NEA encountered interest from a few big USA subscribers early,...

NEA encountered interest from a few big USA subscribers early, so a few large subscriptions had a significant statistical affect on growth. Also, if 31 December is a deadline, then it is easy to have positive or negative spill-over at both ends of each year, which can also be statistically significant. Further, if bonus payments are earned for hitting certain targets, there is an incentive to not to make near-100% of target, and slip sales into the following year to help hit the next target. I was a salesman for a SaaS company years ago, so I know what salesmen and their managers did to maximise incentive payments. I plan to reexamine NEA's incentive payments for Management - NEA's incentives in earlier years struck me as potentially dysfunctional.

ACV growth is just a proxy for revenue growth, so I have presumed that for some years, the constant average revenue growth can be 25%. If NEA can flatten the expense growth, that would be good. It is the expense growth that bothers me, because the company seems to have a profligate culture (flash premises, large entertainment expenses, employee perks, and the like). I followed my sales career with a 15-year stint as a consultant focused on expense reduction in large organisations, and my instincts tell me that NEA needs to focus on that aspect of its business.