The SaaS model for a business is taking over the world.

The number of SaaS companies is higher than the regular consumer startups, and the investments coming through this sector also grow each year. In Europe, startup funding reached a new record of 15BN EUR in 2021, counting a third of the total funding across all verticals.

In this article, we try to cover some of the highlights of the Enterprise SaaS ecosystem in Europe and how the sector has evolved in recent years. We'll be going through a short overview of its growth, identify the key players in the ecosystem, and see why it's becoming more attractive to European investors.

What is Enterprise SaaS?

You already know what an enterprise is and what a SaaS startup is, so let's see the actual meaning of these two combined. The enterprise SaaS sector refers to a product running as a cloud-based solution and offers the functionalities needed by a large company.

As in any SaaS startup, the solution can be available to enterprises as a web solution, through a mobile browser, or by downloading a dedicated app for specific or multiple devices.

Enterprise SaaS and B2B SaaS are two different concepts, and you can easily distinguish them. B2B SaaS solutions are solutions targeted exclusively at companies, but not all of them are developed for enterprises.

Bigger companies have more extensive needs and demands when looking for a dedicated enterprise solution. Besides the actual product that resolves a specific problem, the company also looks at how its processes are becoming more efficient, require priority customer support, and expects a bespoke approach.

The State of Enterprise Software as a Service in Europe

Enterprise software, alongside the other two critical areas in business processes, plays a vital role in how big companies spend their IT budget. The average global spending on enterprise software is around $650BN, which continues to grow even in 2022.

Looking at the global SaaS market and SaaS providers growing steadily in the past seven years, things are getting more interesting. Last year, the software as a service market was worth $150BN and was estimated to reach $208BN by 2023.

Source: Software as a service spending 2015-2023 - Statista

A recent report from 2022 shows that European and US companies increased their spending on SaaS applications in the past pandemic years and continue to do it.

European startups are willing to take the lead, and we see more of them becoming unicorns in 2021 and 2022. According to Accel's latest report, we had 81 European SaaS unicorns in 2021 (2x growth compared to 2020) and 3.2x YoY growth in private SaaS funding in this part of the world.

European investors supporting Enterprise SaaS

According to Crunchbase, 417 companies and SaaS vendors in Europe received early-stage funding across 1300+ funding rounds. The total funding amount reached $8.3B from 788 lead investors joined by 2000+ others.

Some of the biggest European venture capital investors in SaaS are:

• Point Nine Capital
• Notion Capital
• Innovation Nest
• Speedinvest
• Mosaic Ventures
• Northcap
• Tribal VC
• DN Capital
• LocalGlobe
• Connect Ventures
• Frontline Ventures
• Creandum
• Runa Capital
• Dawn Capital
• Partech
• Blossom Capital
• Hiventures
• Global Founders Capital
• Venture Kick
• Ventech
• Portugal Ventures
• And many others.

European Succes Stories

Source: 2021 Accel Euroscape

In Europe, we can already see successful examples, such as UiPath, Payhawk, EmailTree AI, and the soon-to-be unicorns: Contentful (Germany), Tessian (UK), Aiven (Finland), Spryker Systems (Germany), Matillion (UK), Camunda (Germany), or Pollinate (UK).

In Eastern Europe, the latest success stories we can learn from are Uipath and Payhawk. UiPath is a Romanian-born company that has already made history by going public in April 2021 and bringing back a 220.000% return to the investors who supported the company in this process.

Payhawk is a Bulgarian fintech startup that raised $100M at the beginning of 2022, becoming the Eastern European Country's first unicorn. The company had a rapid growth process, raising its Series A round one year earlier, in April 2021.

Payhawk's co-founder and CEO, Hristo Borisov, shared with the How to Web community last year that growing the business as a SaaS business has only had positive results so far.

"I would say getting like-minded investors who have the same vision and trust the team created the biggest impact for us.

Fintech is a market that has high barriers, and without significant upfront investment, it will be hard to be competitive and create a strong product. So I would say that the biggest single impact has been working with investors who have already supported companies from Seed to IPO."

Source: The Eastern European SaaSy Guide

Enterprise SaaS startups who raised funding through SeedBlink

Enterprise SaaS solutions are not only taking over Europe but also opting for an investment round on SeedBlink more often. Between 2020 and 2022, more than five startups had an active campaign on the platform, with 3.746.713 EUR raised from 400+ participating investors from the region.

Siscale

Siscale - is a US-based company that developed Arcanna.ai, a tool designed to empower a team of experts with AI technology to extract insights and automate processes that would consume much of their valuable time otherwise. Arcanna.ai's team has a wide range of expertise in Cybersecurity, Data Security, Data Science, and Software Integration, and offers managed services, and consultancy to their customers.

Siscale had an active round in 2021, targeting 565.000 EUR and closing at 642.500 EUR. The round started with 150.000 EUR pre-committed money and added 415.000 EUR raised through SeedBlink.

Ringhel

Ringhel - is the company building Procesio, an enterprise platform with no-code technology through a platform as a service for non-technical people. Ringhel team makes this enterprise-grade software with a strong focus on security constraints and IT policies trying.

Ringhel had an active round in 2020, targeting a funding round of 400.000 EUR and closing at 525.000 EUR. The round started with 50.000 EUR pre-committed money and added 450.000 EUR raised through SeedBlink.

Procesio by Ringhel

Procesio by Ringhel - is an enterprise platform with a no-code technology through a platform as a service for non-technical people. Procesio aims to help companies adapt faster to market changes and decrease operational costs by using existing resources through this product.

Procesio had an active round in 2020, targeting a funding round of 500.000 EUR and closing at 610.000 EUR. The round started with 50.000 EUR pre-committed money and added 450.000 EUR raised through SeedBlink.

Smarthuts

Smarthuts - a SaaS software solution that allows people to manage the tasks assigned to field employees, partners, or third-party contractors to optimize the resources and processes involved. Smarthuts addresses the needs of companies that have between 10 and 250 employees or contractors working in the field.

Smarthuts had an active round in 2021, targeting a funding round of 140.000 EUR and closing at 190.500 EUR. The round started with 40.000 EUR pre-committed money and added 100.000 EUR raised through SeedBlink.

Global Database

Global Database - is a SaaS software solution that allows customers to identify high-probability prospects globally, verify, engage, and monitor them, to drive growth and minimize risks.

Global Database had an active round in 2021, targeting 1.212.500 EUR and closing at 1.210.000 EUR. The round started with 900.000 EUR pre-committed money and added 312.500 EUR raised through SeedBlink.

Sypher

Sypher - is a software platform that helps companies' processes to be GDPR compliant. With Sypher, you can collect, organize, and review the information needed to assess, document, and maintain the data regulation available in Europe. Additionally, Sypher allows privacy professionals to focus more on analysis, monitorization and advising organizations to find gaps in data protection and keep their GDPR compliance in place.

Sypher had an active round in 2021, targeting 550.000 EUR and closing at 457.500 EUR. The round started with 325.000 EUR, with Sparking Capital as the lead investor, and added 225.000 EUR through SeedBlink.

easySales

easySales - is a SaaS service provider for the eCommerce sector where merchants can sell on multiple channels from a unified plug & play platform. Customers can reuse their existing infrastructure, making it very easy to test new sales channels and opportunities.

easySales had an active round in 2021, targeting 300.000 EUR and closing at 337.500 EUR. The round started with 50.000 EUR pre-committed money and added 250.00 EUR raised through SeedBlink.

Crikle

Crikle - a SaaS solution that provides the necessary tools a salesperson needs to do his job remotely through an easy process and unified platform. The product connects in a few simple steps to existing sales management and CRM platforms, including Salesforce.

Crikle had an active round in 2020, targeting 500.000 EUR and closing at 577.500 EUR. The round started with 100.000 EUR pre-committed money and added 400.000 EUR raised through SeedBlink.

Soleadify

Soleadify - a SaaS software vendor is building a global business database, constantly updating and generating in-depth, fully automated profiles based on existing data points. All the data is extracted from the company's website, social media channels, Google My Business profiles, online articles published about them, and other public directories.

Soleadify had an active round in 2020, targeting 1.250.000 EUR and closing at 1.350.000 EUR. The round started with 1.250.000 pre-committed money and added 100.000 EUR.

SeedBlink's community of EnterpriseSaaS startups continues to grow as more solutions start to be developed in Europe, and their campaign goes live on the platform. Keep an eye out for new investment opportunities, and create your investor profile today!