Welcome to the SaaS weekly roundup that brings you the summary of all the major happenings in the dynamic world of software as a service in one place. As always, we have a ton to unpack, right from acquisitions to quarterly revenue reports, and fundraises to podcasts and videos that you shouldn’t miss out on. Let’s get going.
Table of Contents
News of the week
Thoma Bravo buys cybersecurity vendor Proofpoint for $12.3billion in cash
Thoma Bravo has been on an acquisition spree of late. Now, it has acquired cybersecurity provider Proofpoint for $12.3billion. Proofpoint is known for its email security tools, and competes with the likes Symantec and Trend Micro.
Panasonic to buy Blue Yonder in $7.1billion deal
The Japanese electronics giant has also caught the SaaS bug as it has acquired supply chain software company Blue Yonder. The deal is worth $7.1 billion, and will help the company in improving its existing technologies for detecting out-of-stock products, increasing productivity in warehouses, factory floors, and retail stores, among other things.
IBM is acquiring cloud app and network management firm Turbonomic for up to $2billion
The Big Blue has acquired Turbonomic, a provider of application performance tools. While the terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, reports suggest that the cost was anywhere between $1.5 to $2billion.
Stripe acquires TaxJar to add cloud-based, automated sales tax tools into its payments platform
Stripe – the world’s most valuable startup – is venturing into more categories as it has purchased TaxJar. It offers a range of tax services for calculating, reporting, and filing sales taxes. The payments giant has confirmed that TaxJar will be integrated into its revenue platform.
Microsoft Cloud fuels third quarter results
With a 33 percent growth year-on-year, Microsoft Cloud generated a revenue of $17.7 billion in the third quarter ended on March 31st, 2021. The Redmond giant also mentioned that Microsoft Teams has reached impressive daily users of 145million – up from 115million daily users in October 2020.
Alphabet announces first quarter 2021 results
Search behemoth Google also announced its revenue for the first quarter ending on March 31st, 2021. The company saw a revenue of $4billion for Google Cloud, which was up by 46 percent y-o-y.
ServiceNow’s Q1 strong as company’s workflow automation tools gain traction
IT Service Management company ServiceNow also disclosed its quarterly earnings. Just like Microsoft and Google, it beat analyst expectations and announced revenue of $1.36billion, which increased by 30 percent from the year prior. It also highlighted that it has 1,146 customers that have over $1million in annual contract value.
Zoom: Introducing Immersive View, a fun new way to meet
Video conferencing software Zoom has rolled out a feature dubbed Immersive View. As the name indicates, it allows hosts to manage video participants into a single virtual background to provide a realistic feeling.
Atlassian broadens Jira’s reach beyond tech teams with Jira Work Management
Leading SaaS company Atlassian aims to take Jira beyond tech as it has introduced Jira Work Management. It’s a team management tool for IT and operations team to allow the ability share and structure workflows, privacy controls, and automating tasks.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
MessageBird acquires SparkPost for $600million using $800million Series C extension
Europe-based MessageBird made a lot of news this past week. The communications platform announced $800million extension on $200million Series C round that it had raised in October last year. And made a good use of the amount as well as it acquired email marketing platform SparkPost for $600million.
Brex raises $425million at a $7.4billion valuation, as the corporate spend war rages on
Just a couple of weeks after Ramp announced its funding round, Brex – a credit card provider and cash management firm for companies – has nabbed a $425million funding at a valuation of $7.4billion. The company also announced a service called Brex Premium, a subscription software that provides spend management functionality.
Boston VC invests major funds into local subscription billing startup
Battery Ventures has put in a combined $150million into SaaS firms Chargify and SaaSOptics. These companies provide software for managing billing, payments, revenue opportunities and more for other subscription-based cloud companies.
Cloud storage startup Wasabi nabs $112million, plans new datacenters
Data storage company Wasabi has gotten Series C funding worth $112million. With a total raise of over $219million, the company separates itself from other cloud storage providers as it’s a “hot cloud storage”.
Canada’s newest unicorn: Clio raises $110million at a $1.6billion valuation for legal tech
Clio is a software for law firms, and the Canada-based company has now raised $110million to become a unicorn. With a valuation of $1.6billion, the Series E round was co-led by T.Rowe Price Associates Inc. and OMERS Growth Equity.
Alchemy raises $80million at a $505million valuation to be the ‘AWS for blockchain’
SaaS and cryptocurrency usually don’t come in a single line. But Alchemy is defying that norm as it aims to provide infrastructure for NFTs. It nabbed a $80million with a valuation of $505million.
Connecteam helps organizations to communicate and engage with non-desk employees. It has gotten a $37million funding led by Insight Partners. The Israel-based company has over 10,000 customers across 60 countries.
In numbers
Must reads
Jody Shapiro builds productiv to better manage SaaS applications
How Gupshup turned into a profitable unicorn despite a pivot and two near-deaths
Listen to
Henrique Dubugras of Brex
This is a timely podcast as you can hear from Brex’s co-founder and co-CEO Henrique Dubugras about his journey as a serial entreprenuer, what led him to start Brex and more. He also talks about his fundraising strategy, and why they chose to go fully remote.
Rippling’s Parker Conrad on why the VC/Founder marriage analogy is weird, why the notion of focus is overrated, why narrow point solutions are not best in class products & the rise of the “Compound Startup”
Most of the people suggest that focus is important, and it’s important to solving one particular problem. In this episode however, Rippling’s founder Parker Conrad contradicts the same by saying that that a “compound startup” that’s solving multiple problems at once is the best way to create an exceptional product.
Sam Boonin, former VP Product Strategy at Zendesk on all things PLG and Product Marketing
Help Desk software Zendesk’s former VP of Product Strategy Sam Boonin talks about product marketing, and how to avoid common pitfalls. He also shares how product market works for trial-led sales model.
Watch
The best go-to-market strategy for SaaS startups
The GTM strategy for a startup is crucial for its success. A SaaS startup has to get a lot of things right, be it finding the target audience, how to position your product, its pricing, and more. Watch this video to understand how one should go about it.
