Welcome to the third edition of the SaaS Weekly roundup, your go-to resource for all things SaaS. And boy, this week didn’t disappoint with its fair share of fundraises and feature additions to popular SaaS platforms. Alongside, we also have some interesting reads for you as well as some multimedia content. So without wasting any more time, let’s jump right in.
News of the week
Substack builds multi-author support into its hybrid publishing, newsletter service
Substack is one of the most popular newsletter services allowing anyone on the internet to start a free or paid newsletter quickly. It has added some useful features in its latest updates such as the ability to add multiple authors, ability to customise homepages and more.
Working with web publishers, this adtech startup has notched up $10M revenue run-rate
For the digital publishing industry, making money is quite a challenge considering many users simply ignore the ads. Well, that’s why AdPushup comes in as it offers optimisation tools for publishers to increase their revenue from the display ads.
AppsFlyer reaches Unicorn status after raising $210million to build out mobile attribution
Despite the challenges mentioned above, as digital advertising continues to grow at a breakneck pace, it’s important to ensure that your ads are reaching the right audience. However, it’s not an easy task with the space being infamous for ad frauds. Enter AppsFlyer which offers APO and SDK to companies that can be connected to platforms like Google and Facebook to offer a dashboard to measure the effectiveness of ads. With its latest Series D fundraise, the company has reached the Unicorn status and is aiming for a bigger slice of the pie of the burgeoning market.
Front raises $59M from high-profile exec investors for email collab platform
Front is disrupting the world of email, but not in a traditional way. It actually posits itself as a shared inbox for a company for email IDs like support, where any team member can be tagged to take care of the email. The service is also integrating with other apps like Asana, Salesforce and even WhatsApp. Its fund-raise is also quite interesting as it doesn’t include any VC firm as a lead investor, and instead counts several CEOs and founders as investors who themselves are trying to define the future of the workplace.
Related read: Here’s the pitch deck that email startup Front used to get top tech execs to invest in its Series C round (Paywall)
LumApps raises $70 million to fuel the development of AI for its workplace collaboration platform
Front wasn’t the only service that raised the money in a bid to change the workplace collaboration. Another is LumApps which acts as social intranet service – ala Facebook – to help employees share information across departments. It also integrates with services like Google’s G Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365 for helping users collaborate.
LogiNext raises $39 million from Tiger Global, Steadview to fuel overseas expansion
LogiNext aims to help customers reduce their logistics costs by automating the operations harnessing the power of machine learning. The service already has over 200 clients including the likes of McDonald’s and Decathlon, and with the latest cash infusion, it’s aiming to expand to more markets.
Related read: Indian SaaS firms eye Japan, Latam to pip global giants (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/indian-saas-firms-eye-japan-latam-to-pip-global-giants/articleshow/73508350.cms)
How do you know if you have that fabled ✨Product/Market Fit✨?
I’ve collected the top 10 best descriptions of PMF I’ve come across in the thread below, sorted by most to least concrete.
If you have any others you’ve found useful, particularly pre-product, please share below
— Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan) January 22, 2020
SaaSworthy is committed to recognise and showcase the best SaaS products from across the globe, and this past week we turned our attention to Wireframing software. Head to SaaSworthy’s wireframing category to see the winners.
Must reads
SaaS founder’s guide to conversational marketing
Wondering how conversational marketing can help you get more customers? Well, this acts as an essential primer to how to enable chat services (powered by a chatbot) on your website and why it’s a great way to acquire new users.
PS: In case you’re interested in using livechat services for your business, check out SaaSworthy’s list of livechat software to find out the best one.
3 ways your cold email campaigns need to change in 2020
As a SaaS company, one of the best ways to reach out to potential consumers as well as already paying users (in order to retain them) is emails. But if you spend a little bit more time in crafting an email that stands out, then the chances of getting it opened and having a connection with the user increases multi-fold. In this article, the author suggests some easy-to-follow tips to ensure that your emails are a cut above the rest.
Listen to
Elastic.io: getting traction by charging more for your SaaS – with Renat Zubairov
We’ve always heard that low pricing makes your product / service more attractive, but listen to Elastic.io’s Renat Zubairov as he shares how pricing its SaaS offering higher acted as a filter, and helped the company grow 100 percent year-on-year for the past three years.
IVP’S Hypergrowth Podcast: Harness CEO Jyoti Bansal on simplifying the software delivery process
Jyoti Bansal sold his last company (App Dynamics) to Cisco for a staggering $3.7billion, and in his second stint as an entrepreneur, he’s aiming to make software delivery process easier with Harness.io. Not just that, he’s also started a startup studio BIG Labs to help others create SaaS companies.
SurveyMonkey’s CMO on marketing’s role as the world shifts towards product-led growth
Listen to SurveyMonkey’s first CMO as she shares how the popular form-building service transitioned towards serving businesses, and how it created specific services to cater to their needs in a better manner.
Anyone following Airbnb experiences?
– They’re backing into supply side SaaS for the fragmented $135b Travel Tours and Experience market
– 80% of those gross bookings are made offline
– 61% of suppliers have less than 5k customers per year
– Half do less than $250k/yr in revenue pic.twitter.com/luQjY4Udef— Turner Novak (@TurnerNovak) January 22, 2020
Watch
If you are wondering how should you set up a sales team from the scratch and ensuring that they are motivated enough to make the correct sales, then this video acts as a great playbook for the same. Former SVP of sales at PatientPop Justin Welsh shares how he was able to grow the company’s sales team to 140 members and $55million revenue.
