But early-stage startups could face the most headwinds
if you read In the startup press, you might think that everyone in tech still has a strong hangover from the 2021 boom peak. While there’s a lot of talk about cutting spending, conserving capital, cutting headcount, and digging in, there’s also plenty of good news.
New data de Battery, for example, details a corporate software spending climate that is far from dead; For startups that sell software to other companies, this is great news.
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Good news is not in short supply. As TechCrunch recently reported, Salesforce demonstrated that SaaS growth could still exceed expectations, unicorns Instacart and Klarna are posting strong operating results, and software-focused corporate valuations are picking up. So much for a recession, yes?
The latest data dump from Battery Ventures (which raised $3.8 billion to invest last year) supports our overall impression that while many startups have had to reorganize their operations for today’s more conservative business climate, the business software sales is still good to be on. The same data set also tells us that it’s not equally good everywhere for every type of software vendor.
Let’s take a look at the good news first, and then discuss which software categories are lagging behind their peers. We’ll also cover the bottom-up sales approach and SaaS itself. If you’re building a software startup, let’s guide you today. Work!
The good
Let’s start with a general statistic. Battery created a sentiment index for business technology spending, indexed on a 100-point scale. A lot as PMI.50 is a “neutral” perspective measure on the battery scale. Despite falling from its Q3 2022 reading from 55.4 to 50.2, the index remains in bullish (positive) territory.
No crying, in other words.
