18 Companies Rocking at SaaStock

I have always been excited by SaaS companies, big and small, scrappy and steady, ones building their products around the corner in London, or killing it from Gran Canaria. These companies and their founders all have their different story of growth and this year we are fortunate to gather 900 of them for SaaStock in Dublin. If I could, I would make the ultimate list with all of them but since this year we are doing everything in 18s, I have picked up a few true SaaS rockstars.

You can join them in what will be Europe’s biggest gathering of SaaS founders, executives, investors and fanboys like me. Grab a ticket now.

Thrive

The team at Thrive has set an ambitious mission: to boost the performance and productivity of sales teams across the globe. The tool aims to solve a problem painfully known to sales managers — how to connect the dots between fragmented data in their teams. Thrive is a smart solution for Salesforce that syncs the platform with information from email, calendar and contacts. It runs in the background, updating and populating Salesforce with the full data the sales team has at its disposal, so that it’s put into use at once.

The CEO, Vincent Jong, is also the host of the podcast SaaS.CEO. He was also our neighbour in Runway East. We had a slightly awkward moment when I introduced him to Patrick Campbell who was visiting our office and had to reschedule a podcast interview with Vincent.

CEO: Vincent Jong
Founded: 2015
Based in: London, UK
Funding to Date:

Happeo

Happeo is a digital workplace platform that combines intranet, collaboration, and social networking for teams. It’s a unified solution that helps companies boost their employee engagement and reap benefits from it. Happeo aims to increase internal growth through empowering better communication and an improved experience for employees. It aims to revolutionize the meaning of “working together” through its innovative tools. In 2017, the European Union recognized Happeo as one of the most promising startups in Europe. The company’s growth is 230% year over a year.

Their CEO Perttu attended a workshop I ran in 2015, pre SaaStock. Pretty sure it was a pricing workshop, run by that man, Patrick Campbell. When Happeo raised their huge recent $8mill seed round, I recognised Perttu’s name, realised we were connected on linkedin and then the penny dropped that we had met 3 years ago at this workshop.

CEO: Perttu Ojansuu
Founded: 2015
Based in: Helsinki, Finland
Funding to Date: $8M from Vendep Capital and others

Productboard

Productboard is a product excellence system crafted in Oakland, California. It helps teams working on product creation to reach a product fit for market quicker. Productboard provides businesses with insights into what their users’ needs, how to decide the next product in line, and how to focus resources most efficiently to follow the product’s roadmap. Companies like Zendesk, Avast and Envoy are already using Productboard to optimize their processes, together with more than 1,200 other businesses across the globe.

Ashley Williams, the Community and Events manager, has attended our SOT Berlin event, which led to partnering at SOT NYC, which led to partnering at SaaStock18. As she was making the decision whether to support SaaStock18, she had three reference calls with Travelperk, Sellsy and Chargebee. Guinesses all around to all four companies in Dublin on us.

CEO: Hubert Palan
Founded: 2014
Based in: Oakland, California, USA
Funding to Date: $9.7M from Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Credo Ventures, and others

SmileBack

SmileBack is a customer feedback system created by a team based in Wilmington and Berlin, Germany. It helps businesses increase their customer responses by providing integrated customer surveys, automated alerts, actionable data analytics, and performance reports. Equipped with these tools, companies can boost their customer retention and thus drive higher revenue. SmileBack allows better anticipation of customer needs, improvement of operational efficiency, and reduction of customer churn.

I have known the founder of SmileBack, Brad Benner, as he attended both SaaStock 16 and 17 as well as both on Tour events in Berlin. I am really impressed with what he has achieved and was super excited to hear that he has replaced himself as the CEO of the company and is thinking of starting another SaaS business.

CEO: Ryan Grant Little
Founded: 2018
Based in: Wilmington, Germany
Funding to Date: N/A

Templarbit

Templarbit provides protection for applications from malicious activities such as ‘xss’ attacks. It defends and monitors applications in order to prevent harmful attacks that can disrupt business services. Relying on proprietary data and machine learning models, Templarbit can take autonomous defense decisions which don’t require human intervention. The application security platform is helpful for companies of all sizes, from startups to enterprises, that are creating software solutions.

I met Bjoern at a Point Nine Capital event in San Francisco and recognised his name from Twitter, where he is pretty active. I called him ‘the twitter guy’ and have since seen him co-found Design Inc and then co-found Templarbit. Even though the company is brand new, Bjoern is already attempting to internationalise it, but as he says more as a little experiment. As such he is focusing on one market alone — Japan. The story is pretty fascinating and you can hear it on the podcast.

CEO: Bjoern Zinssmeister
Founded: 2017
Based in: San Francisco, USA
Funding to Date: $3M from 205 Capital

CrossEngage

CrossEngage is an open marketing platform, which blends customer data with cross-channel campaign management options in order to bring a powerful coordination solution. It aims to solve a common marketing problem: the inability to handle communication with users via multiple channels. With CrossEngage, companies can boost customer engagement because they can increase personalized messaging. The cloud platform allows marketing managers to coordinate communication over email, on-site, RTA, push notifications, and more.

CrossEngage have joined us at SaaStock conferences before. They are good friends and Manuel brought to our attention that we had scheduled SaaStock Berlin to clash with NOAH conference. Yet he still chose the ‘underdog event’ us, over the goliath in NOAH.

CEO: Markus Wuebben and Manuel Hinz
Founded: 2015
Based in: Berlin, Germany
Funding to Date: €5M from Earlybird Venture Capital, Vorwerk Direct Selling Ventures, and others

Woodpecker.co

Woodpecker.co is a sales automation solution for B2B companies that enables cold email campaigns and inbound lead nurturing. It helps create targeted and personalized email campaigns, and provides automatic follow-up and reply detection. Woodpecker.io is a great helper for business development teams, saving them a ton of time spent on repetitive email tasks. It also allows easy tracking of campaign clicks and opens. The platform provides a powerful combo of effective multi-channel communication paired with a tailored approach towards every prospect.

Even though I have never met them before, I am super excited to meet the four team members joining us and hear how building a SaaS company from Poland is.

CEO: Matt Tarczynski
Founded: 2015
Based in: Wroclaw, Poland
Funding to Date: Undisclosed sum from Xevin Investments

Demio

Demio is a webinar platform built for marketing. It provides hassle-free solution that helps users create, market and host successful webinars. Demio allows audiences to join seamlessly with one click, provides real-time HD streaming, and allows sharing of webcams and screen. Users can easily upload slides and share videos straight in the webinar. In addition, the platform is designed to boost interaction with attendants. Users can create polls with stats, launch offers and post CTAs, and share handouts and gifts. Demio provides result monitoring and automation options as well.

CEO: David Abrams
Founded: 2014
Based in: Tampa, Florida
Funding to Date: N/A

OneUp Sales

OneUp Sales is a product crafted by Stormburst Studios, a Birmingham-based startup that creates business software inspired by games. The platform aims to help companies motivate their sales teams using real-time leaderboards, celebrations and digital wallboards. OneUp Sales offers a Sales Engagement Stack that allows businesses to analyze data, engage employees, and broadcast internally the team’s accomplishments. It also offers the option to create automated and flexible sales competitions to spark friendly competition between sales team members with leagues and contests.

CEO: Derry Holt
Founded: 2014
Based in: Birmingham, UK
Funding to Date: £150,000 from Mercia Fund Management

Talkspirit

Talkspirit is an enterprise software for B2B companies that enables better internal communication. Team members can form and manage both open and private groups and use instant messaging. Talkspirit also allows file sharing within the platform. The communication solution integrates with a list of other tools and platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, RSS, Trello, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Onedrive. The enterprise social network helps large teams communicate, collaborate and connect, thus allowing also company culture to grow and flourish.

CEO: Philippe Pinault
Founded: 2004
Based in: Paris, France
Funding to Date: N/A from Avolta Partners

Ometria

Ometria is a retail marketing automation platform that provides customer insights and personalized communication. Its mission is to empower retailers to better communicate with their customers through marketing based on Artificial Intelligence. Ometria allows customer profile building, enables the creation of relevant messaging, and ultimately helps increase engagement and revenue. It considers factors such as purchase history, browser behavior, marketing interaction, in-store activity, and returns data. The platform is used by top retailers across Europe and the rest of the world.

Ometria are well known in the UK and when I was first ramping up my knowledge on SaaS, I read a few blog posts from the CEO, Ivan Mazour. In one post, he wrote, he mentioned that he didn’t attend many conferences. We are lucky to have had him attend last year, this year’s SaaStock London and now SaaStock18 with his team. I guess he must like us!

CEO: Ivan Mazour
Founded: 2013
Based in: London, UK
Funding to Date: $10.9M from Summit Action, and others

EKM Systems

EKM Systems provides an e-commerce platform for individuals. It enables selling products online with ease. EKM offers all needed tools that are needed for creating a successful online shop. It boasts a rich list of features, including website building, design, marketing, conversions, payments, orders, and hosting. The platform is always in Evolution Mode, so it offers constant free updates ensuring e-commerce websites stay relevant. With EKM, e-commerce businesses can have an easy start and can manage all their operations straight from the same platform.

It’s 3rd year in a row for EKM systems at SaaStock. Anthony Chesworth literally flew his team over in a small propeller plane, both years. Hoping he does so this year and I am tempted to ask him to go for a spin.

CEO: Antony Chesworth
Founded: 2002
Based in: Preston, UK
Funding to Date: N/A

Demodesk

Demodesk offers a conferencing tool equipped to serve the needs of cloud software businesses. The browser-based platform can be used for easy screen sharing of SaaS product demos. Demodesk provides optimal resolution, as well as collaborative browsing and editing. It doesn’t require installation and works on any browser and device. The tool can be of great help to Sales and Success teams who need a powerful way to present demos. Demodesk also provides a scheduling option on top of the conferencing and screen sharing functionalities.

I was really impressed with the company and the founder Alex Pop, who I met back in June at SaaStock Berlin.

CEO: Alex Popp
Founded: 2017
Based in: Munich, Germany
Funding to Date: $150,000 Grant

Zonos

Zonos is a platform delivering cross-border tech for merchants. Its goal is to ensure top customer experiences and help businesses grow through using a global technology. The e-commerce SaaS solution assists companies in handling currency conversion, global payments, checkout translation, localization, and landed costs. Zonos offers three main products: Hello, Checkout, and Classify, each targeted towards a different set of e-commerce needs. Hello provides localized information about duties and taxes, as well as ensuring confident international shopping. Checkout helps with converting and keeping international shoppers. The solution also helps global businesses in meeting compliance requirements.

Zonos are joining us as winners of the Insider Sale Contest we ran earlier this year so I am super excited to meet them.

CEO: Clint Reid
Founded: 2009
Based in: Saint George, Utah, USA
Funding to Date: N/A

Eyeson

Eyeson provides a flexible solution for video conferencing tailored for B2B. It is built by VisoCon, a spin-off from the leading flight control systems Frequentis. Based on VisoCon’s patented Single-Stream Technology, the platform innovates video interaction and collaboration, setting higher standards in real-time video. Eyeson enables collaboration between industries, borders, and devices, and is a highly scalable solution. It has integrations for various use cases, allows unlimited number of participants in HD, enables YouTube and Facebook live streaming, and provides full mobile optimization.

CEO: Andreas Kröpfl
Founded: 2010
Based in: Graz, Austria
Funding to Date: €1.2M from eQventure and others

LearnUpon

LearnUpon is an edtech platform enabling organizations to train employees, customers, and partners more easily and successfully. The cloud-based learning management system allows delivering courses seamlessly, all packed in a great user experience that simplifies learning. The platform includes features like multi-portals, exams, webinars, branding, gamification, e-commerce, and reporting. It supports numerous languages. Companies can create different user groups with the secure and scalable system. Some of LearnUpon’s customers, now numbering more than 800, include DocuSign, Citrix, Snagajob and CoderDojo.

LearnUpon is one of the best Irish SaaS companies doing great in the EdTech space. CEO Brendan Noud has been with us since day 1.

CEO: Brendan Noud
Founded: 2012
Based in: Dublin, Ireland
Funding to Date: €550,000 from Enterprise Ireland and NDRC

Quaderno

Quaderno is a sales tax management system for online businesses created on the Canary Islands in Spain. It provides automatic sales tax, VAT and GST handling. Businesses can use Quaderno to take care of their tax compliance, receipts, and reporting. Thousands of receipts are being processed via the platform monthly, helping companies from small to large to stay on top of their taxes.

Carlos has been to SaaStock16, 17, and now 18. He’s also been to SaaStock on tour Berlin and Barcelona. Quaderno employees work 25 hours per week which carlos believes forces them to be more efficient at work, and gives more time to surf.

CEO: Carlos Hernández
Founded: 2013
Based in: Las Palmas De Gran Canaria, Spain
Funding to Date: N/A

Partnerize

Partnerize is a SaaS platform that assists companies in nurturing powerful business partnerships across the globe with the goal of boosting growth. It is a product of the Performance Horizon group. The Partnerize Partner Management Platform (PMP) provides insights based on Artificial Intelligence analysis of the potential results that a partner marketing program can bring. The real-time technology allows for examination, management and predictions of the future impact of partnerships between businesses. Currently Partnerize handles partner programs and exchanges between 214 countries worldwide, amounting to $6 billion.

CEO: Malcolm Cowley
Founded: 2010
Based in: Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Funding to Date: $28.5M from DN Capital, Greycroft, Mithril Capital Management, and e.ventures