10º "Traditional” SW - 6th May
Analyst reports:
- Gartner: SaaS Will Still Grow 18% in 2023 & 2024 (1 minute read): Jason Lemkin has noted that while SaaS and cloud growth is slower than it was one to two years ago, it is still expanding. Have you had to revise your growth projections recently? (Gartner)
Startups raising funds
- Simpplr, a Redwood City, Calif.-based employee experience platform, raised $70m in Series D funding. Sapphire Ventures led, and was joined by insiders Norwest Ventures. Additional investors include Tola Capital and Salesforce Ventures. Link
- Hackajob, a London-based technical hiring platform, raised $25m in Series B funding. Volition Capital led, and was joined by AXA Venture Partners and Foresight. Link
- Pietra, a New York-based e-commerce infrastructure startup, raised $16m in Series A expansion funding. M13 led, and was joined by Founders Fund, TQ Ventures and Abstract Ventures. Link
- Aligned, an Israeli B2B buyer-seller network, raised $5.8m in seed funding co-led by Hetz Ventures and NFX. Link
- Airspeed, an SF-based platform for "connecting and celebrating employees," raised $7.5m in seed funding. Greylock and Venrock co-led, and were joined by Salesforce Ventures and Next Play Ventures. Link
M&A and Private equity deals
- Bain Capital is weighing a takeover challenge to Silver Lake for German enterprise software company Software AG, which Bain would merge with existing portfolio company Rocket Software. Link
- Apax Partners and CPP Investments are considering a joint takeover bid for Thoughtworks (Nasdaq: TWKS), a Chicago-based tech consultancy with a $2.3b market cap, per Bloomberg. Apax previously bought Thoughtworks in 2017, before taking it public in September 2021, and remains its controlling shareholder. Link
- Mozilla acquired Fakespot, a browser extension for identifying fake reviews that had raised around $8m from firms like Bullpen Capital. Link
- Intapp (Nasdaq: INTA) acquired Paragon Data Labs, a Wilton, Conn.-based provider of employee compliance software. Link
- Shopify (TSX: SHOP) agreed to sell its logistics arm to Flexport, in exchange for a 13% equity stake. The deal includes Deliverr, which Shopify bought less than a year ago for $2.1b. Link
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