This week was an earnings season where giants like Google and Microsoft revealed their quarterly numbers, and we started seeing a slight impact of the ongoing pandemic. Of course, the effects of COVID-19 will continue and we’ve to see how companies are adapting to the same. Nevertheless, both the tech titans also saw a huge spike in their offerings that help with remote work. So without any more delay, let’s take a look at them and everything else that happened in the world of SaaS in the past 7 days.
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News of the week
Google Meet premium video meetings—free for everyone
It was just earlier this month that the Alphabet-owned dropped Hangouts branding from its enterprise-focused Google Meet to suggest that Hangouts would refer to apps that are aimed at consumers. Alas, the internet behemoth continues to confuse with its multi-pronged approach by offering multiple software for the same thing. While there’s already Google Hangouts and Duo (for mobile only) for video calls, it has also announced that individuals could use Google Meet too, starting early May, that too completely free. Interestingly, while the meetings are time-limited to 60 minutes, the company won’t be enforcing this restriction until September 30th. If you’re interested, you can register on meet.google.com.
It’s clear that with this move, Google is taking a crack at Zoom, which has become the top choice for video calls across the world. That’s not to say that the Google Meet isn’t seeing stupendous growth as it’s adding about 3 million users per day, according to the brand’s 2020 Q1 Earnings Call.
Google Cloud revenue is increased by 52\% to $2.78billion
Speaking of the earnings call, Google Cloud revenue continues to soar. Compared to $1.8billion in Q4 2019, it has grown 52\% in the first quarter of the year to reach $2.78billion.
Microsoft Cloud continues to thrive; Teams surpasses 75million DAUs
The Redmond giant also announced its quarterly results, and its Cloud platform also witnessed robust growth. It increased by 39percent to $13.3billion.
What’s even more interesting is that the brand’s Slack rival has crossed 75million daily active users, which is impressive indeed considering Microsoft Teams had crossed 44million DAUs mark just last month.
“The everything store” also announced its earnings and while its revenues grew, it has cautioned its shareholders that “you may want to take a seat, because we’re not thinking small“. What that means is that Amazon will be spending all its profits on “COVID-related expenses getting products to customers and keeping employees safe.“
Of course, AWS remains strong as it breaches the $10billion revenue milestone; however the growth has slowed down.
Introducing Shop: the most convenient way for shoppers to buy from their favorite independent brands
Amid the crisis, one company that has been growing is Shopify as more small businesses are transitioning to online sales. And while the company makes it easier for retailers to create e-commerce websites, it knows that users are increasingly using mobile to purchase online. Since it wouldn’t make sense for each retailer to have a native mobile app, Shopify has introduced Shop, which is a rebrand of its Arrive app that was used by consumers to track packages and has already seen 16million downloads, wherein Shopify users can list their products. Not just that, the app promises fast check-out, and the ability for consumers to purchase online and pick up the item from the store, if it’s nearby.
Related podcast: Why Shopify is #Winning with James McLeod
Zoom Selects Oracle as a cloud infrastructure provider for its core online meeting service
Zoom is setting a record for being featured in our newsletter week after week. Jokes aside, this time the video conferencing software gets a mention because of its unusual choice for its cloud provider. Instead of going with leading players like Amazon and Microsoft, it has opted for Oracle. It’s worth highlighting that as Zoom has scaled to 300million meeting participants, there have been no reliability issues, which is commendable.
Cloudflare partners with JD to expand its network in China
The popular content delivery network has joined hands with JD Cloud & AI to expand its network in China and add 150 data centers. The partnership isn’t much different from its earlier partnership with Baidu back in 2015, where Cloudflare would be providing tech and know-how, and JD would be investing to build out the network.
Zoho launches app for schools, aims to boost India revenues
India’s Zoho has announced a new app dubbed Zoho Classes to help schools and colleges connect with students. It’ll allow teachers to upload courses, conduct live classes, give assignments, and more. What’s more interesting is that the app is free for government institutions in India and for other educational institutes, it’s free for up to 100 students.
Along with that, the company is also providing its other offerings such as ShowTime, which is a training platform for trainers, while Zoho Meeting will be free for the government for three months.
Microsoft’s Visual Studio Online code editor is now Visual Studio Codespaces and gets a price drop
Last year, the Windows maker introduced the online version of its code editor, Visual Studio. The company has now changed the name of its IDE to Visual Studio Codespaces along with slashing the prices to 50 percent.
Investment quotient
Did you know that 42 SaaS companies got funded in April 2020? The last week of the month also saw a lot of fundraising activity…
Figma eyes acquisitions, new tools with $50 million in fresh funding at $2 billion valuation
Popular UX design software Figma has raised $50million Series D round as the company sees an increased usage when the world is under quarantine. The fundraising was led by A16z and takes the valuation of Figma to $2billion. It’ll be using the money to make acquisitions and acquihires.
Catalyst raises $25M Series B funding led by Spark Capital
With a growth of 400\% in its ARR in the last nine months, the Customer management platform Catalyst has raised Series B funding. Led by Spark Capital, the company will be using $25million on expansion and hiring.
Templafy raises $25M Series C led by Insight partners to deal with enterprise documents
Templafy, a platform for enterprises to templatize documents, has raised $25million Series C funding. The latest round will allow the company to focus on acquisitions, add more features and increase its employee base.
Checkly raises $2.25M seed round to push Active Reliability forward
API management software Checkly has received $2.25million seed funding led by Accel. The Berlin-based startup let developers to check their API endpoints and web apps and notify if there’s something wrong.
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Must reads
10 learnings from Mark Suster’s “Funding in the time of Coronavirus”
9 best practices of streamlined SaaS user onboarding
5 new-age software for the remote work era
How have SaaS content marketing teams responded to COVID-19?
Listen to
Dan Springer, CEO of DocuSign
In this podcast, Bessemer Venture Partners’ Byron Deeter chats with Dan Springer about his journey in the world of SaaS before it was even called so, how he took his first company to a successful exit and then after taking a break, joined DocuSign as a CEO. Springer also shares how to be an effective leader.
How renewals and discounting will be impacted by COVID & how enterprise founders should approach capital allocation & efficiency today with Navin Chaddha, Managing Director @ Mayfield
Mayfield is a renowned venture firm with investments in leading companies such as HashiCorp, Marketo, and Skilljar among others. In this episode of SaaStr podcast, Harry Stebbings is in conversation with Mayfield’s Managing Director, Navin Chaddha about how he got in the SaaS industry, his suggestions for companies during the coronavirus crisis, how will things evolve and more.
Bonjoro: building a SaaS company in a bear suit – with Matt Barnett
Personalized videos for every new signup of your service are certainly an interesting way to connect with the new users, but this isn’t easy to pull off and is difficult to scale too. Australia-based Bonjoro has been able to do that however, as it integrates with various CRMs, email marketing software and more to allow you to send them customized videos depending upon where they are in the funnel. In this episode, The SaaS Podcast’s Omer Khan interviews Bonjoro’s founder Matt Barnett about he started the business while running the agency, and how they acquired over 40k users, among other things.
Watch
SaaStock sessions: leadership in a time of crisis
In the first episode of SaaStock Sessions, Alex Theuma chats with leaders to talk about how to navigate the current situation of COVID-19. While Typeform’s CEO Joaquim Lecha shares on how to prepare for a new world, Mutiny’s Jaleh Rezaei mentions why employees shouldn’t be treated like children.
CIO spotlight: Sylvie Veilleux, CIO of Dropbox on SaaS at Scale
SaaS at scale is gaining steam a lot lately, but if you are wondering what it exactly means then watch this video wherein 7x CIO Mark Settle discusses about it with Sylvie Veilleux, who’s Dropbox’s CIO.
