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Bang for buck: Who are the most efficient revenue-generating SaaS startups?

9 December, 2024

Written by: Lorenzo Chiavarini

A new startup revenue efficiency Index by Flashpoint & Dealroom shines a light on what good looks like for SaaS startups, at different stages of growth, and the best performing private SaaS companies right now.

Dealroom and Flashpoint have collected hard to find up-to-date revenue data for hundreds of private startups, which are now compiled in an open-access data dashboard. Revenue is sourced from founders’ submissions, Dealroom.co data and Flashpoint. All revenues are for 2023/2024, with the majority being for 2024. 

Much of the data has been gathered from startups directly, and other startups can submit their company data on an open or anonymous basis, to help build the most well rounded SaaS benchmarking tool possible. 

The data shows that top-performing SaaS startups produce ~ $200k+ ARR per employee across different funding and growth stages. (This means hitting $5M ARR with ~25 people in the team)

The findings:

  • Top-performing SaaS startups produce $200+k ARR per employee
  • AI features heavily among the most efficient revenue-producing startups, both across scaled up companies (e.g OpenAi, Anthropic) and small uprunnners (e.g. Fracht AI, Fratch, RunPod, and KlartAI)
  • For VC-backed companies: more mature companies tend to have higher rev/employees, with most of the effect till age 10. Total VC funding does not, instead have a significant impact, apart from outsized cases of $100M+ in funding. Larger companies by headcount also tend to have more revenue per employee. 
  • The relation between VC funding/bootstrapping and revenue efficiency is not obvious. Typically, bootstrapped startups show more revenue per employee than companies with a modest amount of VC funding raised but less than the most funded ones.
  • Internationalisation: using web traffic data as a proxy of the degree of internationalisation of the startups, the most efficient startups also show more internationalisation overall.
  • Unsurprisingly, startups tend to go more international with age, employee numbers, and increased total revenues. For instance, startups with 5-10 employees show on average 3 countries compared to 8 for companies with 100+ employees. 
  • Over half of the European startups analysed have the US as a top 3 source of web traffic. The UK follows with being a top source for 34% of European companies not HQ in the UK. Germany and France show less attractiveness for expansion, at 12% and 5% respectively.

Startups can submit their revenue info to the Index to help build a comprehensive startup benchmarking, and claim 6 months of free Dealroom access.

But who are these companies, and which ones are doing even better?

Today we unveil a new dashboard showing the revenue efficiency of over 300 private SaaS startups globally.

All revenues reported are for 2023/2024 and come from data submitted by founders and checked by Dealroom, and Dealroom data collected from regulatory filings, news and other sources.

Many of the top-performing companies are AI-first, such as high-profile scaleups Midjourney (notably bootstrapped), Open AI, Anthropic, and Bending Spoons (bootstrapped for the first 6 years).

But also smaller upcomers like Fratch, RunPod, and KlartAI.

Startups can submit their revenue info to the Index to help build a comprehensive startup benchmarking, and claim 6 months of free Dealroom access.