BigCommerce Migrates to Google Cloud Platform, January SaaS News Roundup, Microsoft Acquires Citus Data: Newsletter January 25, 2019

BigCommerce has announced this week the migration of its infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform. The Austin-based SaaS e-commerce platform reportedly made the move to improve international customer support as well as the speed of its service, a win for Google as the race for cloud platform market domination grows increasingly competitive. BigCommerce was utilizing traditional managed hosting and hybrid cloud in both IBM’s SoftLayer and AWS prior to the recent move, which was motivated by anti-Amazon sentiment among BigCommerce’s customer base, as well as Google’s superior network performance.

In SaaS entrepreneurial news, SaaS Mag has released its January SaaS News Roundup, where the most critical stories in the SaaS world are briefed. Chief among the developments this month are reports on the strong performance of the SaaS industry in 2018, 10 outstanding SaaS companies from 2018, and the end of Google Hangouts. Check it out to ensure you are on top of all the latest trends in the industry!

Elsewhere in cloud data news, Microsoft has announced that they will acquire Citus Data, a Postgres extension for distributing data and queries across multiple nodes, for an undisclosed amount. Available as open-source, enterprise software and database-as-a-service, Citus will bring with it horizontally scalable database capabilities and is Microsoft’s most recent acquisition to bolstering Azure’s PostgreSQL performance and scale. Of the partnership, Microsoft stated, “Working together, we will accelerate the delivery of key, enterprise-ready features from Azure to PostgreSQL and enable critical PostgreSQL workloads to run on Azure with confidence.” Citus has recently raised $13 million in funding.

New in SaaS business listings this week we have a $95K B2B project management suite, with authoritative brand as a project management tool for Trello due to an early entrance into the niche, well-developed SaaS product with two mobile Apps offering expansion opportunities, clear value proposition allowing for growing LTV and strong MRR and automated operations with low owner involvement.

New in e-commerce business listings this week we have a $181K pregnancy and childcare subscription box business, with a high customer repeat rate of c.76% in the LTM, years of operational history leading to a firm position in the growing organic pregnancy products niche, rapid year-over-year revenue growth of c.42%, numerous positive reviews on authoritative third-party review sites, strong traffic profile and large social media following.

Featured in display advertising business listings this week we have a newly SBA-eligible $1.04M digital music platform business, with a decade of operational history creating an authoritative brand, excellent traffic profile with over 1.2 billion page views and 420 million sessions in the past four years, strong backlink profile with hundreds of thousands of backlinks and keyword rankings ranking for c.75,000 keywords, vast user base of over 670,000 registered users and lean and simple operational cost structure allowing for high and steady margins. If you are interested any of the above businesses, please follow the link to request a prospectus.

In events news, FE International is extending a 10% discount to clients and subscribers for LTV Conf, coming April 3-4, 2019 to New York City! Use code FEINTERNATIONAL10 at checkout to purchase Early Bird Tickets (currently 75% off full price) at the lowest they will ever be until January 28. Discounts are offered to bigger groups, so make sure to bring your team. Up to 400 invited SaaS Founders, Executives and Investors from private and public companies will be in attendance making this the perfect place to learn and make new connections.

Speakers include:

-Nathan Barry, Founder and CEO of ConvertKit
-Dan Martell, Angel Investor, exited SaaS entrepreneur and Chief Instigator at SaaS Academy
-David Hauser, Founder of Grasshopper and Chargify
-April Dunford, Executive Consultant for Market Strategy and Product Positioning
-Claire Suellentrop, Co-Founder of Forget the Funnel and customer feedback expert
-Lauren Foundos, Founder and CEO of FORTË

…plus more added every week!

Founder Thomas Smale had a great time at CapCon2019 this past week, and is looking forward to meeting up with fellow SEO experts at Traffic Think Tank in Philly this Saturday, Jan 26. If you are planning on attending or will be in the Philadelphia area, reply to this email to set up a meeting!

Continue reading below for more on BigCommerce’s shift to Google Cloud and Microsoft’s acquisition of Citus.

Listings

New

SaaS – B2B Project Management Suite – $2.1K MRR

• Authoritative brand as a project management tool for Trello due to an early entrance into the niche
• Well-developed SaaS product with two mobile Apps offering expansion opportunities
• Clear value proposition allowing for growing LTV and strong MRR
• Automated operations with low owner involvement

Yearly net profit: $23,000
Asking price: $95,000

E-Commerce – Pregnancy & Childcare Subscription Box Products – $22K gross/mo

• Subscription box model with a high customer repeat rate of c.76% in the LTM
• Years of operational history leading to a firm position in the growing organic pregnancy products niche
• Rapid year-over-year revenue growth of c.42%
• Numerous positive reviews on authoritative third-party review sites
• Strong traffic profile and large social media following​​

Yearly net profit: $61,000
Asking price: $181,000

Featured

Display Advertising – Digital Music Platform – $39K gross/mo – SBA Eligible

• Authoritative brand with a decade of operational history
• Excellent traffic profile with over 1.2 billion page views and 420 million sessions in the past four years
• Strong backlink profile with hundreds of thousands of backlinks and keyword rankings ranking for c.75,000 keywords
• Vast user base of over 670,000 registered users
• Lean and simple operational cost structure allowing for high and steady margins

Yearly net profit: $405,000
Asking price: $1,044,000

Sold

SaaS – CRM for Service Professionals – $31K MRR

Digital Service – B2B Social Media Automation Platform – $24K MRR

Display Advertising – Maternal Support – $9.6K gross/mo

E-Commerce – Amazon Merch – $3.1K gross/mo

In The News…

BigCommerce Migrates to Google Cloud Platform

BigCommerce announced this week that it has migrated its infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), ticking one more victory on the board for Google as cloud providers compete for customers.

Based in Austin, Texas, BigCommerce provides SaaS e-commerce platform services to its merchant customer base. The transition to GCP is meant to improve the platform’s speed, as well as international customer support. When choosing between GCP and AWS, BigCommerce reportedly selected GCP by factoring in the potential for anti-Amazon sentiment among its clientele. Before making the shift, BigCommerce was using IBM’s SoftLayer and Amazon Web Services, where SoftLayer was the main platform for expansion, and AWS facilitated operations during traffic spikes. As they began looking to improve page load times to convert more customers for its merchant base, GCP came out as the clear leader. CTO Brian Dhatt stated, “The move to Google Cloud was driven by where our customers are located, and also where their customers are located. Merchants want a presence as close as possible to their consumers, and Google is the only hosting provider out there that has its own fiber internationally and a network of undersea cables. So for us performance was a competitive differentiator. The physical infrastructure behind Google on the network side is superior.”

Dhatt also offered that BigCommerce has already migrated 90% of its customers without any downtime.

Microsoft Acquires Citus

Microsoft this week announced that it has acquired Citus Data in a deal for an undisclosed amount.

Citus Data is a Postgres extension company whose mission is to make PostgreSQL databases faster and more scalable for its users. As an open source PostgreSQL extension, Citus effectively creates a distributed database to allow users to focus on what they are creating rather than the speed of the platform. Tools like Citus are a driver of the SQL market growth, as they help users get around many of its limitations, making them a suitable investment for Microsoft. Microsoft will work together with the Citus Data team to “accelerate the delivery of key, enterprise-ready features from Azure to PostgreSQL and enable critical PostgreSQL workloads to run on Azure with confidence,” as they continue to invest in the growth of Azure. Of this mission, Citus has stated that “as part of Microsoft, we will stay focused on building an amazing database on top of PostgreSQL that gives our users the game-changing scale, performance, and resilience they need. We will continue to drive innovation in this space.”

Citus has raised $13 million in funding, and current customers include Chartbeat, Agari and PushOwl, as well as other Fortune 100 companies.

For more updates throughout the week on the financial world of online business M&A, follow our team on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.