tidemark

Excited to have Andrew Walsh joining @dudaplatform's online vertical SaaS summit on May 27! The agenda is built around four of the questions operators are actively wrestling with right now: → How to beat the "SaaSpocalypse" → The agentic opportunity → AI monetization and agentic-ready packaging → AI visibility for SMBs Thanks to the Duda team for pulling together a lineup that's getting at the real shifts in vertical SaaS, from how AI is changing what platforms sell to how operators are repricing and repackaging for the agentic era. If you're rethinking pricing, packaging, or GTM, save your spot here: growth.duda.co

I haven't been writing a lot. But after @Stripe asked me to speak at their SaaS Platform Leaders Summit alongside @eileenomara and @bdeeter, it turns out I had a lot to say.

One Control Point. A swarm of agents coming for it. Public investors are saying it’s the end of vertical SaaS. SaaS stocks are down 40% on the thesis. @davelyuan's new essay is direct about how we see the SaaSpocalypse — and what separates the vertical SaaS Control Points and Native AI companies that survive from the ones that don't. It also sets up the conversation we're bringing to Collective Live in San Francisco on October 21-22, where 300 vertical SaaS and Native AI founders will be working through how to own the agentic age. If you're building through this transition, apply to join us at Collective Live: ordnl.link/06xmpGH Full essay linked here: ordnl.link/973RDZn

When we asked Ershad Jamil what's changing right now that operators need to adapt to faster than they think, he didn't say AI. 👀 He said how companies are 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 around AI. Watch the full clip below for what Ershad recommends operators do next. Curious where everyone lands: are you running one GM of AI, two, or none?

Collective Live is back for a third year and applications are now open! What started as a half-day gathering in 2024 has grown into the annual event for the vertical SaaS community. More than 300 CEOs and founders from 17+ industries and four continents have come together to learn, connect, and build alongside each other. Past sessions have covered GTM flywheels, agentic AI, multi-product expansion, and the path to $1B in ARR, with leaders from Clio, Toast, Procore, ServiceTitan, CCC, Built, Moxie, Fora Travel (and more!) sharing how they actually did it. This October 21-22, we're going deeper on the biggest question in vertical SaaS: how to navigate the AI transition. Expect sessions on building and shipping agents, rebuilding engineering orgs into software factories, and rethinking pricing and GTM as the landscape shifts. Space will fill up quickly. Register to join: bit.ly/49nleRV

The hardest operating lesson Kevin Hamilton learned took years to fully trust. And it still runs counter to most founders' instincts. At two companies built for specific verticals, the GTM discipline was the same. Limit the leads an SDR works. Limit the accounts in an AE's territory. Conversion rates go up, not down. In the second episode of Fellows in Focus, Kevin shares the operating lessons that shaped how he leads, and how he thinks about go-to-market focus with founders building now. Hit follow so you don't miss more from this conversation.

Hiring a Chief Growth Officer is one of the harder searches a VSaaS company will make. Ershad Jamil spent years at @ServiceTitan building Payments and new business lines from the ground up — and when he thinks about what he'd look for in that role today, it comes down to one thing: someone entrepreneurial enough to run a business line from zero, with the range to own a P&L, navigate BD, and still get into the weeds when the work requires it. Ershad breaks down exactly what he looks for in this episode of Fellows in Focus, a new series where Tidemark Fellows share the operator wisdom they wish they'd had earlier. More coming soon.

Collective Live is coming back to San Francisco October 21-22! We started this event to bring together leaders of emerging vSaaS companies for a day of in-person discussion and learning with legendary operators, without the pressure of other investors in the room. That's what makes this day different. Last year, over 200 vSaaS CEOs from four continents spent a day working through the strategic questions that define this market: how AI reshapes control points, when to go multi-product, how PE consolidation changes your competitive landscape. The room represented $4B+ in combined ARR across 17+ industries, and the conversations are still shaping how operators run their companies months later. Year 3. Same mission. Capacity is limited, so sign up now to be the first to get notified when registration opens this Spring! If you're a Vertical SaaS CEO or founder, we hope to see you in October: ordnl.link/N17fl14

@goclio Thank you to Ronnie and everyone who joined this morning!

Third, how AI adoption is really playing out. Founders are seeing workflow-specific RFPs instead of broad AI mandates, heavy onboarding and professional services requirements, and a lot of organizational confusion: FOMO, privilege concerns, evolving AI policies. The roles of IT, legal ops, and even law firms themselves are shifting as AI reshapes who advises on what.

Every time we get founders from the same vertical together, the knowledge sharing is on another level. This morning in New York, we brought legal tech founders together with Ronnie Gurion, COO at @GoClio, over breakfast. Three threads kept coming back:

How do you change a fragmented industry like construction? At Collective Live, @ChaseGilbert , CEO of @builttechnology, shared what it really takes: start with the flow of money and build outward from the true leverage point. Built began with lenders, not contractors or owners, and spent years building a system that became the industry’s shared ledger. Today, the platform connects over 300 financial institutions and more than $300B in active real estate. Every new stakeholder was added only after the foundation was proven. Chase’s message for founders is clear. Workflows create value, but coordination is the moat. When you become the shared truth in a spreadsheet-ridden, multi-party value chain, you change how an industry moves and resolve the pain and waste that hold it back. Get the full recap from Chase Gilbert's #CollectiveLive2025 session here: tidemarkcap.com/post/building-…

Dave Yuan the case at Collective Live that private equity isn't a background influence in Vertical SaaS anymore. It's a customer segment with its own buying behaviors, incentives, and internal politics. Once PE starts consolidating a vertical, the buyer landscape shifts. Companies that treat PE as a real segment outperform those that treat it as happenstance. Dave broke down how to actually sell into PE firms, including the three personas you need to understand and the product opportunities most founders miss. He also walked through how companies like SiteMinder and Carbon turned their data into deal-sourcing intelligence that PE firms now depend on. If PE is consolidating your vertical, this playbook is worth your time. Dive into the #CollectiveLive2025 recap here: ordnl.link/0gegy7R

Only 41% of Vertical SaaS companies in our 2025 Benchmark Report are still single-product. Nearly 60% have already made the leap to multi-product. If you’ve expanded, what was the tipping point for your team? If you’re still single-product, what signals are you watching before making the move?

The Platform Journey continues! 🚀 This week, host Avanish Sahai sits down with Drew Sechrist , CEO of Connect The Dots (CTD). An early Salesforce veteran who joined when the company had zero paying customers and helped scale it to over $1 billion in ARR.  Catch the full conversation here: theplatformjourney.tidemarkcap.com/episodes/drew-…

If you're a founder or operator request access here 👉 tidemarkcap.com/vskp-chapter/w…

The next great Vertical SaaS markets aren’t hiding. They’re in the Census data. In his latest post for Tidemark, Bob Solomon analyzes all 820 six-digit NAICS industries across the 2017 → 2022 Economic Censuses to answer a simple question: 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺?

4. Build for the portfolio, not just the company. PE firms want cross-portfolio visibility and standardization. If you can deliver that, you become indispensable to their value creation plan. The companies executing on this playbook are turning PE consolidation into a growth channel. Is PE consolidation happening in your vertical? How are you responding?

3. Carve out expansion. Give pricing concessions on product A, but lock in expansion rights for products B, C, and D. Protect your margin through cross-sell.

In some industries, PE-backed rollups already control up to 80% of the addressable market. The founders who've figured this out are treating PE as a full customer segment—and generating up to 30% of their new bookings from PE relationships. Here's the playbook they're using. ⬇️