I've always found it confusing how run of the mill SaaS trades at multiples assuming decades of doing business. The amount of change in software businesses has been massive and being able to run a successful software business even for 15 years from 2010-2025 requires a great deal of strategy and foresight and more likely than not that's not enough. Considering how these dynamics have been accelerating as technology accelerates it just seemed so off that the market was landing on a 20-30x multiples for software businesses that don't have much moat (e.g. swathes of B2B CRUD apps).

Investor analyst looks at earnings growth and determines Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Customer Acquisition Cost Payback Period (CACPP). They determine that ABC Software Corporation has no marginal manufacturing cost because it makes software that it sells online, so if it invested 90% of its profit margin into marketing it could grow its ARR by 140% a year. Then they extrapolate that for 30 years and say ok the NPV of 30 years of 140% ARR on current CAC, etc etc...

If everyone in the industry benchmarks on more or less the same multiples, it becomes a good idea to buy any b2b crud saas trading at 10x earnings because if the big boys see it they'll probably bid it up to 30x

the other classic move is to take a business which really isn't even a new technology, like revolut, and call it a tech business. now suddenly a bank can trade on a 50x earnings multiple instead of 15x like say a bank. many such cases~