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As the temperament of the fundraising market shifts, particularly in the later stages, the question of how much a startup should burn will become increasingly important. We’re living in a historic period of very inexpensive venture capital. These cheap dollars have fueled spectacular companies with record-setting growth rates. In such an environment, growth at almost any cost is handsomely rewarded. But we’re observing the ecosystem starting a correction - particularly in the late stage of the market. And so burn rates will matter more and efficient growth will be prized again.

Founded in 2002, the Australian software maker Atlassian is an exceptional company in many regards. But foremost, Atlassian is one of the best examples of flywheel SaaS companies yet. Atlassian counts 1600 employees and sells five products JIRA (bug tracking software), Confluence (project management), HipChat (internal chat/collaboration), BitBucket (code repository) and JIRA Service Desk (help desk software. Yesterday, Atlassian filed their F-1, a document preceding their IPO, and revealed how efficient a software company they have built. In 2015, the company will generate $320M in revenue.

In the last 22 months, there have been 4 $1B+ software IPOs and 3 $1B+ software acquisitions. But compared to 2014, 2015 was a meager year for startups looking to go public or be acquired. The chart above plots the M&A activity over this period.

The M&A market halved in activity. In 2014, $11B of disclosed M&A occurred. I’m excluding take-private transactions of public companies like SAP/Concur, Bain/BlueCoat, Oracle/Responsys, etc. Through November 1st 2015, transaction values dipped 40% to $6.8B. The number of transactions has also nearly half from 38 to 17. However, in 2015 the median acquisition was worth $410M, compared to $193M in 2014, indicating that buyers are not buying as frequently, but when they are, they spend more.

On November 18, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Pete Koomen, Co-Founder and CTO of Optimizely, the incredibly fast growing AB testing and personalization company Pete founded with Dan Siroker. Numbering more than 400 people, Optimizely has built an amazing business since 2009, serving thousands of customers. Before Optimizely, Pete was a product manager at Google building Google App Engine which grew to support 150,000 developers. Before App Engine, Pete worked in the AdSense team and managed the OKR process at Google.

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted go-to-market guru Kenny van Zant. Kenny is a serial entrepreneur started his career as founder and COO at BroadJump, a broadband software company that grew to $100M in bookings. He was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002. After BroadJump, Kenny built the go to market organization at Solarwinds, a $4B market cap infrastructure software company, and Asana, a fast-growing productivity company, both of which exemplify a unique go-to-market approach, Flywheel Model, brilliantly.

What is the optimal quick ratio for your SaaS startup? Is it 4?

Quick Ratio = (New MRR + Expansion MRR) / (Churned MRR + Contraction MRR)

The quick ratio measures a SaaS company’s growth efficiency. The formula for quick ratio is above. It’s the new monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in a month plus the expansion MRR divided by the sum of the churned MRR and the contraction MRR. Churned MRR are customers who have not renewed contracts and contractions are those customers who have decreased their payments.

Last week, a friend asked me what I thought the future of software would be. At some point, all the workflow processes that still conducted on paper and pencil will be digitized, all of the tasks completed in Excel will be optimized, and the majority of limitations of traditional software will be overcome. It’s not to say that software innovation in its current form will continue to exist for decades, but what is the fundamental shift that resets the ecosystem like the cloud did in the early 2000s?

Quota attainment is an incredibly powerful diagnostic tool when understanding your SaaS startup’s go-to-market health. Quota attainment measures both the success of individual account executives and the performance of the team. To achieve best-in-class quota attainment, a startup must execute the go-to-market strategy well across five dimensions.

First, the startup must supply the sales team with a growing volume of high quality leads. SaaS companies generate leads in many ways including through sales development reps, search engine marketing, paid social, lead capture on the home page, events, customer referrals, evangelists and channel partners. Consistently growing qualified leads is essential to quota attainment.

Taxis. Food. Cars. Mobile phones. Communications. Banking. Healthcare. Entertainment. In the past ten years, is there an industry startups haven’t upheaved?

Startups have been the most transformational force in US society over the past 20 years. Uber has transformed the taxi industry, reducing taxi rides in yellow cabs in San Francisco by 65% in 2 years. Hampton Creek has created an eggless mayonnaise that terrified the US egg industry. Android is arguably the most widely distributed consumer software in history. WhatsApp delivers 50% more messages than all global SMS volumes. As banks stopped lending after 2008, market place lenders like LendingClub and Prosper bloomed and originated $12B of loans in 2014. OneMedical and DoctorsOnDemand have transformed medical experiences for tens of thousands of people. Finally, YouTube and Spotify and Pandora are shifting the media consumption patterns. More than 20% of US homes in 2015 will have cut the cord - and stopped paying for cable TV service.

Last week, I interviewed Tien Tzuo, the former CMO & CSO at Salesforce, and founder/CEO of Zuora. During our conversation, he spoke about one of the major challenges facing fast growing startups. He called it recognizing the breaking points of management.

At the founding a startup, the structure of the company is flat. Everyone is effectively a peer. At about 8 people, a leader must emerge to shepherd the growing team, and so the first management layer is created. Then again, somewhere around 60 employees, the company must add another management layer, and then again when the company reaches a few hundred employees. Marco Zappacosta, founder and CEO of Thumbtack told me once, “As CEO, I changed from a contributor, to a manager, to a manager of managers, to a manager of manager of managers. And each time, I needed to learn again what it meant to be CEO.”