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How has Corsair Gaming posted such impressive pre-IPO numbers?

This post is by Alex Wilhelm from SaaS – TechCrunch


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After the last few weeks of IPOs, you’d be forgiven if you missed Corsair Gaming’s own public offering.

The company is not our usual fare. Here at TechCrunch, we care a lot of about startups, usually technology startups, which often collect capital from private sources on their way to either the bin, an IPO, or a buyout. Corsair is some of those things. It is a private company that builds technology products and it has raised some money while private. But from there it’s a slim list. The company was founded in 1994, making it more a mature business than a startup. And it sold a majority of itself to a private equity group in 2017, valued at $525 million at the time.
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Fair enough. But flipping through Continue reading "How has Corsair Gaming posted such impressive pre-IPO numbers?"
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Slack’s earnings detail how COVID-19 is both a help and a hindrance to cloud growth

This post is by Alex Wilhelm from SaaS – TechCrunch


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Slack’s shares are set to fall sharply this morning, down around 16% in pre-market trading. As the company beat analyst expectations last quarter and guided within range, the selloff might feel a little surprising.

Perhaps it shouldn’t. I spoke with a VC last week about what the new benchmark results are for private SaaS companies, and to my surprise, he said software startups don’t have to grow at 100% to be fundable in today’s market. Given what I’d heard from other venture capitalists about how so much of their portfolios had found a COVID-19 growth bump, the perspectives felt incongruous.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.
Startups wanted to grow at a pace of more than 100% pre-pandemic, and some have accelerated since. So how could a startup growing less than three
Continue reading "Slack’s earnings detail how COVID-19 is both a help and a hindrance to cloud growth"
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Unpacking Duck Creek Technologies’ IPO and hoped-for $2.7B valuation

This post is by Alex Wilhelm from SaaS – TechCrunch


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Tech stocks retain their highs as the second quarter’s earnings season begins to fade into the rearview mirror, and there are still a number of companies looking to go public while the times are good. It looks like a smart move, as public investors are hungry for growth-oriented shares — which is just what tech and venture-backed companies have in spades.

The companies currently looking to go public are diverse. China-based real-estate giant KE Holdings — a hybrid listings company and digital transaction portal for housing — is looking to raise as much as $2.3 billion in a U.S. listing. Xpeng, another China-based company that builds electric vehicles, is looking to list in the U.S as well. Xpeng has the distinction of being gross-margin negative in every key time period detailed in its S-1 filing.
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Continue reading "Unpacking Duck Creek Technologies’ IPO and hoped-for $2.7B valuation"
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Uber picks up Autocab to push into places its own app doesn’t go

This post is by Natasha Lomas from SaaS – TechCrunch


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Uber has bought UK based Autocab, which sells SaaS to the taxi and private hire vehicle industry, with the aim of expanding the utility of its own platform by linking users who open its app in places where it doesn’t offer trips to local providers who do.

No acquisition price has been disclosed and Uber declined to comment on the terms of the deal. Autocab has a SaaS presence in 20 countries globally at this stage, according to an Uber spokeswoman. We’ve asked whether it will be closing a marketplace service which connects local taxi firms with trip bookers in any locations as a result of the Uber acquisition.
The Manchester-based veteran taxi software maker — which sells booking and despatch software as well as operating a global marketplace (iGo) which local firms can plug into to get more trips — was founded back in 1989, per Crunchbase. Uber’s Continue reading "Uber picks up Autocab to push into places its own app doesn’t go"
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Jamf’s IPO underscores hot demand for tech shares

This post is by Alex Wilhelm from SaaS – TechCrunch


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After the bell yesterday, Apple-device management company Jamf announced its final IPO pricing. We’ve been tracking the Jamf IPO for some time, as it is yet another example of a technology company worth $1 billion or more going public during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Back in March, we’d have guessed that today’s IPO market would be devoid of any public offerings, let alone a litany of successful flotations. But, 2020 is unpredictable; instead of seeing an IPO drought, there have been a modest deluge of debuts. And yesterday Jamf continued the trend of recent IPO pricing strongly, at times selling more shares in the bargain.
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Jamf’s IPO underscores that public market investors
Continue reading "Jamf’s IPO underscores hot demand for tech shares"
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Singapore-based marketing SaaS startup Insider gets $32 million to enter the U.S.

This post is by Catherine Shu from SaaS – TechCrunch


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Insider, a Singapore-based startup that develops software to help clients make marketing decisions, plans to launch in the United States after raising a $32 million Series C. The round was led by Riverwood Capital, with participation from Sequoia India, Wamda and Endeavor Catalyst.

Founded in 2012, the company says its SaaS for multichannel marketing and customer engagement is currently used by more than 800 brands, including Singapore Airlines, Marks and Spencers, Virgin, Uniqlo, Samsung and Estee Lauder. Insider’s Series C brings its total funding so far to $42 million. In addition to entering the U.S., the new capital will be used on sales and marketing, hiring more engineers for its research and development team and adding new features to its platform.
One noteworthy aspect of the company is that half of its executive team, including co-founder and chief executive officer Hande Cilingir, are women. The company runs Continue reading "Singapore-based marketing SaaS startup Insider gets $32 million to enter the U.S."
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BigCommerce files to go public

This post is by Alex Wilhelm from SaaS – TechCrunch


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As expected, BigCommerce has filed to go public. The Austin, Texas, based e-commerce company raised over $200 million while private. The company’s IPO filing lists a $100 million placeholder figure for its IPO raise, giving us directional indication that this IPO will be in the lower, and not upper, nine-figure range.

BigCommerce, similar to public market darling Shopify, provides e-commerce services to merchants. Given how enamored public investors are with its Canadian rival, the timing of BigCommerce’s debut is utterly unsurprising and is prima facie intelligent. Of course, we’ll know more when it prices. Today, however, the timing appears fortuitous.

The numbers

BigCommerce is a SaaS business, meaning that it sells a digital service for a recurring payment. For more on how it derives revenue from customers, head here. For our purposes what matters is that public investors will classify it along with a very popular — today’s trading Continue reading "BigCommerce files to go public"
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SaaS and cloud stocks finally give back ground

This post is by Alex Wilhelm from SaaS – TechCrunch


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After a heated run, SaaS and cloud stocks dipped sharply during regular trading on Monday.

According to the category-tracking Bessemer cloud index, public SaaS and cloud stocks dropped around 6.5% today, a material blow to the value of some of the world’s most highly valued companies, measured by sector-averaged revenue multiples. After recovering all their COVID-19-related losses earlier this year, SaaS and cloud stocks kept on rising, reaching new all-time highs with regularity. But earnings season is starting, meaning that the value of modern software and digital infrastructure companies will soon be tested against Q2 results — results that were recorded fully during the global pandemic.
To hear bulls — both private and public — tell the story, COVID-19 and its ensuing workplace disruptions have provided software companies with a huge boon. Namely, that customers current and future have radically changed their procurement models and will need Continue reading "SaaS and cloud stocks finally give back ground"
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As SaaS stocks retrace highs, a glance at today’s cloud fundamentals

This post is by Alex Wilhelm from SaaS – TechCrunch


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The domestic stock market is advancing today on the back of some better-than-anticipated economic recovery data in the United States. While retail spending is still lower compared to the year-ago period, gains in May from April were better than anticipated.

The American stock market, ready to trade higher on any scrap of good news — even news predicated on economic weakness and the need for continued intervention — shot north, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index rising 2.3% to 9,947.5 and the SaaS-focused BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index (EMCLOUD) rising 1.6% to 1,719.2. From Bessemer, a venture capital firm that invests in cloud startups, here’s some data on today’s SaaS market:
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Vendr raises $4M from David Sacks’s Craft Ventures to reduce SaaS bills

This post is by Alex Wilhelm from SaaS – TechCrunch


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When TechCrunch last checked in with the Y Combinator-backed Vendr in October, the company had just raised $2 million, and was crowing about its profitability. Profitable seed-stage companies aren’t super common, so the startup stood out.

Today Vendr is back with more news, namely that it has raised $4 million more, this time led by Craft Ventures, the venture capital shop associated with well-known tech denizen David Sacks. TechCrunch wanted to know why a profitable company would go back to the well so quickly, so I got on the phone with Vendr CEO Ryan Neu to get a handle on the latest. The timing felt propitious. Vendr tries to help save companies money on their software purchasing — both net-new and re-ups — and given that the startup world just took two punches out of its collective belt, perhaps Vendr was riding some tailwinds.

Growth

Neu told TechCrunch in Continue reading "Vendr raises $4M from David Sacks’s Craft Ventures to reduce SaaS bills"