Bessemer Venture Partners recently released their State of AI 2025 Report, a space exploration manual for the AI software era. With AI now the dominant software force, let's dive into what Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike took away from the report in today's episode:The key differences in performance metrics between AI Supernovas and Shooting StarsWhy Vertical AI companies have a unique opportunity to outperform horizontal AI companies in the early daysThe importance of building a structured Proof of Concept or Pilot program into your customer acquisition processThe top 5 predictions for the AI market in 2026Top 10 takeaways for Native-AI founders and executive leadersThe top five predictions from the report for AI in 2026 include:The browser will emerge as a dominant interface for agentic AI2026 will be the year of generative videoEvaluations and data lineage will become a critical catalyst for AI product developmentA new AI-native social media giant could emergeThe incumbents strike back as AI M&A heats upFor the best listening experience, open the Bessemer Venture Partners State of AI 2025 report and follow along as Dave and Ray discuss the highlights.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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AI Valuations from Aventis
Aventis Advisors recently published a report on AI Valuations which covered the number of investments, size of those investments, median valuations and multiples on AI investments over a 15 year period from 2010 through first half of 2025!Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss some of the highlights including:AI industry categories includedNumber of financing rounds (2010 - 1H2025)Total Capital Raised (2010 - 1H2025)Median sizes by round (2010 - 1H2025)Valuations (2010 - 1H2025)Valuation multiples (2010 - 1H2025)Large Language Model valuations vs AI Coding Assistant ValuationsSummary of the AI funding environmentYou can follow along to Dave and Ray's conversation by clicking the below link to the reportAventis AI Valuation Multiples ReportSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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The Gross Margin of AI Products
AI-Native products and AI products integrated into a traditional SaaS platform have different Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) than a SaaS platform, which directly impacts Gross Margin. With over 80% of SaaS companies already integrating AI products into their platform, the Metrics Brothers knew it was time to discuss the Gross Margin and Cost of Goods Sold considerations of deploying an AI product:Topics that CAC and Growth discuss during this episode includes:Gross Margin benchmarks for AI products versus SaaS platformsCost of Goods Sold (COGS) for SaaS productsCost of Goods Sold (COGS) for AI productsGeneral Rules for COGS vs OPEX categorizationIncreasing AI product Gross Margins with scaleThe cascading reality of AI investments and build-outsIf you are considering investing capital and resources into an AI product, be it in an AI-Native product or as an add-on to a legacy SaaS platform, this conversation between CAC and Growth provides multiple insights and considerations for many Cost of Goods Sold components for AI products vis-Ã -vis traditional SaaS products.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Data Center Metrics: Gigawatts and Manhattans
AI is creating a level of need for data centers, power and processing capacity that has not been seen before - but how to measure the magnitude of that need is the topic for the Metrics Brothers to take on during this episode.During today's conversation, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss many key Data Center metrics including:FLOPS - Floating Point Operations per SecondModel ParametersWatts and Gigawatts = PowerGigawatt/hours = EnergyFirst multi-GW data center named Prometheus Why data center size is now being compared to the city of ManhattanAI is changing the world as we know it - and the Metrics Brothers are diving into this trend metric by metric!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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The New AI Growth Metric: Months to $100M in ARR
SaaS companies were traditionally measured on how many years it took to achieve $100M ARR - a key milestone! In today's brave new world of AI, this milestone is now measured in MONTHS. Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike highlight discuss this new AI growth metric in today's episode with many examples including:LovableCursorWizBoltAnthropicOpenAIDave and Ray discuss how these new hypergrowth AI-Native companies compare to some of the fastest growing traditional SaaS companies including DocuSign, Atlassian, Box, HashiCorp, Zoom and Slack.The Metrics Brothers then dive a little deeper into the details of the "months to $100M" to discuss WHEN does that clock begin to tick, at launch or at $1M ARR? They then go beyond just AI and discuss how Product-Led Growth was once viewed as a key to accelerating growth to $100M and where the reality meets the expectations.Lastly, CAC and Growth discuss one example of a fast growing AI company that could not quite sustain the early growth trajectory that was greatly helped by the hype and the hope of AI - a cautionary tale for other high flyers or just an interesting data point?Take a listen to this episode if you are involved, interested or evaluating how growth rate expectations for software companies in the new era of software!!!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Metrics Brothers (formerly SaaS Talk with the Metrics Brothers) is hosted by Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike. The Metrics Brothers provides unique insights, strategies, tactics and the metrics that are relevant to Native-AI and B2B software and SaaS companies.Each 20-minute episode will cover a topic critical to leading a B2B software company, and chalked full of practical advice that can be introduced and applied in most Native-AI, Agentic AI and B2B software and SaaS companies.
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