This week, the SaaS space was filled with the news of two companies going public. While Rackspace‘s valuation dipped, BigCommerce has made an impressive debut. Of course, that’s not all this week was about as there are a ton of new launches, companies that divulged their quarterly earnings, funding announcements, and more. So let’s jump right into it.
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News of the week
Automattic launches P2, a WordPress-powered collaboration tool for remote teams
Automattic, the parent company behind WordPress, has launched P2 to help remote teams manage the asynchronous communication better. While it competes with collaboration software such as Slack, it acts as a companion where the teams can have larger, not-so-time-sensitive discussions. Since the interface is similar to a blog, it also makes it easier for teams to have separate discussions in a better manner. Each P2 has a unique URL, and can be accessed via web or WordPress mobile apps on Android and iOS.
Drift expands beyond Conversational Marketing
Five years back Drift coined the term conversational marketing, and now, it’s creating another term. Dubbed Revenue Acceleration, the company states that it connects both sales and marketing, and touches all stages of the customer. Drift has also launched Drift Prospector as part of the same that gathers all the touchpoints a prospective consumer has with a company.
Looker gets Google integration capabilities in post-acquisition release
Business intelligence platform Looker has announced a slew of new features, which is the part of the first release since its acquisition by Google Cloud. The software gets bidirectional integration with Google Marketing Platform and Google Ads, support for Slack, and revamped dev tools among others.
Rackspace dives in trading debut while BigCommerce soars
This week, two SaaS companies IPO’d. On one hand is the cloud-service provider Rackspace whose shares dipped by 22 percent, while the Shopify competitor BigCommerce made the best debut of the year. The eCommerce software company saw its valuation double on the stock market.
Dropbox sales beat estimates; shares tumble as CFO prepares exit
Cloud giant Dropbox announced its quarterly earnings, with its revenues beating analysts’ predictions. Its sales increased by 16 percent to $467.4million, while the paying users’ count rose to 15million, up from 13.6million in the same period last year.
Twilio turns in strong second quarter financial results
Just like Dropbox, Twilio‘s earnings report also beat expectations. In Q2, the company’s revenue increased to $400.8million, which is 46 percent up y-o-y. Its customer base also saw a spike, standing at 200,000 accounts versus 161,869 active customers in Q2 2019.
Intuit to acquire Singapore-based SaaS startup TradeGecko
TradeGecko, a SaaS startup that creates online inventory and order management software for small businesses, has been bought by the US-based Intuit. While the terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, Intuit mentioned that QuickBooks customers would be able to launch and manage products across online and offline sales channels, manage orders and inventory fulfillment from various channels, thanks to the integration.
SaaS companies that got funded this week
Rippling nabs $145M at a $1.35B valuation to build out its all-in-one platform for employee data
HR software Rippling has nabbed $145million funding, which takes its valuation to $1.35million. The Series B funding was led by Founders Fund, and will help the company double down on R&D.
Hovering over the crossroads of E-commerce and SaaS, Yotpo scores $75M to dominate both
Israel-based Yotpo helps e-commerce websites by allowing them to get more out of consumer reviews. It has seen 300 percent growth in its customers, and has raised $75million Series E funding to accelerate the same.
PandaDoc announces second Series B extension worth $30M
Proposal software PandaDoc has raised $30million as part of Series B extension. Interestingly, the company had extended the Series B round earlier as well since raising the original $15million back in 2017. In total, the company has raised $50million in Series B, and will be using the amount for hiring.
Qualified raises $12M to make websites smarter about sales and marketing
Former Salesforce executives Kraig Swensrud and Sean Whiteley’s startup Qualified aims to make it easier to tell sales about the user(s) on the website. It’s able to do so by connecting real-time website visitor info with the company’s Salesforce customer database. It has garnered $12million Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners to continue its journey.
Related read: Behind the Round with SaaStr: Qualified.com Raises $12m Series A
Must reads
How investors in $10 billion UiPath spotted an emerging European software decacorn
The New York Times’ secret path to expansionary revenue
Listen to
RevenueCat: overcoming self-doubts as a first time SaaS founder – with Jacob Eiting
RevenueCat, a SaaS platform that helps mobile apps to offer in-app subscriptions, was started in Dec 2017, and today, it’s among the leading companies in the space. In this podcast, its founder Jacob Eiting shares his journey, the insight with which he started RevenueCat, its evolution and more.
Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar on writing the script of the future
With its community approach, Stack Overflow is among the most popular destinations for developers. Today, the company has a number of sites. Listen to its CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar share that along with the community, Stack Overflow also focuses on the product and what it’s working on.
How Sean Ammirati is educating SaaS founders to reimagine their business growth
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Birchmere Ventures’ partner Sean Ammirati is a founder-turned-investor, and he shares his journey from dropping out of the school to create companies and even becoming a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He talks about growth catalyst for SaaS companies once they’ve found the product-market fit, and his predictions for the SaaS industry in 2020, among other things.
Watch
How to deal with an approach about buying your SaaS company – John Thompson
In this video, John Thompson, who co-founded and sold a few businesses shares what all one needs to keep in mind when someone approaches you to buy your SaaS company.
