The past week was quite heavy in terms of news with quite a few companies filing to go public, while we also saw the quarterly reports from a lot of publicly listed companies. As usual, the pace of funding continues unabated. So, let’s not waste any more time, and jump right into this week’s SaaS weekly roundup.
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News of the week
Asana files for direct listing amid slew of software IPOs
After quite a few reports suggesting that the project management software Asana will opt for a direct listing, it has finally filed that. The company has also disclosed that while its revenue is growing, its net loss more than doubled in the last year ($36million vs $15million). The company also divulged that it had more than 3.2million activated users and over 1.2million paid users.
Related read: Asana S-1 analysis
Snowflake files for IPO, taking on Amazon and Microsoft cloud database businesses
Within months after raising $479million from the likes of Salesforce, cloud software company Snowflake has filed for an initial public offering. It also announced that its revenue more than doubled to $242million (from $104million) in the H1 2020, while its net loss reduced slightly.
Related read: A quick peek at Snowflake’s IPO filing
Sumo Logic files for $100M IPO
Another company in the cloud management space Sumologic has filed for a $100million IPO. It has raised over $340million in total funding, and disclosed that its revenue was up 50 percent in the year that ended on January 31st, 2020, standing at $155million.
Software developer tools company JFrog adds to tech IPO rush
JFrog has filed for $100million IPO seeking a valuation of $2billion. The California-based company makes tools for software developers. It envisions a world where the software is version-less, dubbing it as “liquid software”.
Salesforce announces layoffs after quarterly revenue tops $5 billion
The pioneer in this category announced “one of the best quarters in Salesforce’s history“, per CEO Marc Benioff. Its Q2 revenue jumped by 29 percent to $5.15billion. Despite that, the company has announced layoffs of 1,000 employees, which is quite surprising, given the fact that Benioff had promised at the beginning of the pandemic that there won’t be any layoffs for 90 days. While the period is over, it’s surprising nonetheless.
VMware tops Q2 expectations on strong growth in SaaS revenue
While the companies that are filing to go public are mounting up the losses, companies like VMware are announcing strong growth numbers. The Dell-owned company reported Q2 earnings of $447million on revenue of $2.88billion, which was up by 9 percent from the last year. It also announced that the SaaS revenue jumped 44 percent to $631million, and formed 22 percent of the total revenue.
Box shares surge on better-than-expected results, strong guidance
Cloud storage provider Box also witnessed good growth amidst the ongoing crisis and remote work revolution. Its share prices increased after it announced that its revenue was up 11 percent, standing at $192.3million, in comparison to $172.5million a year prior. Its loss also dropped to $7.65million compared to $36.2million last year.
LA gets a big SaaS exit as Fastly nabs the Culver City-based Signal Sciences for $775M
Los Angeles hasn’t been known for its tech companies, but that changes with the acquisition of security monitoring and management company, Signal Sciences by CDN provider Fastly. The buyout is for $775million, and will help Fastly offer better security for applications and APIs.
SugarCRM acquires Node to gain predictive customer intelligence
SugarCRM has announced the acquisition of customer intelligence startup Node. While the price wasn’t disclosed, it’ll provide the CRM software AI expertise as well as the customer prediction element. This also means that the company will now be competing against the likes of Adobe and Salesforce.
Eden intros SaaS tools in a bid to become a more comprehensive office management platform
The office management platform Eden has announced several new features, especially considering the current situation. It has a COIVD team safety tool that tracks who’s coming into the office, allows them to reserve a desk that ensures that the social distancing norms are being followed. It has also introduced a service desk ticketing tool that lets workers file a ticket for a broken piece of equipment, etc.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Visual collaboration startup MURAL raises huge $118M Series B
Without a doubt, collaboration software has become an integral part of the WFH culture. Seeing the shift, visual collaboration startup MURAL has received $118million in an outsized Series B round. Led by Insight Partners, the company claims that it has tripled its ARR and added over a million monthly active users in this year itself.
Google is investing $100 million in telehealth provider Amwell, which will use Google Cloud
Internet behemoth is putting in $100million in telehealth provider Amwell (formerly American Well) as the company files to go public. The partnership will also mean that Amwell will move from Amazon Web Services to Google Cloud.
Finix, a payment service provider, has raised $30million as part of its extended Series B round, taking the total tally to $75million. The company also mentioned that its payment volume has more than doubled from Q2 2019 to the same quarter this year. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, while American Express Ventures also participated.
Restream raises $50M to help creators program and stream to multiple platforms
Amidst the ongoing pandemic, categories such as webinar software and livestreaming software have witnessed a sharp increase. Restream, a software that allows people to stream videos to more than one platform at the same time, has also grown a lot. So, it’s not a surprise that it has nabbed significant funding of $50million as part of Series A round, which was co-led by Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners.
Supermetrics raises €40M to bring all your marketing data together
The data management tool for marketers that bring everything at one place, has completed a €40million funding round led by Highland Europe. Supermetrics helps marketers by providing a unified view of all sorts of different marketing data by automating data transfers, and counts companies such as Nestle and HubSpot as clients.
Socure raises $35 million to combat payments fraud with AI
As more and more people work remotely, phishing attempts, identity frauds and such things have only increased. Cloud-based identity verification and fraud prevention startup Socure is coming to the rescue by offering a digital ID verification suite. And to bolster its efforts, it has closed a $35million round that was led by Sorenson Ventures.
Organizational platform ChartHop raises $14 million in Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz
Organizational chart software ChartHop has gotten $14million Series A funding to help companies offer their organizational and employee information in one place. The round was led by A16z and the company highlights that it has seen 10x growth since its launch in February this year and surpassed $1million in revenue.
Must reads
How Salesforce beat its own target to reach $20B run rate ahead of schedule
What’s the true value of CAD SaaS?
Listen to
Zoom’s Head of Global Sales Operations on sales ops vs revenue ops, the biggest areas of operational and strategic debt for sales teams today & the importance of documentation and the dangers of dirty data
Zoom is the darling right now with its iniquitousness, so it’d be great to listen to the team of how they came to the fore. In this podcast, Hilary Headlee, Head of Global Sales Operations and Enablement at Zoom shares her journey, the difference between sales ops and revenue ops, how sales change as the company scales, and more.
Taker: lessons on failure & perseverance from a SaaS Founder – with Abdullah Alsaadi
In the world of startups, failures are aplenty, but there are select few who don’t give up. Abdullah Alsaadi is one such entrepreneur from Riyadh who continued to launch one startups after the other, and finally found success with Taker.io, an online and app-based ordering platform for restaurants. Listen to him sharing his learnings from each of his failures, and how he used that to build his latest company which is on track for $1million ARR this year.
Subscribing to the future with Zuora’s Carl Gold
Zuora has led the subscription economy from the front. In this podcast, its Chief Data Scientist talks about how the subscription model is transforming businesses, how organizations can fight churn with data, and more.
Watch
How to raise Series A funding (preparing for the post-seed stage startup funding process)
If you’re looking to raise Series A funding and unsure how to proceed, then this video acts as a good starting point. Host TK Kader shares three principles that you need to follow to go from post-seed stage funding to Series A round.
