Welcome to the latest SaaS weekly roundup that gives you all the latest happenings in the world of SaaS. As has been the trend of late, we’re seeing more SaaS companies going public, acquisitions, and significant funding announcements as well.
Table of Contents
News of the week
Tech firm Cvent to return to public markets via $5.3 bln blank-check deal
More SaaS companies are going public. The latest one to do the same is actually making a return to stock markets – Cvent. The event management software company is forming a SPAC that values it at $5.3billion. The company went private in 2016 as it was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.65billion.
BlueJeans launches Virtual Events Platform
Talking about virtual events, Verizon-owned BlueJeans has launched its own platform for the same. Dubbed BlueJeans Events, it offers the usual features such as video conferencing, content sharing, live streaming, and more.
Bevy acquires Egyptian virtual events platform Eventtus
Events seem to be the theme of this week. California-based Bevy has acquired Egyptian mobile event app Eventtus. While the terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, Bevy will be able to improve its tech stack with things like an in-person conference app and other engagement features for event attendees.
Box brings e-signatures to its content cloud with Box Sign
Earlier this year, cloud software company Box had acquired e-signature software company SignRequest. Now, it has added this capability to its own platform. Box Sign will allow users the option to electronically sign contracts and even request signatures from others.
Girish Mathrubootham and Manav Garg launch $85million VC fund for SaaS startups
Freshworks’ founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham and Eka Software’s Manav Garg have introduced a VC fund termed Together. Hailed as founder-first VC fund, the $85million fund has been backed by a network of 150 founders and operators. The fund will be investing in seed, pre-Series A, or Series A rounds.
Related watch: Together Fund wants to enable “the next 30 Olympic champions in (SaaS) startups”
Amazon cloud revenue growth accelerates to 37% in Q2
Retail giant Amazon announced its quarterly earnings which also highlighted that AWS continues to grow at an unprecedented pace. With a year-on-year growth of 37%, its revenues were $14.81billion. The company also announced that it’ll be building data centers in Israel and UAE.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Gupshup scores $240million from Fidelity Management, Tiger Global and others
It was just in April that conversational messaging platform Gupshup raised $100million from Tiger Global. Within a few months, it has received an additional $240million, which it’ll be using to explore M&A opportunities.
Belgium-based Odoo offers open-source software such as CRM, ERP, inventory management, and more. It has raised $215million from Summit Partners. The open-source software is profitable for years, and is valued at $2.3billion.
‘Search-as-a-service’ API platform Algolia raises $150million
Algolia, a company that provides API for search, has received $150million Series D funding. Led by Lone Pine Capital, it’s now valued at $2.25billion.
Dixa, the next-gen CX platform, raises $105million Series C to transform customer service worldwide
Customer service platform Dixa has closed a $105million Series C investment. The funding was led by General Atlantic, and the company will be using the amount on product development, potential acquisitions, and hire more people in its engineering team.
Employee engagement platform Culture Amp raises $100million at a $1.5billion valuation
Employee experience platform Culture Amp has closed a $100million Series F funding round. Led by Sequoia Capital, the company is now valued at $1.5billion. It’ll be using the amount to expand to more markets and look for acquisitions as well.
AuthenticID provides AI-based identity proofing solutions to large companies and businesses. It has now gotten $100million in funding from Long Ridge Equity Partners.
Sendlane raises $20million to convert shoppers into loyal customers
Multichannel marketing automation platform Sendlane has nabbed $20million Series A funding. Led by Five Elms Capital, the startup focuses on e-commerce businesses, and has been able to increase its revenues by 20- to 40 percent on average.
Must reads
Inside Google’s quest to become a cloud-computing giant
The Anti-Portfolio of Bessemer Venture Partners
How Google Cloud plans to kill its ‘Killed By Google’ reputation
Listen to
SaaStr CEO & Founder, Jason Lemkin and Byron Deeter, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, discuss why the cloud is on fire in 2021
This podcast serves as a good way to get up to speed on what’s happening in the SaaS industry. Bessemer Venture Partners’ Bryon Deeter talks to SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin on how the cloud continues to grow by leaps and bounds and how founders can navigate the world.
BrowserStack’s Mark Rudden on hypergrowth in a global pandemic
India’s largest SaaS company – BrowserStack – grew aggressively amidst the pandemic. In this podcast, its Director of EMEA Sales, Mark Rudden shares how they continued to grow by changing their strategy.
Second time CEO: Lessons in building Pitch vs 1st time round with Wunderlist
We’ve shared quite a few podcast episodes featuring Christian Reber, CEO and Co-founder of Pitch and ex-CEO of Wunderlist, which was acquired by Microsoft. However, all of his podcast appearances are full of insights. He shares his learnings of building a company as a second-time entrepreneur.
Watch
How to find new SaaS ideas (the trick every second-time founder uses)
In this video, host TK Kader talks about three principles that one could use to find new SaaS ideas. He shares examples of how a second-time founder looks at it ideas and how they stress test them.
