If you think just last week was super buzzy in the world of SaaS, then you couldn’t be more wrong. While it’s difficult to top the news of Slack being acquired by Salesforce, we did see some IPOs, funding announcements, and acquisitions. So, let’s begin.
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News of the week
PubMatic stock soars after the Adtech company raised $118million in its IPO
The past week saw IPOs like DoorDash and AirBnB doubling their valuations, but there were other companies too that made their public debut. PubMatic, a programmatic advertising company, managed to raise $118million in its IPO, a 47 percent increase in its share price.
C3.ai IPO stock, after a triple-digit gain, continues climbing
Another IPO in the space this week was C3.ai with the stock ticker AI. Its share debuted at $42 and managed to raise $651million for the enterprise AI company.
Cisco goes on an acquisition spree
The networking giant has paid $730million to acquire customer interaction platform IMImobile. The deal will help the company provide end-to-end Customer Experience as a Service (CXaaS).
To add to the features of WebEx, Cisco has purchased Slido, the company that makes it easy for people to moderate questions and interactions in a virtual event. While the terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, Slido had 7million users.
TechTarget, which provides purchase intent data for B2B technology, has acquired virtual event platform BrightTALK for $150million. Over 8million users have registered on BrightTALK for attending events, and it’s being growing amidst the pandemic like other virtual event software. TechTarget believes that the acquisition will help it expanding its purchase intent data and benefit from the move to online events.
Related read: Top virtual event software in 2020
Adobe leaps past forecasts to record quarterly revenue
Adobe has been able to move to subscription and cloud quite well, and that’s reflecting in its quarterly reports too. The Photoshop maker beats analysts’ expectations with a revenue of $3.42billion, 14 percent up from last year. The revenue for the fiscal year 2020 increased by 15 percent to $12.87billion.
Microsoft Teams and Slack rival? Kotlin-maker JetBrains launches Space for developers
Is there a space for another player in the collaboration software segment? Well, the company behind programming language Kotlin thinks so as it has announced Space. Aimed at developers, the software comes with the usual features such as chats, meetings, calendars, etc., but also things like automation CI/CD and turn-based code reviews.
Axios is entering into the software licensing business with a new tool to help companies communicate
Publishers have been licensing their products to others for quite some time. Be it The Washington Post’s Arc CMS or Vox’s Chorus, but now Axios is joining the fray with a SaaS that helps businesses write succinctly. It’ll be debuting in February next year, but is already been tested by the likes of AT&T and Delta for the past year.
SAP latest enterprise software giant to offer low-code workflow
With low-code being in the news, SAP has also joined the club with the launch of SAP Cloud Workflow Management, SAP Ruum, and SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation. These tools will help people with no coding knowledge to develop workflows.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Singapore’s GIC leads $100million series C round for Chinese SaaS startup Huice
Chinese company Huice, a provider of ERP software for e-commerce firms, has closed a $100million Series C funding round. Led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, the company will be using the funds to improve its product and hire employees.
Squire, a barbershop tech startup, triples its valuation to $250million in latest round
Squire provides software to barber shops to help them manage their bookings while allowing the customer to schedule appointments, have loyalty programs, and enable cashless payment. While the startup’s revenue went to zero at the beginning of the pandemic, its adoption increased as it allowed people to book their appointments, and hence it seems to have nabbed a $59million with a valuation of $250million.
CallRail Raises $56million In Funding
Call tracking and marketing analytics platform CallRail has received $56million funding from its existing backers like Sageview Capital and Leaders Fund. The company also disclosed that its ARR has reached the $60million mark.
With organizations moving their data to cloud or having a hybrid approach, it seems the data warehousing space is quite hot. Snowflake has made a stunning debut in the public markets, and now a company that’s challenging it has gotten $37million in funding. Firebolt aims to use the funding to develop its product and expand its customer base.
GetAccept raises $20million Series B, led by Bessemer, to expand its sales platform for SMBs
All-in-one digital sales platform GetAccept has raised $20million in Series B round. Led by Bessemer Venture Partners, the company will be deploying the funding to expand to the SMB segment.
WorkRamp lands $17million Series B
WorkRamp is an enterprise learning platform, which turns boring tasks such as compliance training into bite-sized learning activities. It has gotten $17million funding in a Series B round led by OMERS Ventures.
UserLeap raises $16million to bring better qualitative data to PMs
UserLeap aims to help product managers by bringing high-quality data to them. Founder by serial product manager Ryan Glasgow, UserLeap allows product teams to insert short line of code into the product to deliver contextual micro-surveys to users. The startup has raised $16million Series A funding to bring this vision to reality.
Must reads
Cloud and SaaS technology can drive inclusive banking. Here are 3 reasons how
How organizations can avoid today’s biggest SaaS data security issues
As education goes virtual, it’s time to get SaaS-y on app security
Salesforce acquiring Slack signals “SaaS 2.0”
Listen to
Creating a better presentation software, competing with PowerPoint, Keynote & Google Slides & achieving great design with Pitch CEO Christian Reber
Angel investor Jason Calcanis continues to interview people in the SaaS space as part of “rising stars of SaaS” series, and this week, his attention turned to Christian Reber, who had co-founded Wunderlist (acquired by Microsoft). He has started a new company dubbed Pitch, which aims to make it easier to create a world-class presentation.
Hosting online summits for Your SaaS to grow your authority, partnerships and revenue, with Natalie Luneva
In this podcast, Natalie Luneva, growth and team performance coach for SaaS companies, shares how to think about online summits, how they can help the startup, how to approach speakers, sponsors and more. She highlights that the summits not only help in getting leads, but also in creating connections with industry leaders, generating content, and more.
Solving the customer success equation: Nick Mehta on delivering value at scale
GainSight has moved from strength to strength over the years, and its CEO Nick Mehta shares about the journey. He talks about the customer success equation and how customer success can help in scaling the business.
Watch
AI offers a new kind of IT management for cloud/SaaS service spree
IT Service Management company BMC Software’s chief product officer Ali Siddiqui talks about how the company is taking out service issues with the use of AI chatbot. He also highlights the company’s partnership with AWS.
