SaaS

I am very interested in making investments in the SaaS market.  As such, I am attaching an internal presentation that sets up an investment thesis for the SaaS market. It includes a number of charts that I think will be useful to entrepreneurs who are in or are considering joining companies in the SaaS market.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments.  In particular, we are always looking for interesting companies with a great or many great entrepreneurs. 

Download saas_for_abcdvc.pdf

Comments

[a]

PPT missing?

[x]

Attachment is missing. Could you please post it again?

[Mark]

Sorry about the ppt. should be up in a few hours. Had some problems with it last night.

[Arun]

Mark,
As a VC in India, I have also been keenly looking at the SaaS space here. Not only does it seem like a natural progression from the IT services related stuff we are doing here, but it is also a natural fit with the BPO industry wherein a single service provider can both host a service and also provide ancillary back office related services. Unfortunately, it is still v.early days and not too many players here who have decent scale.

[Sanjoy Sanyal]

These would be very useful slides for an entrepreneur in this space. One comment that intrigued me however is that the “low hanging applications have been done”. I investigated the 44 companies that you referenced in your slides (both the public and the VC-invested-in companies. The largest concentration is in the broad area of Talent Management (8) by which I mean applications like Recruiting, Performance and Learning. There are 4 companies squarely in the CRM space occupied by SalesForce.com and about 5 companies in the overall Analytics or Business Intelligence space. (I have excluded a few companies where the applications appeared to be features and not real platforms). There are about two companies in the Employee Spend management category.

Does this data bear your comment that “low hanging applications have been done?”. I contest the conclusion. From an application standpoint, I think there is sufficient room to develop both SaaS versions of standard enterprise applications and also to develop new SaaS catering to niche needs within the enterprise not adequately covered by the enterprise vendors.

Having said that, I think the issue of the “application” in the SaaS space is not the central question. One of the most interesting companies referenced in your slides is Rearden Commerce, which is trying to develop an online marketplace for services. The model that Rearden is trying to develop goes beyond the application and asks what is the “solution to the business problem” that we are offering. SaaS entrepreneurs would do well to remember this shifting business paradigm. And BTW, if there is anybody who wants the research plese do contact me offline.

[Bill]

HI Ventureblogger..

I met this homepage and I am certain that you will visit it…. As their plan and program sounds fantastic and very interesting, as it will revolutionize the whole internet within a very short time.

www.Eovendo.eu

Kind regards

The Investordirector

[manoj onkar]

We are a more than a decade experienced IT and eCommerce Company with many great SaaS ideas in the implementation and in the pipeline.

Please contact for discussing further.

Manoj Onkar
http://www.linkedin.com/in/manojonkar