We’ve been talking about SaaS IPOs for the past few weeks, and this week is no different. However, there’s one change – instead of talking about the upcoming listing, this week, we saw the actual listing of these shares and they had a blockbuster debut if we may add. So, without wasting any more time, let’s get right into everything that you need to know in the world of SaaS in the past 7 days.
Table of Contents
News of the week
Snowflake more than doubles in market debut, largest ever software IPO
Snowflake’s IPO became the largest-ever software IPO. It was just last week, when its stock price was being proposed in the range of $75 to $85, and then it got listed at $120, which bumped up to more than double at $245. To put it in numbers, the company’s valuation went up by more than five times since February ($70.4billion vs $12.4billion)
Google-backed American Well stock rises 28% in market debut
Just before its IPO, the search titan had invested in the telemedicine provider Amwell. The company listed its shares at $18, which hit a high of $25.90. This helped Amwell to raise $742million.
JFrog IPO Priced at $44. Here’s Where the Stock Finished Trading.
While expecting Snowflake-level success is difficult, JFrog also made a stunning debut on the public market, with its share price opening at $71.27, 62 percent higher than the listing price of $44. This helped the company raise $352million.
After raising $326M in IPO, Sumo Logic sees stock rise 22% on first trading day
Another IPO that was launched this week is Sumo Logic, whose share prices increased by more than 20 percent. The cloud platform managed to raise $326million with its IPO.
How Microsoft is looking to MetaOS to make Microsoft 365 a ‘whole life’ experience
The software giant Microsoft is transitioning to the world of cloud, and it seems the upcoming MetaOS is an important piece to reach its goal. As per the report, the company is aiming to build an experience similar to Tencent’s WeChat platform that can offer everything at once place, right from messaging to voice or video interactions, and payments to gaming. The Windows maker will be able to ddo that by bringing products like Planner, Stream, Tasks, OneNote, Microsoft Team and the likes together.
ServiceNow launches latest Now Platform, telecom and financial services workflows
ServiceNow, the leading ITSM company, has introduced the latest version of its Now Platform with a slew of new products and features. These include, Business Continuity Management, Hardware Asset Management, and Telecommunications Service Management, and more.
Leading IT service company Accenture is starting a new unit called Cloud First, where it’ll invest $3billion over three years to allow its customers to migrate to the cloud and help them digitize their operations. The unit has support for multiple services and has 70,000 cloud pros.
Introducing the Google Meet hardware Series One room kit
The internet behemoth is ensuring that its Google Meet becomes more useful for businesses as it has launched a hardware bundle for the conference room. Termed Series One hardware, it’s built in partnership with Lenovo, and offers a 12MP / 20.3MP Smart Camera, and Smart Audio Bar which comprises a 2.5-inch woofer, a one-inch tweeter, and eight beam-forming microphones. Along with the kit, the customers will also get rechargeable remote control or a 10.1-inch touchscreen with support for Google Assistant.
Meanwhile, if you like using Google Meet, then you’d love the new feature that’s being rolled out – the ability to blur your background. However, it’s available for G Suite users only at the moment.
SEMrush Acquires Fast-Growing SaaS PR Tech Company Prowly
SEO software SEMrush has announced the acquisition of PR software Prowly for an undisclosed sum. However, the latter’s ARR of over $1million means that the company is at a cash flow breakeven point with its y-o-y growth being in the three digits.
Gamification software Kahoot is popular among educators and students for game-based learning. But now it’s going after corporate users as it has acquired a Danish startup Actimo that offers a platform to businesses for training and engaging with employees. The deal has been pegged between $26million and $33million.
Atlassian launches a $50M venture fund to invest in its ecosystem
The company behind Jira and Trello has launched Atlassian Ventures, a $50million fund that will invest in companies that are building products for its ecosystem. It highlights that there are 4,200+ apps already available in its Marketplace, and it wants to find more tools and integrations that helps its users.
Check out
Every year, Forbes releases a list of the top 100 companies in the cloud computing industry, and its 2020 edition has just been released. The list is certainly interesting to see the companies that are making the noise in the fast-growing sector. Did any company in this list caught you by surprise? Let us know in the comments below.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Popular no-code tool Airtable has raised a significant funding of $185bmillion that catapults its valuation to $2.5billion, which was led by Thrive Capital. The company also announced the launch of Airtable Apps, which are in evolution to Blocks, allowing users to add functions and programs to tailor the software per their requirements. The startup is also launching its API.
Related watch: Airtable’s Howie Liu has no interest in exiting, even as the company’s valuation soars
Study abroad EdTech company ApplyBoard raises $55million Series C Extension
There’s no denying that EdTech is becoming hotter than ever amidst the ongoing pandemic. The Canada-based ApplyBoard seems to be making the most of the same, as it has announced $55million Series C Extension, after raising $75million in May this year.
Alloy secures $40M to digitally onboard banking customers
Alloy, which bills itself as an identity operating system for the financial services industry, has nabbed a $40million Series B round. Led by Canapi Ventures, the New York-based company will be using the funding to expand its sales, marketing, and engineering teams along with the product development team.
Data.World raises $26 million to address data processing pain points
Data catalogue startup Data.World has closed a funding round of $26million which was led by Tech Pioneers Fund. The platform aims to make it easier to have a catalogue that maps data to business concepts so that everything is available at one place.
Airmeet: We raised $12 million to unlock the potential of virtual events
With the world under the lockdown, events and conferences have been shifted to virtual environment. While there are a lot of players in the virtual event category, the India-based Airmeet has been making a lot of waves. Now the company has announced its Series A funding round at $12million which was led by Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures.
Cloud collaboration tool Air cofounded by two Stanford grads raises $12million in Series А
With working on the cloud becoming the new normal, Air aims to remove the friction of using different platforms. Air allows the users to move all their content from cloud service providers like Dropbox or computer hard drives, and ensures that the content is neatly organized. To continue its mission, it has now raised $12million as part of Series A which was led by Tiger Global.
Demand Sage raises $3M to make sales and marketing data more accessible
Demand Sage, a platform that wants to make it easier to marketers and salespeople to get data and insights, has raised $3million. The seed funding was led by Eniac Ventures and Underscore VC.
In numbers
Must reads
Extremely transparent and Incredibly remote: Gitlab’s radical vision for the future of work
6 product-led SaaS onboarding lessons (with 8 great examples)
Listen to
How I Built This with Guy Raz: Calendly’s Tope Awotona
Calendly has been in the news this week as it hit the revenue of $60million last year, with just $500,000 funding. But the appointment scheduling software is unique in many more ways. Listen to the inspiring story of its founder Tope Awotona of how he was a door-to-door salesman, launched a couple of companies, and eventually started Calendly.
10 Mistakes the CEO of ZoomInfo made on his journey to IPO with Henry Schuck, CEO @ ZoomInfo and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr (Part 1)
Keeping up with our theme of SaaS companies that IPOed, ZoomInfo is yet another example that’s among the top when it comes to most successful IPOs. However, as you’d hear in this podcast, its CEO Henry Schuck shares the missteps along the way, learnings and more. Do note that it’s the part 1 of the podcast, and its second part hasn’t been released yet.
SaaS product-led growth and the new customer journey – with Blake Bartlett
We’ve talked about product-led growth quite a lot in this newsletter, but if you still want a primer on what is it and how it could prove to be a game-changer for modern SaaS businesses, do give this podcast a listen. Blake Bartlett, the partner at OpenView Partners is also behind this term, so he shares insights based on proper examples.
Stephen King of GrowthForce
Cloud-based book-keeping firm GrowthForce is led by Stephen King who has built quite a few businesses. He has also been through six recessions, and hence he gives actionable advice on what companies should be doing in the times of uncertainty such as the current one due to COVID-19.
Watch
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston says the pandemic forced the company to revaluate what work means
TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2020 conference is going on (at the time of writing), and it has a slew of interesting speakers and discussions. The publications Editor-in-Chief Matthew Panzarino also got a chance to talk to popular cloud company Dropbox’s CEO Drew Houston how COVID-19 has accelerated remote work. He also shares how the company started changed its product roadmap around the new way of working and ensuring that it can support / enable such use cases.
