Most people would assume that coronavirus would have slowed down the investment appetite of VCs and angel investors. But if you look at the investments that happened in SaaS companies within this week, then you might have to rethink that notion. But a lot more happened in the past 7 days, and that’s what we’ll be talking about in our weekly roundup.
Table of Contents
News of the week
Keep your teams working safely with BeyondCorp Remote Access
With everyone working remotely due to the quarantine, accessing an organization’s apps and services for employees has been an issue. While many turn to VPN software for remote access, it’s not easy and scalable either. Enter Google’s BeyondCorp’s Remote Access that lets people access cloud-based apps. It follows the zero-trust approach, and has been used internally by the search giant for nearly a decade.
As we turn to remote working, Malwarebytes joins VPN fray
If you’re looking for a VPN however, then popular security company Malwarebytes has introduced its own VPN. Simply dubbed Malwarebytes Privacy, the software supports the usual features such as IP masking and 256-bit encrypted tunnels. Currently available for Windows, it’ll soon be launched for Mac, iOS, Android, and Chrome OS-based devices.
On a related note, another popular VPN service provider, NordVPN is adopting open-source WireGuard VPN to launch NordLynx.
Amazon’s AWS has announced a new capability that will make it extremely easy for companies using AWS to integrate data from AWS to various SaaS applications. The “everything store” promises that the feature offers bi-directional data flow, is private, and can be configured easily. It supports popular SaaS products such as Salesforce, Marketo, Slack, and Zendesk.
Zoom’s stunning growth continues, and so are the concerns regarding its security
Just a couple of weeks ago, Zoom announced that its witnessing 200million meeting participants every day, and it didn’t take it long to zoom ahead (pun intended) to 300million. It shows that the popular video conferencing software continues to grow prolifically. The company is also living up to its promise of feature freeze for 90 days, and instead focusing on improving the security as it has released Zoom 5.0. Among the new features is support for 256-bit GCM encryption (Galois/Counter Mode), ability to choose the Data Center region, and better host controls, among others.
Interestingly, as per an investigative report by The New York Times, Zoom’s partner Dropbox was already aware of the security woes as it had paid private hackers back in 2018 to find potential issues. However, Dropbox realized that Zoom wasn’t very proactive in resolving them.
Related read: 11 Zoom alternatives that score high on security
Google is continuously rolling out updates to its video conferencing solution, Google Meet. The Zoom-like tiled layout was teased last week too, but there are some other features too, such as noise cancellation and low-light mode. There’s also an option to just share the Chrome tab, instead of presenting the entire screen or the app.
Skype takes on Zoom with custom backgrounds for video calls
After Microsoft Teams, Skype is also adding support for custom background. The feature is available for all platforms, and one can choose the background of their liking by heading to Audio & Video settings on the app.
Investment quotient
ForgeRock nabs $93.5M for its ID management platform, gears up next for an IPO
Identity and Access management is another area where we’re seeing a lot of interest amid coronavirus and work from home culture. To cash in on the same, ForgeRock has garnered massive $93.5million Series E funding to expand its product and invest in R&D.
Miro lands $50M Series B for digital whiteboard as demand surges
As everyone is working remotely, collaboration is an important aspect for employees to brainstorm on their ideas which isn’t possible with video conferencing. That’s where Miro comes in, which could be best defined as a virtual whiteboard where people can collaborate simultaneously. The company has raised $50million led by Iconiq Capital to hire more employees to meet the demand due to COVID-19.
Guru raises $30M from Accel, Slack & others as Philly startup scene heats up
Enterprise Wiki software, Guru has received $30million funding as part of Series C round which was led by Accel. Just like other companies that have nabbed funding recently, Guru is also seeing an uptick amidst the remote work era. The company offers a browser plugin that helps in surfacing the relevant information for various SaaS products used by the organization in one place.
Collaborative meeting notes platform Hugo nabs seed funding from Google, Slack
Another collaborative tool, Hugo has gotten $6.1million seed funding that was led by Google’s Gradient Ventures. The app is focused on making minutes of meeting more productive and allows people to share them with each other so that everyone can focus on what needs to be done.
Indusface gets $5 Mn from Tata to secure digital applications
India’s Indusface, which aims at providing security to websites and app platforms has raised $5million. The company will be utilizing the funding to expand internationally and add more enterprises as its clients over its current count of 2,000 customers.
env0 introduces self-service Cloud Management Platform
env0 has gotten $3.3million funding as it exits beta to help companies opt for Infrastructure-as-code (IaC). The round was co-led by Boldstart Ventures and Grove Ventures. The company offers cloud management and governance capabilities for AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to make it more efficient for developers to focus on coding.
In numbers
2.5million
that’s the number of video consultations that Doctolib witnessed in Germany and France due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Must reads
Product strategy: defining a product’s purpose and plan
Optional product pricing definition and whether (or not) it’s a worthwhile strategy
SaaS sales guide: how to close deals despite the pandemic
Wartime SaaS forecasting: fighting uncertainty by accounting for unknowns
Listen to
Loopio: how to bootstrap an enterprise SaaS company – with Jafar Owainati
Loopio is a company that makes it easier for enterprises to respond to RFPs (request for proposal). In this episode, its Chief Revenue Office Jafar Owainati shares the unusual journey of the company, the idea for which germinated back in 2010, but it was started in 2014. The company was bootstrapped for four years and then got a funding of $9million two years ago.
Domo’s Chief Strategy Officer, John Mellor on why COVID will do more for digital transformation than any other C-level initiative, what great change management looks like in practice & how to gain true bottoms up adoption when also selling top
Chief Strategy Officer is a little unconventional role, but John Mellor has been doing that for quite some time now with stints at Omniture, Adobe (which acquired Omniture), and most recently, Domo. He shares why COVID-19 will change the way we work, how virtual events will pick up, and what should leadership be doing during such challenging times.
Vlad Magdalin – how Webflow is reinventing the website
Webflow is one of the prominent no-code tools, and makes website creation a super-easy process. In the debut episode of Makerpad’s podcast, founder and CEO Vlad Magdalin shares the journey of the company, how it stands out from the rivals and what’s in the pipeline in the future.
Guillaume Moubeche of lemlist
In the Effective Founder podcast, host Andy Baldacci talks to successful SaaS founders to discuss the strategies that helped them to grow. In this episode, he talks to lemlist’s Founder and CEO, Guillaume Moubeche about how he navigated in the hyper-competitive email marketing software space, and took it to $1million+ ARR within two years.
Check out
If you want to understand how companies like Canva, Intercom, and more grew their businesses to millions of ARR, then check out this resource, which has curated all their growth case studies in one place.
Watch
SaaStr’s Summit: Bridging the Gap 2020
While SaaStr couldn’t hold its annual conference in March, it recently conducted a free virtual event with talks from the likes of Slack, Salesforce, and more. Fret not, if you weren’t able to attend the talks, as they have been uploaded on YouTube as a playlist.
Related read: Top SaaS conferences and events in 2020
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