Welcome back to this week’s edition of SaaS weekly roundup. While there may not be much news in the SaaS realm, there have been a ton of funding announcements. So, let’s jump right in.
Table of Contents
News of the week
Oracle and Salesforce hit with GDPR class action lawsuits over cookie tracking consent
There’s no doubt that the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is quite strict, and a non-profit foundation called The Privacy Collective is filing a case against Oracle and Salesforce. As per the foundation, the giants are breaching the rules and are processing and sharing people’s information via third-party cookies.
Before BigCommerce’s 200% IPO pop, Intuit offered $1.5 billion for the software company
Just last week, eCommerce software provider BigCommerce made an impressive debut on the public market. However, a report suggests that a month before the IPO, QuickBooks-maker Intuit had approached the company to buy it at $1.5billion.
Slack and Atlassian strengthen their partnership with deeper integrations
There was a time when Atlassian was competing with Slack (via HipChat, which it sold off to Slack itself), but now the two companies are working closely. And now, Slack has announced more integrations with Atlassian’s offerings. These include the unfurling of Jira and Trello’s links even if the user hasn’t logged in.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Coda, would-be successor to Google’s G-Suite, now valued above $600million
Collaboration software Coda is billed to be the one-stop replacement of Google’s Docs, Sheets, Slides and more as it allows all of them to be created in one document itself. The San Francisco-based company has raised $80million from the likes of Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, Khosla Ventures as well as a slew of angel investors.
Announcing Blend’s Series F funding led by Canapi Ventures
Blend, a SaaS-based platform that helps lenders to simplify applications for mortgages and loans, has received $75million Series F funding. Led by Canapi Ventures, the company is now reportedly valued at $1.7billion.
Parsable scores $60million Series D as pandemic forces faster digitization of industrial sector
Parsable aims to help industrial companies by offering a Connected Worked platform for seamless collaboration between employees. To further its mission, it has raised $60million Series D funding, which was led by Activate Capital and Glade Brook Capital Partners. The company wants to use the funding to expand to more countries in Asia, EMEA, and Latin America and grow its workforce as well.
Keeper Security raises $60million to protect companies from data breaches
Keeper Security ensures that companies can be saved from password-related data breaches and cyber threats. To accelerate its go-to-market, it has reportedly raised $60million. The round was led by Insight Partners and will be used by the company, which also has an encrypted chat service in the form of KeeperChat, for hiring among other things.
Moka, the HR tool for ARM and Shopee in China, closes $43million Series B
While we hear little about SaaS companies out of China, they certainly exist. This week, HR platform Moka has announced Series B+ round at over 100million RMB (roughly $14.4million), taking its total Series B funding to $43.2million. Currently, the company has over 700 paid clients and claims that its renewal rate is above 100 percent.
RevenueCat secures $15million Series A for app subscription platform
Founded in 2017, RevenueCat helps companies in building a subscription platform on their apps. The company has gotten $15million Series A funding to focus on product development and double its employee count.
Stream provides APIs to enable product teams of a company to build chat and activity feeds for their applications. It has now closed a $15million Series A round which was led by GGV Capital.
Must reads
Product marketing examples + how it works for SaaS businesses
Leaders from HubSpot, Privy, Flywire and more on the future of marketing
Listen to
Scott Farquhar, co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian
The company behind the likes of Jira and Trello, Atlassian, is one of the leaders in the SaaS industry. The Australia-based company currently has a $50billion market cap which is impressive indeed. Listen to its co-founder and co-CEO Scott Farquhar about what inspired them to start Atlassian, their success and failure, leadership lessons, and what the future might hold.
Saravana Kumar – Bootstrapping a multi-product company to $10million ARR
Kovai, the company that has a slew of products such Serverless 360, BizTalk 360 and Document360, has grown to $10million ARR without any external funding. Its CEO Saravana Kumar shares the insights which led him to start the company, what led him to launch multiple products, and how Document360 is different from its earlier offerings, among other things.
The 4 phases of company growth and what breaks at each stage, how to instil process with scale without adding barriers and more with Lara Caimi, Chief Customer and Partner Officer @ ServiceNow
ServiceNow is one of the leading companies in the ITSM space, and in this podcast, its Chief Customer and Partner Office Lara Caimi talk about her journey into the world of SaaS, the evolution of a company at various levels in terms of its revenue and what’s needed at each of those stages. She also shares why processes are important and how they make the process more efficient, how COVID-19 resulted in several changes, and more.
Watch
Why hiring a business coach was a game-changer with Elias @ Drift
Drift is currently among the top SaaS companies to watch out for. Its CTO and co-founder Elias Torres shares how they have been able to scale the company from 0 to 150 employees within a year, and why hiring a business coach was a game-changing decision from them.
