Welcome to another edition of SaaS weekly roundup, where we bring all the major happenings in the world of SaaS in an easy-to-consume fashion. The past week has a ton of news, acquisitions, and funding announcements, and we also have some interesting podcasts and videos for you. So without wasting any more time, let’s jump right in.
Table of Contents
News of the week
As soon as the video conferencing software Zoom announced its earnings for Q2, its shares jumped up by as much as 40 percent. The company beat analyst’s expectations by a huge margin, and its revenue grew by 355 percent y-o-y. More importantly, with a valuation of $129billion, the company is now in fact bigger than IBM and AMD.
Dialpad acquires video conferencing service Highfive
While Zoom continues to dominate the video conferencing segment, it doesn’t mean that the market isn’t big enough for other players to exist. UberConference‘s owner, Dialpad, a VoIP provider, has acquired Highfive, a video conferencing company that provides businesses with conference room solutions. While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, this acquisition will help Dialpad to become a significant player in the UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) space.
Conversational AI drives better customer experiences
One of the biggest categories that saw a noticeable uptake amidst the ongoing pandemic is Contact Center, and the search giant is also making a substantial change in its offering. Dubbed Contact Center AI (CCAI), Google ensures that companies can support their customers through voice calls or chats. Among the latest changes include Custom Voice, which allows companies to create a unique voice, and Dialogflow CX that can handle complex (multi-turn) conversations across chat or voice.
Salesforce beefing up field service offering with AI
Edison, Salesforce’s AI layer, has been present on the company’s offerings for quite some time, and now, it’s getting added to its field service platform. While Salesforce wasn’t working on its field service offering for quite some time, it noticed that the usage has been picking up this quarter. With AI, the service will become more efficient for handling services for appliances, as well as scheduling technician visits.
Fresh off $200M Series D, Gong acquires early-stage startup Vayo
Just last month, revenue intelligence platform Gong raised $200million to reach a valuation of $2.2billion. Now the company is putting its cash reserves to good use as it’s buying Israeli sales technology startup Vayo, which identifies trends like customer churn or when the deals might slow down.
CrowdStrike stock retreats following coronavirus-fueled earnings beat
CrowdStrike, a cloud protection software, managed to beat Wall Street estimates as per its quarterly earnings. Its revenue was $199million, compared to $108.1million in the same period last year. In the Q3, the company expects a revenue between $210.6 and $215million.
Cloudera’s Q2 solid as Cloud Data Platform aims for multi-cloud, hybrid deployments
Cloudera also announced its Q2 earnings and it revenue rose 9 percent to $214.3million compared to the same quarter last year. A big part to its growth goes to Cloudera Data Platform which more than doubled its customers. The company projects the revenue of $839 to $853million for fiscal 2021.
Nextcloud incorporates Kaspersky antivirus security
Nextcloud, an open-source Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) tool now scans all the files with Kaspersky Scan Engine before adding them to the cloud. This will ensure that potentially dangerous files don’t get uploaded and thus, doesn’t spread to the other users.
Goldman-backed startup Optimizely to Be bought by Episerver
Optimizely, a popular A/B testing software has been acquired by Episerver. The company was backed by some big names such as A16z, Benchmark and Index Capital, while Goldman Sachs led the funding round last year. While the amount of the acquisition wasn’t divulged, it was reportedly less than $600million, which is almost same as the company’s valuation last year.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Legion raises $22 million to automate workforce scheduling
Retail scheduling and analytics software, Legion nabbed $22million funding as its business continues to grow in the current crisis. The company claims that 18,000 locations have joined its platform since April as its retail demand forecasting product takes things such as local events, weather, seasonality, and more into account to apply to predict future demand.
InCountry raises $18M more to help SaaS companies store data locally
With privacy regulations becoming more stringent, more and more companies have to store their data locally in the country. And now a startup is helping do that. Aptly dubbed InCountry, it offers data residency-as-a-service, and has received $18million Series A extension.
InfoSum raises $15.1M for its privacy-first, federated approach to big data analytics
Continuing with the theme of privacy, London-based InfoSum has built a federated approach to data ensuring that organizations can share the data with each other without passing it to them. The company has gotten $15.1million which was co-led by Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures.
Toss Lab raises $13 million Series B for its collaboration platform JANDI, the ‘Slack of Asia’
South Korea-based JANDI is aiming to take the fight to Slack in the collaboration software space as it has completed a $13million Series B round. Led by Softbank Ventures Asia, JANDI already claims to be the top software in Japan and Taiwan.
Solar SaaS startup SenseHawk raises $5.1M in Series A round led by Alpha Wave Incubation
Building solar site isn’t an easy task. To solve that, SenseHawk offers a cloud-based platform to enable its customers to build solar sites while keeping the costs and workforce productivity in check. It has now raised $5.1million Series A round which was led by Alpha Wave Incubation, a ventured fund managed by Falcon Edge Capital.
Dorian raises $3.25M for its no-code, interactive storytelling platform
If you’ve been following the previous editions closely, then you’d know that the no-code space is quite hot right now. Dorian, a company that combined no-code with storytelling, also aims to create a space for itself with its $3.25million seed funding led by March Capital Partners.
Capchase raises $4.6M to deliver fast cash to SaaS companies
With SaaS companies trying to find alternate ways of funding other than to give up equity, a lot of new platforms are rising. Capchase offers SaaS companies the option to get cash through their accounts receivable. Its $4.6million seed round was led by Caffeinated Capital.
Must reads
Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman isn’t worrying about hurt feelings as he goes for IPO three-peat
Remote-Work boom mints another internet billionaire
Why product ops is key to product-led success—according to Pendo’s Christine Itwaru
Listen to
Qwilr: SaaS freemium pitfalls and how to avoid them – with Mark Tanner
Qwilr helps companies design perfect proposals, and follow that up with quotes, and updates among other things, by simply sharing a URL with the prospect. With its mobile-first approach, the software also makes it easier for team members to collaborate with each other. In this episode, COO Mark Tanner shares the evolution of the company, and the mistakes they made with the freemium approach.
How to hire an A-player VP Sales and scale your team with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin and the co-founder and CEO of HireSweet, Robin Choy
In this podcast, SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin and Robin Choy, Co-founder and CEO of HireSweet share their insights on building and scaling companies. They also talk about how to get the hiring right.
Winning people’s attention with Nathan Latka of Founderpath
We’ve featured Nathan Latka’s podcast on the newsletter quite often, but in this week’s pick, listen to his inspiring story of selling his first company, how he went on to create a media empire. He also shares how he’ll use the learnings and insights from that for his new company called Founderpath.
Watch
SaaS onboarding: how we do it at Ahrefs
Designing a good onboarding experience can make or break a product, and as this video suggests, if you make it too complex, users will go away, and if you make it basic, then users won’t understand what the product does. Ahrefs‘ Tim Soulo shares how they got over this issue by creating a pre-boarding experience, i.e. ensuring that people know about the product with educational content.
Growth hacking strategy for SaaS startups (how to acquire 100K users)
Host TK Kader shares how SaaS startups can acquire 100k users without spending it all on ads or other expensive methods. He shares some simple tips, ranging from creating the ideal customer profile, riding on the integrations / partnerships with popular apps, and more.
