Earlier this week I he asked startups to share third-quarter growth metrics and whether they were moving ahead or behind their annual goals.
Many companies have responded. More than I could have anticipated, frankly. Instead of just giving me some data points to learn from, The Exchange collected interesting data bundles from emerging companies with great performance in the third quarter.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.Of course, the startups they contacted were the companies that gave their best. I didn't get a single answer that didn't describe any growth, although a handful of respondents noted that they were behind schedule.
Regardless, the dataset that came together felt worthy of sharing due to its specificity and breadth. And so other startup founders can learn from the performance of some members of their peer group. (Making fun of.)
Let's get into the data, which has been segmented into buckets covering fintech, software, and SaaS, developer or security focused startups, and a final group that includes D2C and fertility startups, among others.
Q3 performance
Obviously, some of the following startups might belong to several different groups. Do not worry! The categories are relaxed. We're here to have fun, not part hair!
Fintech
- Numbered: According to Numerated CEO Dan O'Malley, his startup that helps businesses access banking products faster had a big Q3. "The revenue for the first three quarters of 2020 is 11 times our origination 2020 plan and 18 times the same period in 2019," he said in an email. What is driving growth? The digitization of banks, O'Malley says, "has been forced to happen rapidly and dramatically" in 2020.
- BlueVine: BlueVine offers banking services for SMEs; think about things like checking accounts, loans and payments. The company is having a great year, sharing with ProWellTech via email that it has expanded its customer base by "660% from Q1 2020 to" this week. It's not a revenue metric and it's not Q3 specific, but since both Numerated and BlueVine cited the PPP program as their growth engine, it seemed worthy of being included.
- Collection platform: A consumer-focused fintech, Harvest helps people recoup commissions, track their equity and bank. In an email, Harvest said it had "grown over 1000% +" in the third quarter and is "ahead of its 2020 plan" thanks to more people signing up for its service and what a rep he described it as "favorable wind". The savings and investment boom continues, it seems.
Software / SaaS
- Uniphore: Uniphore supplies AI-based conversational software products to other companies used for chatting with customers and for security purposes. According to Uniphore CEO Umesh Sachdev, the company grew by "320% [year-over-year] in our Q2 FY21 (July-September 2020) ", or a period that corresponds to the Q3 2020 calendar. According to the executive, that result was" on par with [its] Plan. "Given this growth rate, is Uniphore an early stage newcomer? Um, no, it raised $ 51 million Series C in 2019. That makes its growth metrics quite impressive as implicit revenue. base from which it has grown so quickly this year is bigger than we would expect from younger companies.
- Text request: An SMS service for SMEs, Text Request grew a lot in the third quarter, telling ProWellTech it was "6x more revenue than Q3 of 2019," long before its goal of doubling its invoices. A company director said that while "customer acquisition more or less lived up to expectations," the value of those customers increased dramatically. I delved into the numbers and was told that the 6x figure is for the total dollars billed in the third quarter of 2020 including recurring and non-recurring income. For the company's recurring software product alone, growth was 56% in the third quarter.
- Notarize: Boston-based digital notarization startup Notarize most recently raised a $ 35 million Series C - is way ahead of schedule, with a company vice president telling ProWellTech that during the " first week of blocks, Notarize's sales team got 3,000+ inquiries, "which they managed to turn into revenue. The same person added that the startup is" probably 5 times ahead [its] original plan of 2020 ", with the substance measured as annual recurring revenue or ARR. We'd also like some tough numbers, but the pace of growth is spicy. (Notarize also announced that it grew 400% from March to July, at beginning of this year.)
- BurnRate.io: Burnrate.io, supported by Acceleprise, didn't raise much money, but that didn't stop it from growing rapidly. According to co-founder and CEO Robert McLaws, BurnRate "started selling in the fourth quarter of last year," so it didn't have a pure Q3 2019 vs Q3 2020 metric to share. But the company managed to grow 3.3x from Q4 2019 to Q3 2020 according to the executive, which is still outstanding. BurnRate provides software that helps startups plan and forecast, with the company telling ProWellTech with the annual planning season coming up, it expects sales to continue growing.
- Analysis of the sauce: Location data as a service! This is what Gravy Analytics appears to be doing and has apparently been a good run so far in 2020. The company told ProWellTech that it has seen sales increase 80% year to date compared to 2019. This is a bit off the charts. our Q3 scope as it is more 2020 data, but we can be generous and include them anyway.
- ChartHop: ProWellTech covered ChartHop earlier this year when it raised $ 5 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Numerous other investors took part, including Cowboy Ventures and Flybridge Capital. According to our coverage, ChartHop is a "new type of human resources software that brings together all the data of different people in one place". The model works well, with the startup reporting that since its seed round in February - that $ 5 million event - it has grown 10-fold. The company recently raised a Series A. According to an emailed rep, ChartHop is "on target" for its pre-pandemic business plan, but "way ahead" of what it expected at the start of the pandemic.
- I think: Credo is a market for digital marketing talent. It is actually a company that I have known for a long time, thanks to the founder John Doherty. Second to Doherty, Credo has "increased revenue by 50% since June, while only minimally increasing consumption." Very well.
- Canva: Breaking my rules on including financial data only, I include Canva because it sent strong product data that it involves strong revenue growth. According to the company, Canva's online design service experienced "greater growth in both the second and third quarters, with an increase of 10 million users in the third quarter alone (compared to 30 million users in June)." The 33% user growth from 30 to 40 million is impressive. Additionally, the company added that it has seen more team-based usage since the start of the pandemic, which we assume involves buying more expensive group memberships. Come in real next time, please, but it was still interesting.
