Welcome back to SaaS weekly roundup, wherein we summarize the major happenings in the world of SaaS and bring that in one place. We’ve got a lot to unpack this week, so let’s get right into it.
Table of Contents
News of the week
While earlier this week, a report suggested that Google was looking to acquire Zoom two years ago, the hottest company in the world right now, has gone ahead and made its very first acquisition in its nine-year history. Zoom has acquired secure messaging company Keybase, which will help it implement the end-to-end encryption for video calls. It’s certainly commendable how Zoom has accepted the critiques around the security concerns, and how quickly it’s fixing them.
Google unifies all of its messaging and communication apps into a single team
Just a couple of weeks back, Google rebranded its enterprise-focused Hangouts Meet to simply “Meet“. At the time, we highlighted the fact that Google’s messaging strategy is quite confusing, Hopefully that will become more coherent going forward, as the search titan has brought its varied messaging and communication apps under Javier Soltero, who’s the president of G Suite.
Salesforce announces Work.com to help companies reopen amid the pandemic
Salesforce has announced Work.com, a software suite that’s aimed at helping businesses reopen safely amid the ongoing crisis. The features include the ability to manage shifts, manage emergency response procedures, and support for manual contact tracing.
Related watch: Salesforce CEO on new software to help businesses reopen
India’s leading SaaS company, Freshworks recently completed an important milestone of crossing $200million in ARR. Even more impressive is the fact that the revenue has doubles within 18 months. Along with that, the company has also announced the appointment of Tyler Sloat as its CFO (Chief Financial Officer), who was earlier with Zuora.
Box makes quick decision to add new collaboration capabilities in face of pandemic
Popular cloud service provider Box is adding new features to make it easier to users to collaborate with each other. Along with a cleaner interface, the service is introducing “Collections” that will allow users to categorize files and folders as per their liking. People would also be able to comment on documents for easier remote collaboration.
GitHub gets a built-in IDE with Codespaces, discussion forums and more
In its virtual conference dubbed GitHub Satellite, the Microsoft-owned company announced several new features. Among those is GitHub Codespaces, a development environment on cloud to make it easier for developers to join and collaborate on projects. The service is currently in Beta and can be used for free. GitHub also unveiled Discussions, which offers forums for projects. For security, the company took covers off Code scanning and Security scanning features. Lastly, it has brought forth GitHub Private Instances for enterprise customers.
Business intelligence software Qlik has introduced an intelligent alerting platform for Qlik Sense. The feature will allow businesses to monitor their data almost real-time and take appropriate actions accordingly. One can customize the alerts as per their needs, and the company will improving upon them further integrating with workflow and robotic process automation (RPA) solutions.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Canada’s newest unicorn: Edtech startup ApplyBoard raises $75M at $1.4B valuation
The Canadian company ApplyBoard finds itself among the list of unicorns with its latest round of funding. The company helps international students to find opportunities for higher education and apply to them, and has raised $75million to expand its partnerships and improve tech.
Orca Security raises $20M Series A for its multi-cloud security platform
With companies opting for multi-cloud deployments, it’s important for them to have visibility of workloads on each of them. Enter Orca Security, which not only provides this visibility, but also has security tools for identifying vulnerabilities, malware and more. To expand further, it has gotten $20million Series A funding.
Groove raises $12 million to automate sales engagement
Sales engagement software Groove has garnered $12million at the time when the sales strategy is shifting drastically due to COVID-19. The product helps create campaigns that can be personalized and allow teams to collaborate on them. It’ll be using the Series A funding to increase its userbase.
Workstream, a platform for deskless work, raises $10 million to serve local businesses
It seems that deskless workers are in the vogue as there are several companies that have raised money in this space. The latest is Workstream, which makes it easier for hourly, deskless workers to find jobs quickly. Led by Founders Fund and Basis Set Ventures, it has raised $10million Series A round.
Classplus raises $9M to grow its Shopify-like platform for teachers and coaching centers in India
This week another ed-tech startup got cash in the bank. India-based Classplus, which bills itself as a “mobile-first SaaS platform tutors to offer their curriculum and operations completely online” has raised $9million Series A funding.
Must reads
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Listen to
Nathan Latka on growth hacking everything
Nathan Latka, the host of the popular “The Top” podcast, author, and founder of getlatka.com, shares his thoughts on the future of media, how he managed to grow his podcast to 10million downloads. He also talks about getlatka.com and why debt financing for SaaS businesses could be gamechanger.
Tyler King of Less Annoying CRM
In this episode of Effective Founder, Andy Baldacci talks to Tyler King, CEO and Co-founder of Less Annoying CRM. In this incredibly honest conversation, King shares how he thinks about his business and how it stands out from other CRMs out there. He also discusses his thoughts on hiring, delegating work, and the roadmap for the company.
Moz and Sparktoro’s Rand Fishkin on how early-stage failure bred future success
Profitwell’s Patrick Campbell sits down with Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz and Sparktoro to discuss his learnings from his first venture. While Moz is incredibly popular and acquired a lot of users, it struggled in retaining them. He also discusses how it’s important to not be focused on pleasing people so much that it affects the business.
Watch
Recession resistant bootstrapped SaaS + the myth (?) of personal brand with Justin Jackson
In this video, host Rob Walling talks to Justin Jackson, the co-founder of Transistor.fm on which are recession-resistant bootstrapped SaaS business ideas. They also discuss about whether the person brand helps in growing a SaaS company.
How to create the perfect SaaS business in 2020 (by answering these 3 questions)
If you’re looking to start a SaaS company, then this video gives you a great starting point by thinking about three things: product, market, and GTM. It also discusses why these are the most important aspects to consider.
