“80% of the worlds workforce doesn’t sit at a desk, and 95% of the world’s software is built for people who sit at a desk. Once people build software for the other 80%, the size of the addressable market that could be created could dwarf what we currently have, which is pretty humbling to think about.” Jake Saper, Emergence Capital (@jakesaper)   We dive deep into the nitty gritty details of SaaS investing and company building with the best in the business, Jake Saper from Emergence Capital. Emergence has been around since the beginning of the SaaS industry and -uniquely for a venture firm- is entirely focused on early-stage investing within it. They were early investors in major successes like Salesforce, Veeva, SuccessFactors, Box and Yammer, and more recently, Gusto, Zoom, and many more.  This episode is a must-listen for anyone investing in, operating in, or thinking about modern SaaS companies!   Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast: Acquired.fm @AcquiredFM Let People Know You’re An LP on Twitter!   Links from the Show: Emergence Capital Emergence Capital – “Series-A SaaS Metrics” Emergence Email Newsletter   Show Bookmarks: [03:50] – SaaS Basics [06:45] – The Beginnings of Emergence Capital [08:39] – The Emergence Capital Model [10:51] – Back to the Origin Story [15:38] – The Emergence Capital SaaS Thesis and Investment Themes [20:50] – Coaching Networks [29:22] – Evaluating Market Size for SaaS Companies [38:46] – Building SaaS Companies [39:49] – The Makeup of CEOs and Founding Teams [47:43] – Before Product Market Fit [“Focus”] [51:40] – SaaS Metrics and Product/Market Fit [1:05:52] – What happens after the investment? [The IPO Press Release] [1:09:20] – Go-to-Market in SaaS [1:14:45] – SaaS Pricing [1:19:00] – Show Wrap Up   People Worth Knowing: Jon David Dannie Herzberg Doug Landis Gordon Ritter Jake Saper Joseph Floyd Mark Benioff Matt Wallach  Paypal Mafia Peter Gassner  Rob Ward  Stewart Butterfield Viviana Faga   Companies and Products Mentioned in Episode: Airbnb Apple Music Box  Compendium Confluence Drone Deploy Emergence Capital Enrollment Guru (knowledge management) Gusto Kleiner Perkins Madrona Meritech Microsoft Pfizer Salesforce Service Max (acquired by GE) Slack Software as a Service Spotify SuccessFactors Taunt Textio Force.com Veeva Yammer Zendesk Zenefits Zoom   Episode Specific Terms: ARR/MRR (Triple/Triple/Double/Double) Churn/Negative Net Churn Cloud Coaching Networks Cohort Analysis (The Smile) Deskless Workforce Diligence Disintermediation Enterprise Flywheel Generalist VC vs Focused VC Horizontal vs Vertical Software Investing Themes Investment Memo Investment Thesis Market Pull Multi-Tenancy vs Single Tenancy Network Effects On Track Earnings (OTT) On-Prem Opportunity Sizing  Principles, Senior Associates, Associates Product/Market Fit (“Customer Love”) Referral Effects SaaS Sales and Marketing Efficiency Technical Thesis Total Addressable Market (Top Down-Market Sizing) Utilization (as a Consumer Metric) Value Provided on Unit Basis (Bottom Up Market Sizing)   Ben and David’s Affiliations: Wave Capital, @WaveCapitalVC PSL, @psl