It’s been a wild year for modern software companies, often called software-as-service (SaaS) firms due to how they deliver their product. From a strong start to the year, to a rapid devaluation in the face of a global pandemic, and a return-to-form after it became clear that software wasn’t a category that a consumer recession would harm.
Indeed, SaaS and other cloud companies have seen their valuations reach new heights in 2020, pushing the larger stock market up as their own worth soared. These frothy, booming times make the larger effort to take software into new parts of the larger global economy all the more exciting.
After all, if public SaaS companies are worth more than ever, startups themselves are inherently worth more, which means that even more capital should pour into the young companies that want to transform software eating the world from catchphrase into reality.
To dig into the SaaS market this year, we’ve compiled a panel of well-known investors to chat with TechCrunch at Disrupt this September 14-18. We’re bringing Canaan Partners‘ Maha Ibrahim, Andreessen Horowitz’s David Ulevitch, and Bessemer Venture Partners’ Mary D’Onofrio to help explain the changed world to us. (Astute readers will recall that D’Onofrio makes regular Extra Crunch appearances as a SaaS guru.)
We want to know how important seeing a COVID-19-era growth acceleration is to raising capital in 2020, what metrics are most attractive to the investing classes in this new world, and where SaaS is being deployed that’s new, and exciting. And, maybe, if any of the assembled investors are feeling spicy, if any bit of the SaaS market is overhyped, or overvalued.
SaaS has become the de facto business model for what feels like the majority startups, and inside of SaaS itself a focus on business-focused upstarts are taking a large slice of available venture capital. We’ll dig into why that’s the case, and how that impacts startups at different stages of maturity.
Grab your pass today to attend Disrupt to check out this session and so much more. You will also get access to the CrunchMatch platform after registering so you can start networking right away with the TechCrunch community. Get your pass here.
