So what do Salesforce and Asana have in common?
- They both have large installed bases
- They both are doing a big AI push, and are deep into AI enhancing their products
- They both are now projecting … single digit growth for next year.
Less than 10% growth.
They are both the latest entrants into The Single Digit Club. Projecting growth below 10% next year.
Here’s the thing. It was never supposed to be like this.
Why not? At least because of high NRR. Salesforce historically had NRR well above 110%. Asana until recently did as well, despite selling to many SMBs (where high NRR is much harder).
If your NRR is 110%, we sort of expected growth would always at least be 20%-30% a year. With NRR of 120%, like many had until recently, and some still do (Databricks is 140%+)? You’d expect at least 40% annualized growth even at $1B ARR, maybe more.
But while NRR overall is still delivering — almost everyone still has at least 100% NRR, which is the gift of SaaS — it’s no longer overdelivering in many cases.
Even high fliers like Monday have seen at least a dip in NRR. While still outstanding for their smaller deal size, you can see how NRR is still the lowest it’s been in 4+ years, even at Monday:
A drop of -10%, -20% in NRR is just making growth so much harder. And driving even some leaders into The Single Digits Club.
But not everyone:
It’s a world of Haves and Have Nots in SaaS today.
Those selling outside of B2B, those that are truly AI native, and more in many cases are having an incredible run. But inside of tech sales, a drop in NRR is just crushing growth. We all have to power through it.
(growth charts from BVP Cloud Index here)
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Jason Lemkin, Khareem Sudlow
