# Proof Narrative: The average exit multiple for SaaS venture-backed companies is 8.5x invested capital, higher than for consumer internet companies.

## Verdict

**Verdict: UNDETERMINED**

This claim cannot be confirmed or disproved from publicly available evidence. The specific metric required — MOIC, a VC fund return measure — is not available by sector from any public source.

## What Was Claimed?

The claim asserts that SaaS venture-backed companies produce average exit returns of 8.5x the capital invested (MOIC — multiple of invested capital) and that this beats the equivalent figure for consumer internet companies. This kind of sector-comparison claim is common in VC pitch decks and investor presentations.

## What Did We Find?

There are two very different "multiples" in SaaS financial discussions, and they measure completely different things.

The first is **MOIC** — multiple of invested capital. This is what the claim specifies: how much a VC fund got back relative to what it put in. The second is **EV/Revenue** — enterprise value as a multiple of annual revenue, which is what M&A markets actually report publicly.

When searching public data for the "8.5x SaaS" figure, what appears is EV/Revenue data. Aventis Advisors, analyzing 543 SaaS M&A transactions from 2015 to 2026, reports top-quartile deals exceeding 8.1x EV/Revenue with a median of 4.5x. These are EV/Revenue figures, not MOIC.

MOIC data for VC-backed exits is proprietary, living in databases like PitchBook and Carta behind paid subscriptions. The National Venture Capital Association and Kauffman Foundation publish aggregate VC return data but not sector-level MOIC breakdowns. No public source reports average SaaS exit MOIC at 8.5x or at any level broken down by sector.

## What Should You Keep In Mind?

The verdict of UNDETERMINED is not a finding that the claim is false — it is a finding that it cannot be assessed from publicly available data. MOIC and EV/Revenue are frequently conflated in popular discussion. Anyone citing "8.5x SaaS multiples" should specify whether they mean MOIC or EV/Revenue, and identify the specific source.

## How Was This Verified?

This claim was analyzed using the Proof Engine's compound claim methodology, with adversarial searches across Aventis Advisors, SaaS Capital, PitchBook, Kauffman Foundation, and academic databases. See [the structured proof report](proof.md), [the full verification audit](proof_audit.md), and [re-run the proof yourself](proof.py).
