You win some, you lose some. Last week’s venture capital spree in the B2B startup arena has fizzled out, and we’re left with but a few investment rounds.
VCs were more trendy than ever, planting their funds in up-and-coming industries. This time around, $56 million was placed in two B2B industry trends: the as-a-Service boom and the enterprise on-demand space.
A solid volume of funding suggests investors expect these spaces to become more than just a trend among the enterprise. These startups may not be the next Uber, but they could be onto something.
Platform-as-a-Service
STAQ
In the latest deal for the as-a-Service space, STAQ announced a $5 million funding round led by Pereg Ventures. Genecast, Core Capital, Kinetic Ventures and Revel Partners participated as well, reports said on Thursday (May 19). STAQ provides Platform-as-a-Service solutions targeted towards marketing and advertising firms, linking companies with an automated reporting tool to manage technologies used by each firm.
“The digital advertising ecosystem contains thousands of technologies that companies must use in order to transact and monitor business performance at scale,” STAQ said in its announcement. “Until STAQ introduced its service, publishers, brands and agencies used costly manual labor or custom integrations to collect and move information across systems.”
STAQ provides a way to automate the aggregation and movement of data between these platforms, including analytics, delivery reporting and traffic statistics — the information critical to advertising firms’ success.
The firm said it will use the funds to strengthen its capabilities to integrate tools with each other in the digital advertising arena, as well as to grow its staff.
Software-as-a-Service
Showpad
We told you the as-a-Service trend is hot these days. Also on Thursday, Software-as-a-Service firm Showpad announced $50 million in Series C funding, spearheaded by Insight Venture Partners, along with other backers, including Dawn Capital and Hummingbird Ventures.
Showpad provides software to firms to optimize their content and identify the content that is unused — or irrelevant — for a corporation. Its technology measures effectiveness of existing content, particularly for marketing and sales efforts.
The firm, which said it will use the funds to strengthen its market position, said it focuses on streamlined software to make its offering useful. In announcing the new funding, Showpad also revealed an integration with Gmail to assess the effectiveness of marketing emails, as well as an integration with Salesforce to streamline data entry into CRM systems.
“Our focus on bringing simplicity and joy of use to enterprise software has put in place a great foundation for growth and innovation, and this newest round of funding will position Showpad to further establish the company as the market’s leading content activation platform,” said Showpad Co-CEO and Cofounder Louis Jonckheere in a statement.
B2B On-Demand
BHIVE Workspace
Venture capitalists continued to be on-trend with their financing, worth $1 million for India’s BHIVE Workspace, a solution to provide on-demand work space for professionals. With the new support, the firm said it plans to expand its offering to include more than 2 million square feet of office space, open 24/7, to professionals across six Indian cities.
The Series B funding, announced on Thursday, was led by Blume Ventures following its first funding round last year. BHIVE said it collaborates with landlords to ensure steady cash flow streams; the firm added that its flagship location operates at 100 percent occupancy.