APIs are seen as the cornerstone of modern software applications, as they allow developers to efficiently stitch together multiple services and build better apps faster. With the continued rise of microservices architectures and cloud computing infrastructure, APIs are the main way in which software interacts with software, both within and between organizations. Today, developers are spending more than half of their time on APIs, underscoring how important APIs are to modern software development.
Microservices architectures decompose applications into smaller services that can be independently managed and updated. With services now organized around business lines or functions, microservices offer increased flexibility and modularity, making applications easier to develop, test, deploy, scale, and maintain. As companies increasingly leverage microservices and engage with third-party and open APIs to create applications, the volume and complexity of enterprise API footprints are exploding. In web development, serverless architectures are abstracting away backend infrastructure behind APIs, which is leading to a decoupling of the backend from the frontend. These trends underlie an unbundling of the software stack and a move towards API-led SaaS, where software is consumed in smaller component parts.
There has also been a recent emergence of new web API protocols/frameworks like GraphQL and gRPC which enable a step-function improvement in performance, leading to the creation of new types of applications. As a result of these shifts, an entirely new infrastructure software layer around API development, management, networking, monitoring, and security has emerged (see below landscape).
GraphQL has been widely adopted by large enterprises like Facebook, Yelp, and GitHub, who have reported significant improvements in application performance and developer productivity. With GraphQL, developers can specify exactly what data they need wrapped in a single request, reducing unnecessary, repetitive data fetching and improving overall application performance at scale. This attribute is especially advantageous for large-scale applications with numerous front-end clients that require high-performing data retrieval.
GRPC is another modern API protocol that is gaining popularity amongst developers. It is a high-performance, open-source framework for building remote procedure call (RPC) applications. With GRPC, developers can write efficient, fast, and scalable distributed applications, enabling microservices to communicate with each other. GRPC also supports a range of programming languages, making it a versatile option for application development.
As APIs have come to the forefront of application development, tooling around building, authenticating and testing APIs and writing their documentation have arisen in the form of collaborative software platforms. These companies emphasize the collective power of the engineering community towards faster and more robust API development, improved governance, and tighter security downstream. The growing overall trend towards sharing data externally, spurred by API-first businesses, has contributed to the growth of API marketplaces that provide a place for developers to upload, distribute and monetize their APIs as well as provide a space for consumers to discover and implement APIs for their own products.
In microservice architectures, apps are broken down into a network of back-end services that perform specific business functions. Both open source and commercial product offerings have developed around the concept of service mesh – the management of inter-service communication that will only grow in complexity as additional microservice applications are built. New innovations have also arisen around the API Gateway in terms of routing efficiency, security, real-time tracking and scalability.
The rapid proliferation in both closed and open API development has led to a corresponding rise in security concerns. APIs are now commonly used as a primary target for attackers, as they are directly used to access underlying sensitive software functions and data sources. Existing cybersecurity solutions like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and older models of API gateways do not offer comprehensive coverage, and per Gartner research issued in 2022, APIs have been noted as the #1 attack vector today.
Security leaders note identifying, inventorying, and securing APIs as a critical pain point within their organizations, and see implementing API security solutions as a top priority over the near term horizon.
As more organizations recognize APIs as the building blocks of modern software, we believe tooling and services around API design, testing, security, and networking will continue to advance and capture developer mindshare.
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This thought piece was originally shared with TCV’s TCXO community. TCXO brings together executives across functional domains to share best practices, unpack challenges, and foster networking opportunities. Members will have access to exclusive TCV content, events, and programming. Sign up to here to join the network.
The U.S. healthcare industry is undergoing a rapid technological transformation underpinned by the recent and novel digitization of healthcare data. Historically, the healthcare industry has operated in an offline fashion (e.g., paper records, phone calls, faxes, etc.), and the utilization of digitized healthcare data was largely limited to insurance claims. Today, healthcare generates ~30% of the world’s data and its data volume is projected to grow faster than that of any other industry.[1] At the same time, technology adoption within healthcare remains low; as evidence, consider that the financial services industry spends ~3x as much on software per year relative to the healthcare industry, despite being only one-third of the size.[2]
In our view, the proliferation of healthcare data is principally the result of three factors:
1. Ubiquitous adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) platforms
2. Growing availability of genomic data
3. Increased use of wearable healthcare devices
The first followed the 2009 HITECH Act, which provided incentives for healthcare providers to purchase EMR technology platforms; accordingly, as of 2019, ~96% of healthcare providers had adopted an EMR, up from only ~8% in 2008.[3]
The second is a derivative of the dramatic reduction in genomic sequencing costs over the past two decades – from ~$95M per genome in the early 2000s to only ~$500 today.[4] The resultant proliferation of genomic data has had a transformative impact on the medical field and led to a myriad of advances in treatment and MedTech, particularly around understanding how an individual’s DNA contributes to varying health and disease outcomes.
Finally, the growing use of wearable healthcare devices (e.g., smart watches, blood glucose meters, etc.) has resulted in troves of real-time, patient-generated data that is increasingly being used for real-time patient monitoring and intervention applications, as well as in clinical trials to both expand patient accessibility and improve data capture.
Until recently, all three of the aforementioned types of healthcare data existed either in an offline format (e.g., paper records) or essentially not at all (e.g., genomic and wearables data). Note that there are several other types of healthcare data consistent with this trend, including, but not limited to, lab, medical imaging, and social determinants of health (SDOH) – all of which are important and have their own idiosyncrasies. In our view, however, drivers #1 – 3 outlined above are the three most notable and encompass the broadest array of healthcare data; accordingly, this piece focuses principally on those three.
As a derivative of unsustainable growth in U.S. healthcare expenditures, coupled with a growing need to improve health outcomes, the healthcare industry has reached a profound inflection point. Against this backdrop, we have strong conviction that numerous category-defining, franchise technology companies will be built that utilize healthcare data to address the industry’s most ambitious problem statements and pain points, including increasing drug discovery and development productivity, improving diagnostic quality and care coordination, driving operational efficiencies, and improving the overall patient experience – all vectors which also improve patient outcomes. In our view, these technology platforms have the opportunity to drive an enormously compelling ROI for industry stakeholders across a myriad of use cases and applications.
Having said all of that, there are several foundational considerations that render healthcare data uniquely difficult to utilize. While the complete list is rather long, here are some of the more notable roadblocks:
1. Healthcare data exists in silos generally organized by data type (e.g., clinical records, insurance claims, genomic, lab, imaging, pharmacy, etc.)
2. Custodians of one type of data are unlikely to be willing to share it with other industry stakeholders (e.g., a provider with clinical data vs. an insurer with claims)
3. There is no ubiquitously utilized enterprise master patient index (EMPI) that can be used to pair datasets at the patient level; single data sources by themselves present an incomplete picture
4. HIPAA compliance and other regulatory considerations heavily restrict data access, sharing, and utilization rights
5. Different data formats and connectivity standards introduce added complexity and friction in terms of data sharing (though some recent industry initiatives are helping)
6. ~80% of healthcare data is unstructured (e.g., free-text notes, images, etc.) rendering it difficult, if not impossible, to use in its current form[5]
In our view, these challenges, coupled with the growing volume and diversity of healthcare data sources, present a unique opportunity for technology companies to deliver significant value to the healthcare industry. We sub-segment the technology companies that benefit from this theme into four buckets, including:
1. Infrastructure and enabling technologies
2. Data analytics
3. AI / ML to drive decision-making
4. AI- / ML-enabled automation
Note that #1 and #2 are not mutually exclusive, while labeled and annotated training data are prerequisites for #3 and #4. Below we’ve shared a bit more about each category, as well as some representative vendors that fit into each.
2. Data analytics – Packaged, self-service analyses via an application layer and / or curated data delivered via an API; examples include Kipu*, Komodo Health, H1 Insights, OM1, and Truveta
We further believe that technology companies across all four categories have an opportunity to differentiate and establish competitive moats along the four dimensions outlined below. To be clear, compelling technology platforms need not check all four boxes – some may only check one of them.
1. Unique access to healthcare data – This can be a derivative of business model (e.g., open / network-based system), via barter or give-to-get relationships, long-term data sharing partnerships, and / or customers contributing data, among other levers
2. IP that integrates, curates, and prepares the data for downstream use cases – This may take the form of technology tooling and / or organizational know-how (e.g., the process for cleansing the data)
3. Functionality that applies healthcare-specific contextualization – This often involves both platform functionality as well as clinically / scientifically trained personnel in order to ensure effective platform utilization by the end user
4. Software applications that deliver value in the context of specific business use cases and workflows
In closing, the U.S. healthcare industry is perhaps the last major industry to undergo digitization; it is also one of the largest. Against a rapidly growing volume and diversity of healthcare data, coupled with challenges and complexities associated with its use, we believe there is an extraordinary opportunity for technology to play a leading role in audaciously unlocking and delivering value across multiple sub-segments, functions, and applications in healthcare. Accordingly, we at TCV are incredibly excited to continue to partner with companies boldly seeking to utilize healthcare data in order to fundamentally transform both the development of novel medicines and provision of patient care, and, ultimately, to improve patient outcomes.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of TCMI, Inc. or its affiliates (“TCV”). TCV has not verified the accuracy of any statements by the speakers and disclaims any responsibility therefor. This blog post is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any private fund managed or sponsored by TCV or any of the securities of any company discussed. The TCV portfolio companies identified, if any, are not necessarily representative of all TCV investments, and no assumption should be made that the investments identified were or will be profitable. For a complete list of TCV investments, please visit www.tcv.com/all-companies/. For additional important disclaimers regarding this blog post, please see “Informational Purposes Only” in the Terms of Use for TCV’s website, available athttp://www.tcv.com/terms-of-use/
Contracts are at the heart of business, enshrining a company’s rights and obligations across areas ranging from sales transactions and supplier relationships to employment agreements and beyond. Resulting from this centrality, rising contract volumes and legal complexity have made contract management unmanageable without leveraging technology.
Evisort delivers end-to-end contract intelligence software that turns contracts into data. Customers use a simple, intuitive interface to extract critical context from contracts, integrate that data into other enterprise systems, and automate a wide range of legal and operational workflows – themselves codified in contract data. Evisort’s platform is powered by award-winning AI that is purpose-built for contracts and trained on over 10 million documents, thereby driving a differentiated customer experience and rapid, tangible ROI.
We are thrilled to announce TCV’s Series C investment in Evisort. We believe that contracts have been both an under-managed source of risk and under-explored source of value for companies, and that Evisort’s AI-powered Contract Intelligence Platform solves increasingly important pain points for businesses of all sizes, ranging from the Fortune 500 to mid-sized companies alike.
Evisort was founded in 2016 by lawyers and technologists who saw the need for automation in contract management. The platform started as an intelligent analytics engine that extracts clauses and metadata to index contracts and their contents, making them easily searchable and manageable without manual data entry. Evisort’s AI further contextualizes the contract, indicating what type of contract it is, identifying counter-parties, flagging auto-renewal dates, and more.
More recently, Evisort has been adding workflow capabilities – relevant for coordinating contracting processes and operational workflows across the business. Evisort’s end-to-end approach ensures that all contract data is located in one repository, minimizing security risks, reducing the number of required integrations, and allowing the system to apply learnings from previous contracts to new ones.
More than any other contract management software business we’ve evaluated, Evisort’s AI platform supports a wider range of teams, industries, and use cases. Sales teams use Evisort to drive sales and renewals by reducing contracting friction and speeding time to agreement and revenue recognition. Legal departments use Evisort to drive compliance, quickly find and report on critical information, and act as a single source of truth. Procurement and sourcing organizations rely on Evisort to accelerate purchases, negotiate stronger agreements, and manage supplier risks more effectively. In all cases, Evisort drives efficiency by reducing reliance on manual legal review – a major bottleneck in many contracting processes.
Transforming the future of contract management
Evisort’s Contract Intelligence Platform has three main capabilities:
AI-Powered Contract Analytics and Insights: Evisort extracts data from contracts, produces critical insights, and reports on those insights in an easy-to-use dashboard, so that users can focus on higher value tasks. This contract intelligence is then used to generate workflows across the organization. Evisort is focused on delivering the intelligence layer between core operating systems such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning platforms.
Intelligent Contract Lifecycle Management: Evisort provides contract request intake, contract drafting, approvals, version control, and repository (storage, search, reporting) features. Evisort’s platform creates a source of truth so teams can centralize knowledge, collaborate easily, and simplify contract administration.
Central Contract Repository and Integrations: Evisort’s no-code platform lets legal, sales, and procurement teams self-serve, taking the burden off of IT teams and providing immediate configurability. Evisort easily integrates into existing systems to minimize the need for data migration and accelerates deployment because employees can work from the systems they already use.
Why now: A big market waiting for the right end-to-end product
At TCV, we have invested extensively behind the digitization of the legal industry – having backed innovative legal technology industry leaders such as Clio, LegalZoom, and Avvo. As part of our work in this space, we have been closely following the evolution of the CLM market for nearly a decade. In that time, customers consistently indicated a desire to manage both new and existing contracts in the same place – in other words, a true end-to-end platform. Over the last several years, our conversations in the space increasingly indicated that Evisort’s founders Jerry, Jake, and Amine had built exactly that and Evisort’s platform was seeing accelerating adoption in a largely greenfield market.
Evisort customers – which include our portfolio companies such as Netflix – typically start with analytics use cases to understand existing contracts, and then add pre-signature workflow to more efficiently generate new contracts. From there, thanks in part to Evisort’s ease of use, usage often quickly expands to additional teams and stakeholders within their organization. For customers, the results are industry-leading time-to-value, implementation speeds, self-service analytics, and flexibility to apply contract-based insights to a wide range of business functions. For Evisort, a cohesive and forward-thinking strategy appears to have translated into an innovative and fast growing company in an exciting market.
Looking Forward
As we look to the future, we are incredibly excited about the tailwinds strengthening Evisort’s value proposition for its customers. Businesses of all sizes have more contracts and a greater need to manage them than ever before. The compliance and regulatory environment also continues to evolve, requiring businesses to maintain constant visibility into their contract corpus. And companies are increasingly leveraging the data embedded in contracts to drive business processes across sales, procurement, operations, and finance.
Given that robust backdrop, we are incredibly excited to work with Jerry, Jake, Amine and the rest of the Evisort team to maximize the opportunity for AI applications in contract management.
The employer-employee relationship is being reshaped and the next generation of HR software vendors are helping employers attract and retain the best talent
At long last, companies are waking up to the reality that the talent they employ is their most strategic, and ultimately differentiating, asset. However, in a somewhat ironic twist of fate, attracting and retaining talent is more difficult than ever before, driven by near decade-low unemployment rates, the much touted Covid-induced “Great Resignation”, and global competition for increasingly diverse and inclusive talent. Employers are also facing hybrid work as the new normal, as well as a generational shift to Millennials as the dominant employee base.
The task for navigating these challenges is being laid at the feet of HR teams, whose responsibilities now span everything from driving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) initiatives and improving organizational health and wellness to reducing employee attrition and navigating hybrid work / the return to the office. All of this in turn necessitates a much more strategic approach, and has escalated the importance of People teams to mission-critical as organizations recognize they need to do everything in their power to hire, nurture, and retain top-tier talent.
At the same time, People teams have historically relied on a legacy stack of outdated and inflexible software tools (e.g. ADP, SAP Successfactors, Oracle HCM, and Ceridian) that have acted primarily as systems of record rather than systems of engagement built for a hybrid work-environment and focused on employee user-experiences and organizational ROI. These tools are unable to drive employee engagement and lack the functionality required to enable People teams to operate effectively.
Enter Next Gen People SaaS, the new-age of HR software tools seeking to empower People teams looking to align People operations with overarching company strategy.
These vendors are going after a massive market opportunity – Paychex, Workday, and ADP alone comprise $200Bn in market cap. That said, the market is not homogeneous, and the dynamics in each segment are nuanced. For instance, while the SMB market is largely greenfield (running many HR processes on paper and Excel), the enterprise market is rife with legacy solutions that are difficult to integrate with and thus organizations are left with tool sprawl, where a spaghetti-mix of 50+ different HR tools is not unusual.
We at TCV have been lucky enough to partner with next gen HR leaders includingLinkedIn, Grupa Pracuj (the largest job board in Poland), Hirevue (AI-driven talent assessment and video interview platform), Perceptyx (employee surveys and people analytics platform), OneSource Virtual (Business-Process-as-a-Service vendor for the Workday ecosystem) and more recently Darwinbox (cloud-native end-to-end HRIS platform for Enterprise), and Humu (enterprise-grade digital training platform). In addition, we have also had the opportunity to both collaborate with and learn from a deep bench of People-team leaders across our portfolio, including TCV Venture Partner Jessica Neal, the former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix. We continue to believe there are enormous opportunities ahead in HR and expect to see innovation arise from every corner of the globe. Here are three of the major themes we believe will shape the HR-tech landscape in the coming years.
#1: HR products built for employees
While we are now used to frictionless, user-friendly tech experiences everywhere in our personal lives, the software tools many of us use daily in the workplace are clunky and counter-intuitive. Next Gen People SaaS is changing this paradigm by putting employee experience at its heart and, in the process, turning systems of record into systems of engagement, driving ever-higher ROI, as well as enabling flexibility with how employees engage with employers.
Best-in-class UX is required for Next Gen People SaaS
Superior UX enables employees to self-serve to a much greater degree, alleviating the administrative burden on People teams. Geographic and vertical context also becomes relevant. For example, offering a truly mobile-native and mobile-optimized (note: not the same as just having an app) UX in emerging markets and frontline industries can be critical in driving access and engagement across the full employee base. This is a key factor that underpins the strong momentum seen in companies like Darwinbox. Many new-age tools also monitor traditionally “B2C” KPIs (e.g. DAU/MAU, sessions per day), while also continuously A/B testing to drive better user engagement, thereby unlocking workforce insights that legacy tools with poor user uptake are simply unable to access. By utilizing Next Gen People SaaS, People teams can drive heightened employee engagement while also gaining meaningful insights in culture, sentiment, and employee performance.
Employing talent on its own terms
The days of inflexible, full-time, in-office employment are largely behind us. Companies have realized that, in the war to hire world-class talent, the ability to offer flexible employment (e.g. remote work from anywhere in the world, freelancing) can be a critical differentiator. That said, this creates enormous challenges for People teams, as running onboarding and compliant payroll and benefits across full-time and freelance employees in several countries is fraught with complexity. This has driven the rise of a host of new tools (e.g. employer of record, aggregated global payroll, end-to-end freelancer management tools) to simplify this process and alleviate companies of onerous compliance and administrative burdens. We believe these tools will further embed themselves into the core-HR stack of the hybrid workplace of the future.
#2: Talent is at the forefront of HR product innovation
The ongoing war for talent will dramatically reshape the HR tech-stack in the years ahead. Given the criticality of talent as a key differentiator, we expect to see accelerated innovation and the rise of best-in-breed point solutions (particularly for larger enterprises) at every stage of talent management process:
Sourcing
Professional networks, such as former TCV investment LinkedIn, have become staples of the HR toolkit. That said, there are further opportunities to enrich data from existing networks and build more advanced, automated searches powered by AI: e.g. aligning with an employer’s diversity and inclusion goals, helping to automatically elevate talent at the right stage in their careers, prior candidate rediscovery, etc.
Screening and recruitment
We are seeing two major, and often simultaneous, themes reflecting the growing war for scarce talent – 1) a pivot towards building candidate-friendly recruitment experiences vs. being employer-centric (as much as employers are trying to better evaluate whether a candidate is a good fit for them, savvy candidates are doing the same with potential employers); 2) a pivot away from interview processes focused on subjective individual assessments towards more quantitative, standardized screening that collects dozens of data points along the candidate journey to reach better, less biased recruiting outcomes.
Enablement
Retaining and nurturing talent have become highly strategic areas for employers, exacerbated by the generational shift towards a Millennial employee-base. We have seen the rise of increasingly sophisticated solutions for engaging and training talent, including a focus on individualizing content delivery. For instance, TCV portfolio company Humu helps teams instill and develop effective workplace habits through the use of behavioral nudges. At the core of Humu’s differentiation is the focus on delivering the right content, to the right person, at the right time.
Although the supply of world-class talent in every department is scarce, nowhere is the effect of the war for talent felt more acutely than in R&D. As ‘technology’ has shifted from being a standalone industry vertical to a horizontal foundation that nearly every industry depends upon, demand for engineering talent has never outweighed the supply more dramatically. Given that analysts continue to forecast a global technology talent shortage of nearly 5M workers by 2030[1], we anticipate this will be a defining trend of the 2020s and will continue giving rise to engineer-focused talent solutions.
While we expect the proliferation of talent-focused point solutions to continue, at the same time, we expect to see other segments of the HR stack begin to rebundle. Many mid-market and enterprise People teams have experienced massive tool proliferation over the last years (some using as many as 50+ different HR apps!) and tool sprawl is now becoming increasingly challenging to manage. As a result, we expect to see many core HR tools (e.g. time & attendance, benefits etc.) naturally aggregate thereby providing HR teams and employees with seamless, end-to-end integrated workflows.
#3: The specialization (and verticalization) of HR
In spite of the fact that both employer and employee needs vary significantly by size, industry, and geography, many vendors historically have offered a ‘one-size-fits-all’ HR proposition. As a result, there have been a number of historically overlooked and underappreciated market segments that represent massive greenfield opportunities when innovators focus on them explicitly. Going forward, as we have seen with broader vertical SaaS over the last decade, we expect to see the rise of verticalized HR vendors who focus on a specific customer segment and offer a much deeper, more tailored proposition than a generic, horizontal platform. In addition to this, we believe there are clear parallels with our theses around the office of the CFO and SaaS as a network whereby the verticalization of HR also gives rise to the opportunity for vendors to offer a bundled solution which in turn can drive TAM expansion, improved retention, better unit economics, and a more strategic relationship with customers. Two major expressions of this that we are focused on are 1) the rise of SMB-focused platforms and 2) tool-building for frontline workers.
Rise of SMB platforms
People teams in SMBs have historically been notoriously overstretched, understaffed (or even nonexistent!), and undertooled. More often than not, the “core People” platform is pen-and-paper or an Excel spreadsheet that is error-prone, time-consuming to update, and only acts as a very basic system of record.
Increasingly, as SMBs are having to up their game and offer great employee experiences irrespective of resource constraints, we are seeing a new generation of arms dealers cater to this enormous yet enormously underserved market segment. Given the greater propensity for SMBs to purchase bundled solutions, we believe that vendors who can land with a mission-critical beachhead have an opportunity to expand their footprint and build a single-aggregated People suite for SMBs.
We see two primary beachheads into the SMB today – the central people data repository (“HRIS”) and Payroll (mission critical from day one). Companies in such a position have a unique opportunity to build an ecosystem of integrations with best-in-breed tools (e.g. for performance, engagement, training and onboarding, interviewing, etc.), further embedding themselves as the epicenter of the new SMB People stack, and potentially over time branch out and cross-sell other People modules and even financial services (e.g. insurance, expense management, etc.). As outlined above, this drives a multitude of benefits (ARPU expansion, improved retention, deeper customer relationship, etc.).
Given the sheer scale of the SMB base (e.g. SMBs typically represent ~50% of national GDPs[2]), the market opportunity for even national or regional champions is enormous.
Building for the frontline
Despite the fact that nearly 2 billion people currently work on the frontline and nearly every organization employs a combination of desk-based and frontline workers, HR tools have historically catered primarily to longer-tenured, desk-based employees. That said, this is changing as organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of engaging their frontline workforce, in no small part catalyzed by the recognition of the critical role frontline workers played in helping navigate the Covid-19 pandemic.
The requirements of frontline employees can differ significantly from those of desk-based workers. As a starting point, many frontline workers lack access to a desktop (so being truly mobile-optimized and deliverable to a variety of endpoints is mission critical); they may not have a company email address (which has implications for security as well as means of communication); and they often have more flexible, shift-based working hours (which has implications for time/attendance/payroll). In addition, hiring, training, and onboarding may need to happen in a matter of hours, versus days or weeks for desk-based employees.
We are now seeing the rise of HR tools optimized to service the unique requirements of this historically underserved segment of the workforce. Going forward, mirroring the rise of vertical SaaS in the past several years, we expect to see continued specialization of HR platforms by worker type, which in turn is a stepping stone towards industry verticalization. As with the SMB opportunity, this could in turn drive opportunities to offer bundled HR solutions such as employee learning, time and attendance, and payroll.
What excites us
While great progress has been made modernizing the HR technology stack in recent years, the unprecedented challenges HR teams face when looking to hire and retain world-class talent are more pertinent today than ever before. We believe this will continue to create massive opportunities for problem-solving technology vendors across the HR stack, especially into historically underserved market segments. We at TCV are incredibly excited about what the future holds for HR tech and look forward to backing and supporting visionary teams building the seminal businesses of tomorrow across every corner of the globe.
[1] Future of Work: The Global Talent Crunch, Korn Ferry, 2018
[2] 2020 Annual Report on European SMEs, European Commission; & “Measuring the Small Business Economy,” Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Commerce, 2020
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The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of TCMI, Inc. or its affiliates (“TCV”). TCV has not verified the accuracy of any statements by the speakers and disclaims any responsibility therefor. This blog post is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any private fund managed or sponsored by TCV or any of the securities of any company discussed. The TCV portfolio companies identified, if any, are not necessarily representative of all TCV investments, and no assumption should be made that the investments identified were or will be profitable. For a complete list of TCV investments, please visit www.tcv.com/all-companies/. For additional important disclaimers regarding this blog post, please see “Informational Purposes Only” in the Terms of Use for TCV’s website, available at http://www.tcv.com/terms-of-use/
If the best way to create the future is to build it, then the best way to understand a possible future is to listen to those who invest in it. Gartner interviewed several leaders at TCV to better understand their views on the future of high technology and high-tech providers. The views expressed below represent TCV’s view on its operations and the future. These opinions are TCV’s own and independent of Gartner positions. Throughout the interviews, the following themes emerged regarding the forces and factors driving technology investments and future success:
Top-line revenue growth has replaced cost efficiency as the primary job for technology — it is now Job. 1.
Insight is the source of effective strategies for achieving growth through differentiation and specialization.
The pace of change is accelerating across the frontiers of technology, including how rapidly companies and consumers adopt it — and few competitive advantages are as decisive as speed.
Technology architectures are in the midst of a generational change that is driven by more than the cloud or Hyperscalers.
TCV has invested in these insights, focusing on companies with the technological potential to support rapid, substantial growth in large, untapped markets. Figure 1 shows the ideas and connections TCV leaders described as the future of high tech.
Figure 1. TCV’s Perspective on Technology-Accelerated Growth
Growth Is Job 1 for Technology
“When you cut through all of the jargon and acronyms, the biggest difference for software and tech over the past five years has been in supporting growth,” says McAdam, who contrasts the growth imperative with technology’s prior jobs of taking costs out or getting cheaper computing power.
“Technology has created operating leverage via business process automation. Now technology’s value rests in driving top-line growth.” This changes the nature of technology, how it is valued, and what it does, according to McAdam.
“Growth is the uber premise when we think about disruptive technology solutions and the digitization of everything that drives our investment themes,” McAdam explains. “Consider CFOs. It used to be that an old-school CFO would be cost-oriented and say yes if the solution saved money and drove EPS. CFOs of today still care about this, but not as much as they care about taking market share from the competition. The clearest way a tech company can get a multibillion-dollar market cap — one that is 10, 20, 30 times revenue, is to provide a product that allows customers to transform their businesses and grow faster than the competition.”
Building for Scale and Speed
Applying technology in support of revenue growth requires TCV to work with companies on their go-to-market (GTM) strategy. TCV uses the ratio of revenue growth to sales and marketing expense (see Figure 2a) to identify points of friction and efficiency.
Figure 2. TCV’s Sales and Marketing Ratio
The calculation indicates how much new growth the company is achieving for every dollar spent on sales and marketing. If the ratio is 50 cents every $1 spent on sales and marketing generates 50 cents in new growth. The lower the ratio, the more opportunity there is to increase efficiency or effectiveness.
Figure 3 illustrates how the sales and marketing ratio can visually depict the performance of a company’s sales and marketing efforts. (Note these ranges are for illustration only; typical ratios vary by industry.)
Figure 3. Illustrations of Sales to Marketing Ratio
Source: TCV
TCV is using technology in a number of ways to move the needle:
Implementing analytics and diagnostics to identify growth obstacles, and documented strategies to better orchestrate key GTM practices across sales and marketing.
Facilitating forums and collaboration where leaders share ideas and best practices and road-test ideas with other executives.
Leveraging GTM practices that are based on best practices within the portfolio and providing other TCV companies with ready-to-programs to speed time to value.
TCV’s head of Marketing, Katja Gagen, added: “We see companies using technology to optimize their go-to-market capabilities. This can range from publishing thought leadership on growing sales pipeline or refining their messaging. The difference with technology is that companies can actively benchmark themselves against industry best practices.”
Blending Human Insight with Analytics to Identify Growth Potential
“We track nearly 10 million companies in our database,” notes Tim McAdam, a general partner at TCV. “We then do a deeper analysis of 2,000 to 3,000 candidates per year in order to select 12 to 15 companies in which to invest.” This puts our information on prospective companies into an analytic engine running proprietary algorithms created from the firm’s domain knowledge, sector expertise and 26 years of investment insights.
The result for each candidate is much like a credit score — a snapshot of investment worthiness that guides subsequent analysis and decision making. As McAdam explains, “Any given result is statistically valid because of the high number of other companies we have ranked against the same set of metrics. It’s an empirically driven assessment of the company’s areas of strength and needs for improvement.”
TCV uses this information to differentiate each of its portfolio company’s situation and connect it with experienced people and resources in support of the company’s success. McAdam compares TCV’s role to that of a coach, “we recognize that the founders of our portfolio companies are deeply invested in their firms. We seek to provide advice for them with humility, intellectual honesty and insight, with an eye toward finding solutions that move them forward.”
Growth requires a different Technology Architecture and Infrastructure
Matt Robinson, a TCV principal, explains that “high-tech architectures shift about every decade. Today, the increasing importance of speed, extensible solutions and consumption-based business models is the driver of evolution in architectures and infrastructure. If my technology is designed to drive your top-line growth, then your growth becomes my growth,” Robinson explains. “Our architectures and infrastructures need to be seamlessly integrated together.” Thus, the business case for architecture evolution is at least as important as the technical innovation from cloud and Hyperscalers.
The Future of High Tech — High Growth Potential
TCV does not see the future as one of consolidation around a few large well-capitalized companies — either Hyperscalers or so-called digital giants. “It is an old argument to think that everything will consolidate,” McAdam notes. “That view makes sense only if companies stop finding new ways to grow.” While he believes that Hyperscalers are important, he sees their role as “more of a channel to a stream of future technology-intensive growth and innovation rather than a competitor in the application/solution space.”
$1.58T is spent annuallyin the U.S. construction industry, yet it’s one of the least digitized industries in the world. Paralleling the shift to digital transformation across other industries, this is beginning to change. That’s just one reason we are delighted to announce that TCV is partnering with construction finance cloud leader: Built Technologies.
Construction may be one of the least digitized industries, but that’s not going to last for long. Builders and owners are expecting digital services, just as they do in all other aspects of their lives. When it comes to financing a construction project, customers around the world should expect seamless communication, payments, and procurement through the convenience of their phone. That’s why we are excited to invest in Built, who is seeking to upgrade the functionality and user experience for everyone in the construction value chain.
Nashville, Tennessee-based Built offers a cloud-based platform solution for construction lenders, owners, developers, and contractors. Its software acts as a digital workspace to allow all parties to collaborate to get projects built and keep capital flowing to the proper destination. The software is used by more than 150 of the leading U.S. and Canadian construction lenders, in addition to thousands of developers and contractors.
Built is closely following TCV’s thesis for SaaS as a Network – combining software + payments + marketplace, and connecting all key stakeholders on one platform. SaaS as a Network is a strong model for industries lagging in digital adoption, as products are focused on driving solutions, operational enablement, and strong ROI. We’ve seen this at Toast in the restaurant space – where Toast helps businesses operate more efficiently and grow revenue by providing payments, software and services, or with Clio, where law firms are able to manage their employees, and customers, and enable payments.
We believe SaaS as a Network is markedly increasing the possible expected return and economic strength of vertical sector-serving SaaS platforms, given it takes advantage of end-to-end workflows to build “rails” direct to their merchant’s customers, suppliers, and employees.
When a SaaS provider starts serving a high enough density of merchants, it can leverage that strength to build two-sided marketplaces with the merchant’s customers, suppliers, and employees. That SaaS vendor has now created a marketplace that can enjoy powerful network effects as seen in consumer marketplaces like Airbnb and Amazon.
Built’s platform started with a Construction Loan Administration offering that improves communication and operations between banks and their borrowers. Built has grown this offering to over 150 lender customers, representing more than $80 billion of unique construction dollars and is the system of record for these lenders’ construction portfolios. In addition, builders use this system to access their capital—the lifeblood of construction.
By following the flow of money from banks into the hands of builders and owners, the Built team realized there was an even bigger opportunity within the construction ecosystem. They started to build more products around payments and value-added services like on-site inspections and other critical support to enable the construction loan process.
Built was able to accomplish all this due to its product-driven team, led by CEO, Chase Gilbert, who has construction industry experience and understands the real-world buyer pain points. In addition, Chase and the Built team have taken a customer-centric approach that informs everything that they do, especially product design. As we spent time with customers, one of the key themes we kept hearing was the operational efficiencies that Built enabled. All stakeholders involved with the Built platform felt that they were able to operate better through their use of Built.
Since its 2015 launch, the platform has been used to manage the financing of over $135 billion in construction, spanning more than 200,000 commercial, homebuilder, land development and consumer residential projects. All these were factors that led to TCV being the lead investor in Built’s $125 million Series D funding round.
TCV first called on Built in 2017, and our team took the time to build a strong relationship with the executive team.
“We appreciate the great investing experience TCV brings to the relationship. As a result of its deep customer and technical research, TCV understands our vision and can see just how big an opportunity this is for both of our companies. We’re excited for our future together.”
Chase Gilbert, CEO, Built
While the recent funding is a nice milestone for the team, we are even more excited about the tens of thousands of users that access Built on a regular basis to fund their operations, and the opportunity Built has to build more products and do more to help its customers.
We view our investment as a perfect opportunity to add value. We think Built has a superb window of opportunity, as the world moves faster into a recovery being boosted by widespread embracing of digital ways of working. And, finally, we see huge potential in Built’s ability to connect key stakeholders in the construction process, connecting everyone onto a shared system. We’re grateful for this new partnership with Built and Brookfield Technology Partners, 9Yards Capital, XYZ Venture Capital, HighSage Ventures, and existing investors Addition, Index Ventures, Canapi Ventures, GreenPoint Partners, Nine Four Ventures, Fifth Wall, Goldman Sachs, and Nyca Partners among other individual investors. We look forward to supporting Built’s world-class team on their mission to transform a global market. The addressable market is not just the U.S.’s $1.58 trillion, but the world’s annual $10 trillion construction market.
We believe construction finance on a SaaS as a Network footing presents a remarkable future opportunity. Let’s get something great Built here!
If you’re interested in driving change in the construction finance market, Built is hiring!
After perusing slick digital shopfronts for hours, checking AI-enabled online catalogs, and paying through seamless single-click checkouts, you may eventually be rewarded with ‘your delivery should arrive in 5-10 working days’ and left to pray that the shiny new gizmo you ordered will arrive in one piece. Sound familiar? For all the innovation and investment across most steps of the online purchasing journey, the actual delivery experience has been largely neglected. Yet, the surge in remote purchasing shows no signs of abating and consumers are demanding faster, better, and cheaper deliveries. This has placed the status quo under immense strain and the need for new solutions to help companies navigate this complexity today is greater than ever.
A New Frontier for Innovation in E-Commerce Enablement
E-commerce enablement has been a key investment theme for TCV, and we have made multiple investments across each step of the value chain. In early 2019, we invested in RELEX Solutions (Helsinki, Finland) which provides an AI-driven platform helping global retailers forecast demand and prepare their supply chain to execute against it. In 2020, we backed Spryker (Berlin, Germany) which helps enterprises build beautiful digital commerce platforms for B2B, B2C, and marketplaces. We also invested in Mollie (Amsterdam, Netherlands) which provides a seamless, easy-to-integrate online payments solution for merchants across Europe. Another recent investment is Trulioo (Vancouver, Canada) which provides seamless know-your-customer (KYC), and know-your-business (KYB) verification checks globally, enabling smooth onboarding of merchants and consumers onto online marketplaces and fintech platforms. Paradoxically, while the e-commerce experience may appear increasingly effortless for consumers, the underlying technology landscape has become increasingly sophisticated and complex.
Following our investments upstream in the ecommerce value chain, we cast our eye further down, identifying logistics as the natural next step. Within this untapped, vast market, last-mile delivery from a fulfilment center to a delivery endpoint like a consumer home has always been the most operationally complex and resource-intensive leg of the journey, absorbing nearly 50% of total logistics dollars spend, driven by inherent lack of economies of scale (disparate drop-off points) and its on-demand nature. Complexity has also compounded due to new delivery and fulfilment modes like micro-fulfilment centers, curb-side pick-up, etc. which strain already razor-thin margins for retailers and carriers alike. Even Amazon, the most sophisticated logistics machine in the world, has not been spared — as a percentage of retail-related sales, Amazon’s cost of fulfilment/shipping grew from ~16% to 32% between 2010-19. On the end-consumer front, delivery experiences have become a critical driver of satisfaction and repeat purchases, with delivery constituting the only physical touchpoint for online brands with their customers. In fact, 55% of US consumers have bought goods from one retailer over another because they provided more delivery options[1]. Throw all of the above in the mix and you have a market that is ripe for disruption. Enter FarEye – a next-generation intelligent software platform that helps enterprises to orchestrate all of their delivery logistics requirements.
We were thrilled to recently announce our investment in FarEye. Founded in India in 2009 by Kushal Nahata (CEO), Gautam Kumar (COO), and Gaurav Srivastava (CTO), the trio started their journey as logistics consultants, before settling on their strategy of building a software platform that would help companies navigate the immense complexities of managing last-mile deliveries. Having spent several years developing the product in India and South-East Asia, where delivery logistics challenges are even more pronounced than in Western economies, FarEye relocated headquarters to Chicago and moved towards global expansion, addressing the vast demand across Europe and the U.S.
Compelling ROI and an Enormous Market Opportunity
We first came to know FarEye through its superlative customer feedback and enormous ROI generated for customers – 22% improvement in first-attempt deliveries, two times improvement in courier satisfaction, and 24% increase in on-time deliveries all while providing complete visibility across the entire logistics operations. Spurred by these reviews, we got in touch with Kushal and were blown away by the depth of the platform as well as Kushal’s strategic and product vision.
The FarEye platform provides an incredible range of end-to-end functionality today — all deployed on fully multi-tenant, cloud-native infrastructure — that benefits retailers, carriers, manufacturers, and end consumers alike. Shippers and carriers benefit from automated order allocation and dispatching, real-time dynamic routing, loop optimization and electronic proof of delivery; their customers get slot-based & flexible delivery scheduling, automated alerts and notifications, the ability to real-time track their deliveries, and 24/7 chatbot-based customer support. FarEye also empowers enterprises with the latest advances in real-time tracking and tracing, ETA prediction based on real-time constraints such as traffic bottlenecks, and control-tower visibility of enterprise delivery activity.
At the heart of the FarEye platform is a low-code BPM engine that allows users to rapidly build delivery workflows that can be customized to meet the demands of a particular industry and customer. Customers today span hot-food delivery, pharmaceutical, packaged goods, housewares, industrial equipment, and more. FarEye even counts some of the largest global carriers among its clients. FarEye Delight has helped the company to quickly expand its existing customer base which increasingly rolls out the platform across new geographies and business units while growing its functionality with net retention that is best-in-class.
As e-commerce and broader home-delivery become the new normal, retailers across the world are racing to adapt, while those that do not face the risk of quickly falling behind. For TCV, FarEye is an excellent fit with our overarching strategy of investing early in what we believe to be the franchise technology companies of the future – no matter where they are founded. FarEye joins Cognite, Trulioo, Redis Labs, Revolut, Relex, Nubank, Klarna, Mambu, Mollie, Spryker, and Dream Sports among recent investments made outside the U.S. Based on our experience investing in many other global leaders that were once young growth-stage companies, we believe FarEye has the technology, talent, expertise, and strong track record to become a truly generational software business of the future.
***
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of TCMI, Inc. or its affiliates (“TCV”). TCV has not verified the accuracy of any of the data or statements by the author and disclaims any responsibility therefor. This blog post is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any private fund managed or sponsored by TCV or any of the securities of any company discussed. The TCV portfolio companies identified above are not necessarily representative of all TCV investments, and no assumption should be made that the investments identified were or will be profitable. For a complete list of TCV investments, please visit www.tcv.com/all-companies/. For additional important disclaimers regarding this interview and blog post, please see “Informational Purposes Only” in the Terms of Use for TCV’s website, available at http://www.tcv.com/terms-of-use/.
[1] MetaPack Global eCommerce Consumer Report, 2020
We believe that SaaS vendors, particularly vertical and SMB, that provide a “system of record” are seeing massive increases in TAM, competitive moats, and economic opportunity. By extending and leveraging their workflow, data, and account ownership, SaaS vendors are delighting end customers while creating platform and networks.
With
opportunity comes competition, both from within one’s category (e.g.
application area) or from adjacent categories within one’s vertical (e.g. industry).
As boards and management teams wake up to the opportunity, they realize that
the race is on to capture the full potential of their vertical.
This post is a framework to help leaders of SaaS companies think through the strategic choices and hopefully increase the odds of reaching their full potential.Strategy is implemented by focused alignment of execution, talent, M&A, organizational structure, functional excellence, and financial and governance/board frameworks.
Finally, it’s important to acknowledge that very few companies have reached “full potential,” and this framework is inherently aspirational. However, “most entrepreneurs aren’t building a house, they are putting bricks in the foundation of a skyscraper” (Naval Ravikant). Aspiration is important, so hopefully this is an articulation of what is possible.
Lead the Category
This phase of the SaaS strategy is well understood. A SaaS company aspires to:
build a great product (and service)
over time, build an efficient and repeatable
go-to-market model (marketing -> sales -> onboarding)
and then “add capital” and execution
to press its advantage against sluggish incumbents or poorly capitalized
competitors
This is the
playbook that Omniture and our portfolio company ExactTarget pioneered a decade ago. Despite
massive capital inflows into SaaS and deteriorating economics, this model
generally still works today.
On the product side, scale
in data + AI can create increasing differentiation. For example, when you start
to have more data than anyone else, you can flip your product from being
reactive to proactive — having the product tell users where to look and how to
optimize the system. Both Xero and Shopify have done this well.
Five other things
to think about in this early phase that don’t get enough attention:
Scalable onboarding: Onboarding friction can be unaccounted
drivers of CAC and churn. A great onboarding process builds the trust and
confidence that are the foundations of virality/word of mouth, future cross- as
well as third party channel strategies. Carefully measure funnel metrics and be
attentive to new customer NPS. Automate early as “throwing bodies at it” can
create process debt that will be difficult to unwind later.
Expansion: Expansion drives net revenue
retention and most of the strategies we are about to discuss. With all sales
processes, it’s a lot easier to learn, iterate, and optimize with fewer bodies
and less complexity.
UI and Architecture: Like onboarding, these can be long-lead
time fixes that compound as your business scales and gets more complex. A
specific call out is to plan for an API strategy. It can facilitate future
partner strategies and increase the value and stickiness of your offering.
Pricing structure/strategy: You will constantly revisit tactics,
but it’s important to have some sense of how your pricing structure might change
over time.
Foundations for global, including a work culture that can
support distributed executives and operations, and good product feedback loops that
incorporate non-home market needs.
Hyperscale Locations, Feed
the Beast
A lot of ink
has been spilled on forward investing in sales and marketing, and arguably it’s
part of a/the “lead the category” strategy. But, it’s worth a call out as it’s
important you don’t take your eye off the ball too early. So much of winning and
future monetization is getting location market share. When the wind is at your
back, go get it done! Market structures have a nasty habit of shifting, future
secular tailwinds may abate, or competitors may leapfrog your product or your go-to-market
model. If your churn and sales economics are sound, keep “feeding the beast!”
One
particularly powerful unlock is Channel. There are verticals and
categories, where influencers in a channel are kingmakers and can help you
engage with segments that are otherwise difficult or uneconomical to
reach. Furthermore, Channel partners’
engagement and contributions can enrich your products and increase overall
customer value. A great example is in tax software, where Xero’s wooing of accountants proved to be
an effective source of customers and a formidable competitive moat (thereby
disrupting the incumbent provider). Xero went as far as offering free practice
management tools to help accountants run and grow their business on Xero.
Win the Control Points:
Own Your Vertical
This is where management teams are faced with a paradox of choice: “Where should we go next? How should we spend the next incremental dollar? On increasing ARPU, acquiring incremental locations, or expanding into new verticals, geos or segments?” At this juncture, it is our belief that you should focus on winning the control points. In vertical SaaS, there are typically one or two control points, “systems of record.” Usually one control point in the front office (e.g. Point of Sale, CRM, e-commerce) – “that drives sales, that grows the business, that serves as the cash register.” And one control point in the back office (e.g. general ledger) – “where everything else reconciles to.” Hopefully, you provide one of the systems of record, so go build or acquire the other system(s) of record and secure the high ground!
Pragmatically,
a system of record is the last software package a customer will “turn off” in a
tough economic time.
We also like to think about the concept of “gravity”:
Workflow gravity – the system that all other systems integrate to – it’s where the most users spend the most time. Not all workflows deliver the same value; in my experience the system of record workflow tends to deliver the most value.
Data gravity – the system that creates and holds the most critical information and is the hardest to migrate. That data can be critical to a client for a wide range of applications, from understanding their customers (e.g. CRM) to managing risk (e.g. compliance). Data also can be critical in two-level situations, such as loan underwriting (e.g. a bank underwriting a merchant’s risk via POS data) or supplier information management (e.g. a client managing risk by validating supplier capabilities and quality). Data depth and scope also create gravity where AI technologies can be highly productive.
Account gravity – the user/sponsor of the system is the highest-ranking individual in the customer organization; it’s the system that requires the biggest financial outlay, etc.
Winning the
other system of record is not easy. By definition, a system of record is hard
to displace and unless the market is greenfield pen and paper, competition can
be challenging. You may be able to do it organically with product innovation,
but M&A can be the more desirable path if “integration debt” is manageable.
If M&A is not possible, a slow winnowing of your competitor may be the only
approach available to you.
If you own
multiple systems of record in a vertical, the benefits are enormous:
Customer delight: automation from integrated
workflows and potentially unified data and data models allow efficiencies and
offerings unavailable before
Stronger account ownership
to capture incremental spend and drive more efficient growth
A new level of
durability and stickiness
A good example
is Veeva. The company started in 2007 with the launch of a CRM
and a sales automation platform for pharma sales reps (e.g. record their
activity, keep track of the doctors they meet with or drop off samples for, etc.).
After becoming the dominant player in that category, Veeva saw an opportunity
to move backward into research and
development for their life science customers (developing new drugs,
conducting clinical trials and bringing those drugs to market). In 2011 Veeva
launched Vault, a suite of applications that first centered on the core content
management needs for clinical trials, regulatory submissions, and quality
documentation. The company then expanded to include a series of core data
applications that help manage clinical trials, quality processes, safety processes, etc. Veeva is expected to
finish 2019 with $1.1B in revenue (26% YoY Growth) and 37% EBIT margins. Vault
represented 51% of total revenue and grew 38% YoY. Analysts also estimate Vault
meaningfully expanded Veeva’s addressable market.
Another recent
example might be front office player Shopify’s $450M acquisition of 6 River
Systems to move into back office fulfillment and warehouse management. Some
financial analysts estimate that merchants spend up to ~10-15% of their GMV on
logistics which could potentially provide multiples of Shopify’s current take
rate.
Expand Headroom
With
category leadership comes high market share and potentially high saturation. Long-term
growth is driven by location growth, as there’s generally a finite share of
wallet you can access. It’s important to invest in the S-curves of geos,
segments, and adjacent verticals that can unlock new location TAM. This can
take a couple of tries before you’re successful, so start this during your growth
phase when there’s less pressure on maximizing profitability.
Extend Through the Value
Chain
This stage
of growth can be transformative. By leveraging the strengths of your core
customers, you can expand into a new market with a new set of customers. Typical
patterns include moving from front office software to extend to your customer’s
customers, or from back office software and extending to suppliers. These can
be riskier bets, but success can pay out big here:
Increased TAM
Workflow that spans multiple parties and
creates increased customer value and vendor stickiness
Two-level network effects
Supplier
Extension
seems to work best by “following the money” and leveraging purchasing power. TCV
portfolio company Ariba articulated the “golden rule”— He
with the gold rules! By using their leadership in procurement software at large
corporate buyers, Ariba extended to build a robust suppliers software business
for merchants that serviced those corporate buyers. More recently, Avetta has followed a similar path in the
supplier information space by building a strong two-level network effect. We
believe corporate clients want to be on Avetta because it has the largest
network of suppliers, and suppliers want to be on Avetta because it has the
most corporate clients. Avetta’s advantage gets stronger as it scales. Moreover,
Avetta has an opportunity to help suppliers do more than just manage compliance
information. As a result, Avetta sees growth in helping suppliers grow and
operate their business.
CCC is on the third generation of this approach. They started by
serving large auto insurance carriers and then extended into autobody repair shops
that serve the carriers. CCC is now in the process of expanding to parts
suppliers. By getting all the key constituents on its software platform, CCC is
able to leverage AI and automation to massively reduce friction and provide a
great customer experience across all steps of the auto insurance process.
Employee
The employee
opportunity is similar to the supplier opportunity in terms of “following the
money.” Companies can use integrated payroll or time & attendance offerings
to establish a relationship with the employee. Employees are also consumers who
represent significant B2C opportunities such as consumer lending, insurance,
etc. There are big dollars here, but perhaps less opportunity to build significant
network effects.
Consumer
The
consumer/demand opportunity is the white whale. We believe that SaaS companies
tend to capture ~ 50-100bps of GMV for software subscription, whereas online
demand channels can take 15-20% of GMV in categories such as hotels and
restaurants. In addition to the massive revenue opportunity, Consumer also represents a strategic
flank worth monitoring carefully. Online marketplaces have large competing
salesforces that engage with your merchant customers and have strategic
interests encroach on the software layer to try to control supply. Booking.com bought Buuteeq and Hotel Ninjas to
vertically integrate into hotel supply. Uber is rapidly expanding its driver
offering to over-draft protection, a debit card, and likely lending over time
to manage driver churn. This is another example of increasing marketplace + SaaS convergence.
Some
derivative Consumer monetization
models include:
Consumer pay:FareHarbor approaches tour and activity
operators with a free to merchant, consumer pay model: “We’ll build your
website and booking engine for free, with no work on your part; you just pay us
for payment processing and the customer will pay us a booking fee.”
Channel management:SiteMinder offers
channel management to help hotels manage existing channels in real time. SiteMinder
has extended that value proposition to “Demand Plus,” an offering that helps
hotels easily expand into new channels to scale demand.
Existing customers: While 15-20% marketplace take rates may
be sensible for new customer acquisition/discovery, companies such as Olo are looking to move existing
customers to lower cost channels through their dispatch offering while taking a
much lower percentage of GMV.
Customer Co-opt: By seeing consumer data pass through
their systems, some SaaS vendors are building consumer profile databases that
they might monetize over time. In the recruiting market, we’ve seen players
leverage job distribution tools to build a candidate database. Shopify
similarly has built a large shopper profile database across all their
merchants. While Shopify hasn’t monetized directly, the uplift in conversion
rate is likely significant. This model is the most capital efficient but can create
conflicts with the vendor’s core merchant customers.
The biggest
benefit of extending through the value chain is that it gives you a
beachhead and a right to win in a new vertical to start the “full potential”
growth cycle again. As you do this, it’s important to reconsider your end
market and focus. When Ariba transitioned from procurement software to supply
network, they started to represent a front office “system of record” for their
suppliers. In doing so, Ariba was both a large enterprise “procurement company”
and an SMB “supplier enablement company.” The question was: “Which priority
should dominate?” When extension leads to conflicts, there are no easy answers.
As such, it is important to acknowledge that this growth strategy is ever-evolving.
In winning the key control points,
for the same reason a single system of record has a lot of “gravity,”
you now have an even stronger opportunity to turn your product into a channel. This
enables entry into adjacencies with data, workflow, and account ownership
advantages for you as well as for the end customer. The most extreme example is the “platform/ecosystem”
play, where you monetize third party vendors that want access to the channel your
product has become (e.g. Salesforce, Intuit, Shopify). However, most commonly a SaaS
vendor will pursue additional monetization with in-house or white-labeled
products.
Another key
consideration in prioritizing adjacent function/monetization is consistency
with your core go-to-market channel and proximity to key decision makers. Go-to-market
will determine the financial leverage of the cross-sell and often the overall
success. The core advantage of SMB software here is that often the
decision-making is relatively consistent and concentrated across software
purchases.
Every
vertical is different, but there are some common functionality/monetization
patterns emerging. Each of these patterns deserves its own write-up, but for the
sake of brevity here are some highlights:
“Integrated payments -> integrated banking”: The attachment of payments to SaaS has been well covered. That trend is expanding to the attachment of integrated banking. We had an opportunity to interview two of the smartest people in the business, Tim Barash and Jackie Reses. Square is out front here with broad based merchant and consumer plays. To understand the magnitude of the opportunity, Square’s Subscription & Services (most of which are financial services) are expected to reach $1.3B in 2020. This represents 23% of 2020 total GAAP revenue and 47% of 2020 Total Gross Profit (incremental gross profit is ~90%). Brex is earlier in its progression, but we’re excited to see how the company leverages its initial corporate card and expense management offerings to extend into broader financial services.
“Follow the workflow”: At times SaaS companies have
actually observed customers at work or mapped out the physical sites to
understand all the areas their workflow touches as areas of expansion.
“TAM shark”:HashiCorp CEO
David McJannet describes expansion as “TAM Shark,” constantly circling the
biggest, fastest growing (most change/opportunity) markets. He requires product
managers to report on market size and growth of all adjacent categories to make
sure they are focused on the biggest opportunities. Generally, over a 2-3 year
period companies have one, maybe two opportunities to build distinct add-on
businesses. Make sure you’re picking the biggest markets and therefore the
biggest payoffs.
Summary
If the
typical SaaS playbook is “Lead the Category” and “Hyperscale Locations,”
clearly the full potential for vertical SaaS players is dramatically larger
than conventional SaaS wisdom would suggest. We’re excited to work with — and
hopefully invest in —the frontier players as they explore the “Full Potential
of SaaS.”
If you found this useful, let us know, and we’ll continue to publish and explore the topic. We look forward to hearing your adds, edits, and challenges.
Caveats
There’s a tension between aggregating as big a profit pool as quickly as possible vs. “winning the market.”
This framework is characterized as a sequential strategy. In reality, most companies are pursuing multiple steps concurrently, and the sequence is more a reflection of prioritization.
Time horizon: this approach is a long-term strategy to winning, which may often be at odds with short-term maximization of valuation multiple and financial performance.
This approach is informed by a U.S./western/mature approach. In emerging/more greenfield markets, less focus and value chain expansion earlier in company development may make sense.
The
views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect those of TCMI, Inc. or its affiliates (“TCV”). TCV has not
verified the accuracy of any statements by the authors and disclaims any
responsibility therefor. This blog post is not an offer to sell or the
solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any private fund managed or
sponsored by TCV or any of the securities of any company discussed. The
TCV portfolio companies identified above are not necessarily representative of
all TCV investments, and no assumption should be made that the investments
identified were or will be profitable. For a complete list of TCV investments,
please visit www.tcv.com/all-companies/. For additional
important disclaimers regarding this document, please see “Informational
Purposes Only” in the Terms of Use for TCV’s website, available at http://www.tcv.com/terms-of-use/.
[1] See TCV’s SMB and Vertical SaaS investments at the end of the document.
