Thus, SaaS startups are not category-specific, instead sharing a business model approach more than any particular industry focus.
Among myriad SaaS startups, those focused on selling to business clients — a group often called enterprise SaaS — are a magnet for venture capital.
Since then, investment into enterprise SaaS startups has slowed.
Enterprise SaaS startups raised $21.9 billion, $45.0 billion, $55.1 billion and $58.3 billion in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively.
Perhaps a rate cut or two and a strong enterprise IPO are the tonic required to really reignite venture investment into enterprise SaaS.
Consumer tech is bound for a comeback among unicorns, but maybe not just yetTen years after Cowboy Ventures’ founder Aileen Lee gave unicorns their nickname, she and her team are back with fresh analysis on private companies worth more than $1 billion.
As the number of unicorns boomed from 39 to more than 532, Cowboy found that their very nature also changed.
“The pendulum swung hard to enterprise, with 78% of unicorns today focused on B2B, the inverse of 2013,” Lee and her team member Allegra Simon wrote.
But spending more than a decade in tech teaches you something: to be ready for the pendulum to swing back.
Hence Cowboy’s prediction that “given the hard shift to enterprise,” we can “hope and expect more exciting consumer unicorns will be born in coming years.”
