The SaaStock Startup Program has taken off this year and will now be bringing over 125 Startups from 6 continents to Dublin this October. We are super excited to welcome them all for three days of fantastic content, investor meetings, relaxed networking, pitching, and general SaaS shenanigans!
The top tier of our Startup Program is RISE, which is dedicated to the ten hottest SaaS companies from around the world. These companies are pioneers in their field and have crafted effective solutions to the problems they solve. Not only will you be able to find them on the expo floor at SaaStock, but they will also all be speaking on the Accelerate Stage on Wednesday, the 16th!
This article is designed to shine a spotlight on these chosen few and explain why they are worth paying a lot of attention to at SaaStock19. Let’s meet them!
SalesTrip
Travel booking solutions is a crowded space, but SalesTrip, founded in 2017, are already making a real name for themselves. SalesTrip offer something different from other expenses booking systems. It is effectively integrated into the Salesforce platform, which means that it understands far more than the regular booking system. In addition to offering the standard functionality of a travel and expenses solution, it can also make predictions about the likely cost of travel engagements. It lets the CFO measure the ROI of travel. Founder and CEO, Manoj Ganapathy already has one successful exit under his belt, and with his leadership alongside his elite team, SalesTrip looks destined for further success in the years to come.
Swit
One work suite to replace them all! This is the Startup who is taking on Slack and Asana despite arriving at the market years later. They are filling the gap between the two SaaS giants by doing both chat and team management. With Swit, you can turn your conversations into trackable tasks and seamlessly move between different workflows while maintaining context. While only founded in 2017, they had 450 clients within four months and no marketing. They have also secured a seed round which was led by Korea Investment Partners, with participation from Hyundai Venture Investment Corporation and Mirae Asset Venture Investment. These guys are a powerhouse in the making, watch out everyone.
Klaus
Customer success has never been more critical, especially in a world where everything is being offered as a service. Founded in 2018, Klaus has created a conversation review tool that improves customer service quality by making internal feedback easy and systematic. It plugs into all the main help desk platforms (Zendesk, Intercom, etc.) and helps deliver the equivalent of code-review to customer success teams. Klaus has already raised €1.7 million from Creandum, with participation from numerous Angels, including the founders of Pipedrive. This a quick start for a company with big aspirations, and they already have companies such as Automattic (WordPress), Trivago, Soundcloud, Figma, and Wistia on their books; I am excited to see what they deliver over the coming year.
DashDash
One of the unique Rise Startups is DashDash. Microsoft Excel has over 1 billion users worldwide despite a whole host of productivity tools popping up as alternatives. DashDash wants to harness this existing pool of excel knowledge and use it to create a spreadsheet tool that does more. You will be able to create web apps and more all using your spreadsheet skills. They have already secured an $8 million series A round of funding led by Accel, with participation from Cherry Ventures, Atlantic Labs, and various angel investors. DashDash Co-founder, Humberto Ayres Pereira states that “by removing the need to learn programming languages and making developing apps as simple as building a Lego set, we’re aiming to usher in the next billion programmers.” This is a fascinating concept, and I want to learn more at SaaStock.
Infinigrow
This is the second time for Infinigrow at SaaStock, and this Israel-based company has the perfect product for Europe’s largest community of SaaS leaders. Their AI technology recommends which channels to allocate B2B SaaS marketing budgets towards and how to allocate it – according to historical performance data, market data, and specified company KPIs. Also, it can recommend previously unused or undiscovered channels and forecast their results/impacts. With customers such as Paddle, ContentSquared, Demisto, and a $750k seed round last year, they have already had a strong start since being founded in 2017. Given the value that Infinigrow’s solution can add to all SaaS companies, these guys are worth saying hello to.
Xain
This Berlin-based AI Startup was only founded in 2017 but has already risen to prominence by recently partnering with Porsche to become the first company to put blockchain technology into a car. XAIN provides a platform that takes care of data privacy in machine learning. They enable companies to train your AI directly on each dataset without having to consolidate and anonymize your training data. Last year Xain received seed investment funding of €6 million, led by venture capital fund Earlybird in 2018. Out of all 10 Rise Startups, Xain has some of the most complex and intelligent technology. If you want to learn more about AI and its applications, you should speak with Xain at SaaStock.
ClickCease
ClickCease is another Israel-based startup that is joining us for the second year in a row. Led by our Tel-Aviv SaaStock Local Leaders, Ilan Missulawin and Yuval Haimov, they are the first bootstrapped startup on our list. They offer a click fraud detection and protection service. They protect Google Adwords campaigns from click fraud with special and unique detection algorithms. This is a growing problem, and few companies tackle this as effectively as ClickCease. They offer revolutionary active protection by blocking fraudulent IPs instantly and automatically, preventing competitors and bots depleting its customer’s advertising budget.
Refract
We all know that deals can be lost by poor performance from Sales reps. How should we combat this? Refract’s amazing AI software tracks conversations, and their AI determines what creates successful outcomes for teams and delivers personalized coachable insight for every rep. SaaStock veterans Refract have been with us since the beginning of 2016. They are one of the more mature startups on the list and were founded over four years ago. They have a great list of clients with Timeout, Forrester, Akkroo, Showpad, and VMWare, to name but a few. They were also voted No.9 in the top SaaS companies to work for in the UK, showing a significant commitment to culture. If you are looking to improve your conversions, just drop in and speak to Founder, Kevin Beale and the team at SaaStock19.
Watermelon
This fruity business is one of the fastest-growing business applications in the Netherlands. Watermelon had already secured a $1.6 Seed round and already has 34 employees since launching its product last year. Watermelon’s chat management platform comes in two parts, and this is what it makes it so powerful. The first part consists of building your chatbot without needing any programming knowledge. This is then supported by their platform, which has a dashboard where conversations come together. Watermelon can make customer service faster, better, and more fun. With huge clients like Domino’s, Pepsico, ALD, and VGZ but also offerings for SMBs, they have a flexible, effective platform that is going places.
Salesmachine
Experience can sometimes be key in helping startups succeed. Salesmachine certainly has this with serial entrepreneur Gilles Samoun at the helm. He has been the CEO of over six companies and has numerous exits. His latest company, Salesmachine, is already another success of his and is highly relevant to SaaStock’s audience. Their customer success platform helps subscription businesses onboard, retain, and grow their customers. It brings all customer data together in one place, helping businesses understand customer health and deploy customer success strategies to reduce churn and increase upsell. With clients such as Instapage, Mention, Marvel, and Spendesk, they have some of the hottest SaaS SMBs using their software. This tool can be vital in helping SaaS companies grow and scale, check them out.
Be sure to take the time to meet these rising stars.
