The 10 Hottest SaaS Startups Of 2021 (So Far)
CRN gives a rundown of the 10 hottest software-as-a-service startups so far this year: from CodeSignal, whose software helps recruiters test software development job candidates, to Zuper, the maker of field services deployment software.
See the latest entry: The 10 Hottest SaaS Startups of 2022 (So Far)
From a platform that employers can use to test software development job candidates to software that aims to improve how companies deploy field services workers, software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies have made a splash in transforming workplaces in 2021.
Some of the largest employers had to adopt remote working this past year and have declared a willingness to keep some form of it even after the global pandemic subsides, prompting a renewed interest in software tools that can improve and even change business operations in a variety of industries.
With headquarter locations including San Francisco and St. Louis and Kissimmee, Fla., these startups show that not only does innovation happen anywhere, but that startup funding remains strong and good ideas don’t only happen within the largest tech giants.
Here are the SaaS startups that have caught our attention so far.
For more of the biggest startups, products and news stories of 2021 so far, click here.
CodeSignal
Top Executive: Tigran Sloyan, CEO and co-founder
Headquarters: San Francisco
This startup offers a platform to help recruiters test software development job candidates on their technical skills. It counts among its customers Facebook, Uber, Zoom and Robinhood, according to CodeSignal’s website.
In May, the startup announced a new partnership with Eightfold.AI, which CRN ranked among “The 10 Hottest AI Startups of 2021” so far.
CodeSignal ended 2020 with a $25 million Series B round of funding. CodeSignal was founded in 2015 and has raised $37.5 million to date, according to Crunchbase.
Denim Social
Top Executive: Douglas Wilber, CEO
Headquarters: St. Louis
Denim Social offers social media management and marketing automation software for highly-regulated industries such as banking, insurance and wealth management.
For these companies, compliance can get in the way of a consumer-oriented marketing campaign, according to Denim Social’s website. The company allows customers to schedule and plan social media content, curate industry-specific articles for audiences and learn about online audiences with analytic reports.
The company counts AWS, Twitter and Facebook among its partners.
The company was founded in 2020 through the merger of St. Louis-based Gremlin Social and Iowa-based Denim. The company also raised a $4 million Series A round of funding to increase marketing.
Grax
Top Executive: Joe Gaska, CEO
Headquarters: Burlington, Mass.
Grax’s SaaS Data Archive schedules auto-archiving jobs to manage storage costs and application performance, removes data from an application without removing access, and makes archived data available for reports and analytics, all within Salesforce Einstein environments.
The company also offers products for backup and restoring, archiving data, logging changes in cloud app data overtime and making cloud app data available across the organization, according to Grax’s website.
In June, Grax released History Stream, a DataOps solution to stream native SaaS app data stored in AWS and Azure cloud data lakes. In 2019, CRN ranked it among “The 10 Hottest Data Storage Startups Of 2019.”
Grax was founded in 2018 and has raised $12.8 million to date, according to Crunchbase.
Malomo
Top Executive: Yaw Aning, co-founder and CEO
Headquarters: Indianapolis
This startup provides software to manage customer relationships while products are en route. Through Malomo, users can send customers updates on the location of orders, keep customers on their website with a custom tracking experience and educate customers on the product before it arrives to improve satisfactions, according to the company’s website.
The company has big-name carrier support from FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service. It’s also integrated with Shopify.
In April, Malomo raised a $5 million seed round for hiring, tool development and adding more carriers, according to the company’s website. It was founded in 2018.
Marsview
Top Executive: Murali Mahalingam, founder and CEO
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Marsview offers a SaaS platform for AI-powered conversation intelligence. The company’s suite of tools allows for automatic speech recognition, speaker separation, emotion and sentiment recognition and other actions, according to the company’s website.
The company’s APIs integrate with contact center workflows to analyze interactions and improve agents’ interactions and audit for compliance. The software integrates with video conferencing tools to read faces, emotions and body movements for analysis. Marsview integrates with Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other chat tools to analyze conversations for response times and sentiments, according to the Marsview website.
This year, Marsview became available for marketplaces for Microsoft Azure and Zoom. The company was founded in 2019.
Monte Carlo
Top Executive: Barr Moses, CEO and co-founder
Headquarters: San Francisco
Monte Carlo’s software takes on “data downtime,” the wasted hours data teams spend on broken dashboards, inaccurate analytics and poorly trained machine learning models.
This company’s software uses machine learning to learn what a customer’s data looks like and alert workers to issues. Data isn’t extracted from the datastore and implementation comes code free. Users of Monte Carlo include Fox, Hearst and Vimeo, according to Monte Carlo’s website.
In February, Monte Carlo raised a $25 million Series B round of funding, bringing total funding to $40 million, according to a company statement.
Spekit
Top Executive: Melanie Fellay, CEO and co-founder
Headquarters: Denver
Spekit offers a platform to train employees with the aim of increasing internal tool adoption, onboarding new employees and uniting salespeople under shared methods and goals, among other use cases.
Users of Spekit’s learning management system can measure employees’ engagement and sentiment, according to the company’s website.
In March, Spekit raised a $12.2 million Series A round, bringing total funding to $15.7 million. Spekit will use the money toward personalizing learning experiences and go-to-market operations, according to a statement from the time. Spekit was founded in 2018.
In February, Spekit launched Flows, a tool for onboarding new employees and training them on companies’ tools and processes. Spekit customers include Uber, Southwest Airlines and Databricks, according to a statement from the time.
Volta Networks
Top Executive: Dean Bogdanovic
Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.
Volta Networks delivers cloud-based virtual routing through a SaaS model, giving customers the opportunity for cloud-based routing at the edge.
Volta virtualizes and scales routing control planes while accelerating new network services through automation, saving customers money with low-cost white box switches, according to the company’s website. It counts among its partners Fujitsu, Edgecore Networks Corp. and Broadcom.
In January, CRN deemed Volta one of the “10 Hot Edge Computing Companies You Should Watch In 2021.” Since then, Volta’s Elastic Virtual Routing Engine (VEVRE) used to create virtual routers was honored by the 2021 Lightwave Innovation Reviews.
The company was founded in 2015 and has raised $22.7 million to date, according to Crunchbase.
Yac
Top Executive: Justin Mitchell, CEO and co-founder
Headquarters: Kissimmee, Fla.
Yac started off 2021 in a big way with a $7.5 million round of funding in January, including money from Slack’s investment wing.
The money should help the company grow its voice and video messages offerings, which aim to cut down on the number of meetings for remote workers, according to Yac’s website. Users can send a message of a photo, video or screen recording with annotations and their own recorded voice, which the company regards as less interruptive than a meeting.
The product integrates with Slack and has a web app for Linux and Chromebooks users.
The company was founded in 2019 and has raised $11 million to date, according to Crunchbase.
Zuper
Top Executive: Anand Subbaraj, CEO
Headquarters: Seattle
Zuper’s platform aims to simplify field service management with tools for omnichannel booking and dispatching for clients in home services like HVAC and landscaping and even managed service providers. Zuper counts Ikea among its users, according to its website.
The company offers tools to manage work orders, timesheets and shifts, track workers’ locations and invoice customers, according to the website.
The company was founded in 2016 and has raised $1.1 million to date, according to Crunchbase.