So some SaaS and Cloud leaders have seen big impacts from the post-Covid hangover, but others have just kept accelerating. MongoDB is one of those that just has never stopped, although as we’ll see below, even they have seen more cautious buying from their customers. But even macro challenges haven’t slowed Mongo much.
It’s now at a stunning $1.5 Billion in ARR, growing 29% overall, and it’s worth a stunning $29 Billion. That’s about as good as it gets in SaaS and Cloud!
Let’s dig in:
#1. 2022 Saw a Slowdown in Usage Growth, But 2023 Saw a Potential Bounce Back. While MongoDB overall has grown at epic rates, it hasn’t been immune from folks being more careful on how much compute they use. Mongo saw this show up in consumption growth materially decelerating about a year ago. The start of 2023 (FY ‘4) may have seen a partial bounce back, however. Are we near or past the lows in SaaS and Cloud buying patterns? We’ll see.
#2. New Workloads Are Only a Small Percent of Today’s Revenue, But Are The Majority of Tomorrow’s. I like this chart a lot showing both the awesome power of high NRR, and also how you have to invest in customers that scale with you over time. New workloads, new uses of Mongo are actually just a small percent of revenue. But those accounts grow dramatically over time, and don’t really churn. That leads to an awesome force of nature years down the road:
#3. New Customer Count Up 24%. A Very Good Sign. These days many are relying on upselling their existing base and raising prices to keep top line growth growing. That’s OK, but it doesn’t add real long-term value. Adding new customers does, and ideally growing new customers at least half as fast as revenue. Mongo’s doing better than that, adding +24% customers while growing +29% overall. A very bullish sign for the future.
#4. $1m+ Customers Up 30%. Even with economic headwinds, $1M+ and bigger customers still fuel Mongo’s growth.
#5. Average Customer Spend More Than Doubles After 2 Years. High NRR is magical, but NRR as a metric isn’t a GAAP metric. It can be gamed a bit, and is subject to interpretation. But you know what isn’t? Revenue growth. That’s what really matters. And here you can see the magic in Mongo’s business model. After 24 months, the average customer has grown 2.1x. And that includes its biggest customers. They still grow 2x in spend over the first 24 months. Wow.
And a few other interesting notes:
#6. Top 100 Customers are 33% of Revenue, and Enterprise Customers are 75% of Revenue. Anyone can start with Mongo, but the really big guys do … spend a lot! 75% of their revenue is Enterprise, even though it’s a small percent of total customer count. Yes, Mongo is PLG, at least in part. But it leans in big with a sales-driven motion of big customers as their accounts scale.
#7. 45% of Revenue Outside North America. Go global if you can, folks!
#8. Most of Its Top 100 Customers Have Been Customers for 5+ Years. What you’d expect from the account expansion math above, but very interesting to see. Go long, invest long. Keep them happy. You don’t always have to close a $1m deal … upfront. You can grow into them, too. Mongo does. It earns it.
#9. MongoDB, too has gotten more efficient. Finally has non-GAAP positive operating margins. How efficient should you be in SaaS? How efficient can you be? Despite having a partial PLG motion and very high NRR, Mongo has invested in growth. And it wasn’t “profitable” until 2023. Until, well, probably until it had to be. But then it got there fast, like everyone from Monday to PagerDuty to HubSpot. Still, they waited, and they have one of the highest public multiples in SaaS and Cloud. Efficiency is a complicated metric. Mongo still isn’t wildly efficient, even at $1.5 Billion in ARR. But it’s wildly successful.
Wow, just an epic product, CEO, business model, and success story.
A great deep dive from SaaStr Annual here with Mongo’s CEO Dev Ittycheria and Jyoti Bansal, founder AppDynamics and CEO Harness.io, here:
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- Source: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-from-mongodb-at-1-5-billion-in-arr/
