Stripe has announced the launch of Stripe Capital, a new lending program for online businesses. As part of their mission to facilitate investment in growth for small digital businesses, loans are approved through an expedited process, funds are deployed the next day and business owners repay the principal as and when the business earns sales revenue rather than on a fixed day of the month. While competitors in the space include PayPal and Square, a recent valuation of $22.5 billion makes Stripe the most valuable private fintech company in the world.
Elsewhere in SaaS news, Splunk has announced it will acquire Omnition, a SaaS startup specializing in the use of distributed tracing to track microservices applications, as part of a new strategy to bolster their observability technology. While financial terms were not disclosed, the Omnition team is expected to come in with over a dozen engineers specializing in tracing and observability. The acquisition follows last month’s announcement that Splunk will acquire SignalFX, a cloud monitoring company, for $1.05 billion in its largest ever acquisition.
The digital marketing world this week saw Facebook launch an automated lead qualification function in Messenger, intended for use alongside click-to-Messenger Facebook ads. With this new function, a user clicking the “message” button on an advertisement will trigger a series of automated questions, which can then be integrated with CRMs to allow businesses to collect the answers and nurture conversations in other channels. This product launch comes the same week Facebook has been linked to hundreds of millions phone numbers found online, which were seemingly posted from a server lacking password protection.
New in FE exclusive listings this week we have a reputable SaaS business in the Online Privacy and Encryption niche valued at $1.69M. This eight year old business has built a 30,000-member community by providing users state-of-the-art seedboxes to improve online anonymity, download speeds and ease hardware loads. With attractive growth metrics including c.47.2% CAGR, $90,000 MRR, low churn and high LTV, this is a prime opportunity to take over a leading business in a growing niche. Please follow the link above to request a prospectus.
In events news this week, the FE International team had a great time at SaaStr’s local NYC meetup this week, where Jason Lemkin and panels of experts offered valuable advice for SaaS business owners considering raising funding. On September 9, make sure to check out Founder Thomas Smale as he joins Entrepreneur Magazine’s Press Author and Communication Strategy Expert, Jill Schiefelbein, in a free webinar titled The Entrepreneur’s Playbook for Going Global, where they will explore the benefits of taking business abroad. Click the link to register free!
Coming up, the FE team will be sponsoring SaaStock West Coast in San Francisco on September 10-12, where Thomas will be speaking on the Experts Under Fire – Tips, Tricks & Trends for Scaling a Valley-Based SaaS panel, so make sure to set up a meeting if you will be in the area.
Also happening in San Francisco, on September 13th FE International is proud to be sponsoring Activated’s inaugural event! Entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs will gather in the Bay Area to break down mental health and wellness barriers commonly faced in the fast-paced world of business. Make sure to register here using code ACTIVATEDFEI as it is invite-only and this is not an event to miss!
Listings
New
SaaS – Online Security & Encryption Software – $90K MRR
- Reputable SaaS business with eight years of operating history in the online privacy and data encryption space
- Steady revenue growth with revenues rising at a c.47.2% CAGR over the period 2016 to (e)2019
- Strong traffic with over 535,000 visitors and 1M pageviews in the LTM
- Lucrative SaaS metrics with thousands of paying users, high MRR of $90,000, and low net MRR churn
- Advanced features and capabilities with a large and loyal community of tens of thousands of members
Yearly net profit: $373,000
Asking price: $1,690,000
Display Advertising – Cooking & Recipes Blog – $7.6K gross/mo
- Five years of operational history leading to a firm positioning in the cooking and recipes niche
- Impressive volume of traffic with over c.5.5 million visitors over the L12M
- Strong SEO foundation with c.240 articles keyword rankings for c.60,000 keywords
- Lean and scalable cost structure driving high net margins
- Well-developed social media presence with tens of thousands of followers across four social media channels
Yearly net profit: $87,200
Asking price: $274,000
Featured
Amazon FBA – 4 Y/O Home Decor – $37K gross/mo
- Steady quarterly revenue growth of c.116% from Q3’17 to Q1’19
- Strong APRO growth of 15% over LTM
- Well-received products with hundreds of five-star product reviews
- Diversified product sales with no SKU driving more than 6% of total sales
- Strong value proposition with growing private label product sales
Yearly net profit: $88,000
Asking price: $259,000
Lead Generation – Transport Technology System Reviews – $6.3K gross/mo
- Reputable brand in a lucrative and growing niche
- Dominant SEO presence with keyword rankings for thousands of keywords and a robust backlink profile
- Steady traffic with more than 14,000 visitors in the L4M
- Rapid revenue growth, with revenues rising at a c.71% CMGR over the L6M
- Lean cost structure and simple operations
Yearly net profit: $72,000
Asking price: $181,000
Sold
Software – Online Advertising & Monetization Software – $25K gross/mo
SaaS – B2B Customer Support Analytics Software – $9.6K MRR
In the News…
Stripe Launches Stripe Capital
The world’s most valuable private fintech company is moving into a new area of banking: loans.
Stripe, valued at $22.5 billion after its last funding round, announced the launch of a lending arm called Stripe Capital on Thursday. The new venture is meant to help online companies borrow money to grow their businesses — which in turn, helps Stripe’s business. “Stripe Capital makes it easy for internet businesses to get the funds they need, when they need them,” Stripe’s Chief Product Officer Will Gaybrick said in a statement. Gaybrick said small businesses are the “engines for job creation in our economy” and it should be “trivially simple and lightning fast” for them to access the capital and invest in their own growth.
Stripe, whose rivals including Jack Dorsey’s Square and Netherlands-based Adyen, makes software that allows businesses to accept payments over the internet. Growth in companies using their platform could eventually help Stripe’s bottom line.
Splunk acquires Omnition
Splunk announced Wednesday that it’s buying Omnition, a SaaS startup that uses distributed tracing as a means to monitor microservices applications.
Splunk said the Omnition team brings more than a dozen engineers with significant expertise in tracing and observability. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Splunk plans to add Omnition to its IT and Developer portfolio. Splunk said the technology boost will enable its customers gain more insights into enterprise applications whether they reside in on-premises data centers or in cloud based applications and infrastructure.
“The combined power of Splunk and Omnition will provide users with a leading observability technology, bringing tracing together with logs within one of the most advanced IT monitoring and analytics platform,” said Splunk CTO Tim Tully, in a blog post.
Facebook Messenger Lead Nurturing and Possible Data Leak
Facebook is now allowing businesses to qualify leads in Facebook Messenger with the introduction of a new lead generation template. Users who click the message option in a Facebook ad will be introduced to a conversation with prefilled or freeform questions from the business along with follow-up messages encouraging users to respond.
The new featured is accompanied by CRM integration enabling companies to easily communicate with quality leads through third-party chat providers, Pages Inbox or pages Manager App. A UK-based financial services company reported qualified leads increased 42% after using lead generation in Messenger. The roll out of the new Messenger feature comes soon after the Facebook IDs and phone numbers of over 419 million users were found online, leaving users vulnerable to spam calls and SIM-swiping attacks. Over a year ago, Facebook restricted access to phone numbers so the question remains as to how the numbers were scraped from Facebook’s data.
Public concern arises as the exposed server was accessed without a password, meaning virtually anyone could have had access to the database and user’s personal information.