Welcome to another weekly roundup of all things SaaS. This week we have a couple of acquisitions, some significant funding rounds and of course, a curated set of podcasts to learn from the best in the business.
Table of Contents
News of the week
Adobe to buy Workfront for $1.5billion to aid collaboration
Adobe has acquired a lot of companies over the years, and another name is getting added to the list. As per reports, the Photoshop maker is buying collaboration software Workfront for as much as $1.5billion. The deal would close between December and Jan 2021.
Xero kicks off FY21 by banking NZ$34.5 million in profit and lifting revenue by 21%
Accounting software Xero is among the biggest success stories from Australia. Per its latest report, it has NX$34.5million profit. It also crossed 1million customers mark in Australia, while its subsribers also increased significantly in UK and New Zealand.
Mattermost launches new SaaS platform to optimize DevOps collaboration
Open-source collaboration software Mattermost has announced a new platform termed Mattermost Cloud. It’s aimed at DevOps teams to optimize their collaboration by offering cross-team workflows.
Baremetrics, popular subscription analytics software, has been acquired by private equity firm Xenon Partners. The price of the purchase is $4million, which is 2.65x of the company’s ARR.
India-based Kovai has made its first-ever acquisition in the form of Cerebrata, a company that provides Microsoft Azure management tools. While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, Kovai states that the acquisition is complementary to its products, and will help it increase its revenue by 15 to 20 percent.
RudderStack introduces RudderStack Cloud Free, a free tier of their SaaS Customer Data Platform
Data management software RudderStack has announced its free tier dubbed RudderStack Cloud Free. The plan doesn’t have any time limit and users don’t need to add their credit card either. While it’s been available for free as a open-source software, there are infrastructure-related expenses.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
SentinelOne, an AI-based endpoint security firm, confirms $267million raise on a $3.1B valuation
SentinelOne has closed a funding round of $267million crossing a valuation of $3billion. The security firm has raised over $430million in its lifetime. In February this year, it had received $200million funding at a valuation of $1.1billion, which means its valuation jumped ~3x in such a short span of time.
JumpCloud raises $75million Series E as cloud directory service thrives during pandemic
Cloud directory service JumpCloud has nabbed a $75million Series E funding. The round was led by BlackRock, and the company will be using the amount to expand its team.
Estonian-born Pipedrive achieves unicorn status with $1.5billion valuation
CRM software Pipedrive has become a unicorn with its latest funding round. While the company didn’t disclose the amount it raised, its valuation has now reached $1.5billion. It also divulged that over 95,000 sales teams have used its platform.
Remote raises $35million to help orgs with global workforce payroll, benefits and more
As the name suggests, Remote helps companies manage remote workers. It has gotten $35million in Series A funding which was led by Index Ventures. It’ll be using the funding to expand to 30 countries (from its current base of 17 countries)
Livestorm raises $30million for its browser-based meeting and webinar platform
Webinar software Livestorm has closed a $30million Series A round. The company makes it extremely easy to conduct meetings or webinars as it’s browser based and boasts of more than 3,500 customers.
SaaS startup inFeedo raises $3.2million led by Bling Capital
Analytics software inFeedo has received $3.2million in an oversubscribed round after YC’s Demo Day in August this year. The startup has over 300,000 users across 50 countries.
B2B sales platform Nektar.ai raises $2.15million seed investment led by Nexus Venture Partners
Nektar.ai is a sales productivity startup that offers an AI-powered GTM collaboration engine. It has raised $2.15million seed funding led by Nexus Venture Partners.
Must reads
Google Cloud’s big win: the remarkable 2-year journey of CEO Thomas Kurian
2020 expansion SaaS benchmarks: getting back to hyper-growth
How to achieve more by doing less by Brian Kardon
Listen to
Todd McKinnon – creating and defining a new market category
Okta is a leading company in the identity and access management space, but how did it reach here? Its co-founder and CEO Todd McKinnon discusses how he got the idea, the early years, the challenges and how they overcame them among other things.
Why seat based pricing will die and volume based pricing is optimal, how to structure pipeline meetings most effectively & how to think through demand gen strategically with UserTesting CEO Andy MacMillan
In this podcast, listen to UserTesting’s CEO Andy MacMillan talking about his journey into the world of SaaS, why volume-based pricing is better than seat-based pricing, how to scale sales team and more. He also shares about pipeline meetings and why they matter.
How to build a SaaS brand without doing ‘branding’ – with Paul Campillo
Typeform, a form-building software, is a leading player in the category. Its director of brand and communications, Paul Campillo shares what makes it different, and how his background ensured that the Barcelona-based company does things differently.
Watch
Rising Stars of SaaS 5: Repl.it CEO Amjad Masad is democratizing coding for all
Repl.it helps anyone to do coding from the browser itself for collaboration or learn from the teacher as well. The platform supports a variety of programming languages, and its CEO Amjad Masad talks about how coding is being democratized, Repl.it’s evolution and roadmap.
