements
- Configure manual subscriptions more easily
- Add tasks in ChartMogul CRM
- Migrating our database to eliminate processing incidents
- Building our data stack to boost scalability
- And there’s more to come early January 👀
We’re ending 2023 with the most customers we’ve ever had, and while the year was tough for the industry, we’ve made some huge leaps forward. Next year we’re expecting SaaS to remain difficult, but with ever improving conditions. We have a clear focus, strong plan and a great team. Bring on 2024!
2008: SaaS is Really Hard
… 2016: SaaS is Really Hard2017: SaaS is a Great Business
2018: Everyone Invests in SaaS
2019: SaaS Eating the World
2020: I’m Genius
2021: King of World!
2022: Nothing Makes Sense2023: SaaS is Really Hard
2024: SaaS Still Hard But Smidge Less So— Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin 🇮🇱 (@jasonlk) December 15, 2023
