Unicorns Everywhere: These Are the Most Valuable SaaS Startups in Europe

1. UiPath: From Romania to New York
2. GitLab: Developer support for millions
3. Veeam: Security from Switzerland
4. Darktrace: On the way to the stock exchange
5. Talkdesk: One of the big CRM winners
6. MessageBird: Huge round for the Twilio challenger
7. Celonis: As much SaaS business as it gets
8. Collibra: Dealing intelligently with data
9. Kaseya: Digital infrastructure with several brands
10. Personio: HR Champion from Germany
11. Pipedrive: Freshly baked Unicorn
12. Also worth mentioning:

If you're starting a business now and had to choose a business model, you might want to go for Software-as-a-Service – essentially subscription-based software. Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, Adobe, Shopify – some of the most successful companies in the world offer their services in the Cloud with a monthly billing model. SaaS startups are also emerging in different areas in Europe, which are already worth billions – and are currently significantly increasing their customers and sales. We show you the most valuable representatives.

Let's start with a short SaaS overview. More than 20 years ago, Salesforce introduced the term and business model. The principle: companies offer their software in the cloud as a service. Customers thus don't have to worry about updates, new versions, and server capacities. In return, they pay monthly for the service – and no longer pay once for the software. Especially in the fields of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), SaaS solutions are market leaders. Gartner analysts predict total revenue of $105 billion for SaaS companies in 2020.

Before we present our little list, one last note: We're showing startups that were founded in Europe – even if they have since moved their headquarters to the USA. What we noticed in our research: Many SaaS startups with billion-dollar valuations currently come from Israel or have their roots there – including AppsFlyer, Monday.com, GONG, Walkme or Sisense. Although many US analysts also count Israeli players as part of Europe, these do not make our list.

UiPath: From Romania to New York

In 2005, Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă founded UiPath in Bucharest. Both are still on board as CEO and CTO – only today they run the business from New York City. And they seem to be doing very well. Just a few days ago, the company announced a financing round of $750 million. The valuation of UiPath explodes to $35 billion. In total, around two billion dollars in investments are invested in the 15-year-old SaaS company.

But what are Dines and Tîrcă working on anyway? UiPath is a major player in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). This involves the automated processing of predefined business processes by software robots – in other words, bots. All the "repetitive, monotonous operations" within a company will be handled by UiPath using the classic buzzwords AI and Machine Learning. According to its own data, the recurring revenue is at $200 million per year – with a rapidly increasing trend. 5,000 companies are said to have UiPath in use. Next goal: An IPO later this year.

GitLab: Developer support for millions

In 2014, a Ukrainian and a Dutchman join forces in Utrecht and turn GitLab into a company. Back then, it was still a small project by Dimitri Saparoschez (the Ukrainian), but his co-founder Sytse “Sid” Sijbrandij (CEO today) believed in it. GitLab helps developers in companies manage their code in a development environment. The company has a Community Edition that is open source and freely accessible.

With the Enterprise Edition, GitLab benefits from the SaaS boom. In early year, the company announced a sale of shares amounting to $195 million. The valuation: six billion dollars. Here, too, listing on the stock exchange has been firmly planned. Unless a major player comes across. Competitor GitHub was bought by Microsoft for $7.5 billion in 2018.

Veeam: Security from Switzerland

Okay, we're cheating here a bit. Veeam from Switzerland is no longer an independent company. Since March 2020, it belongs to the US VC Insight Partners. The valuation of five billion US dollars at the time of purchase is still noticeable. Like many companies on the list, Veeam now wants to conquer the US market. This is to be achieved with its own software for data security and recovery in the Cloud which, according to its own data, is paid for by 365,000 users. The annual turnover is said to be one billion US dollars.

Darktrace: On the way to the stock exchange

Darktrace also builds its business model around digital security. The software of the company founded in Great Britain in 2013 is supposed to recognize and fend off cyber attacks with the help of AI and Machine Learning (there are the buzzwords again) – even in the cloud. What's particularly interesting is the founding story: Darktrace originated from a collaboration between former British intelligence agents and mathematicians at Cambridge University. Now it's mainly working on its rumored IPO, which should bring a valuation of five billion US dollars.

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Talkdesk: One of the big CRM winners

We are moving on to Portugal, where Talkdesk has grown into a European unicorn since 2011. In mid-2020, the company raised $143 million – the valuation rose to three billion dollars. Why is Talkdesk so valuable? The company helps corporations like IBM, Dropbox or Peloton keep track of their customer contacts. In addition to pure data management, Talkdesk offers centralized communication via SMS, live chat, email, phone, and social networks via the platform. The pandemic has further boosted the Portuguese's business model, as call centers and customer management have landed in the home office – and need to access the data from there too.

MessageBird: Huge round for the Twilio challenger

Another pandemic "winner" is likely MessageBird from Amsterdam. The platform provides the technological basis for customer communication – allowing companies to handle phone calls, SMS and messenger messages via the cloud. Companies can also easily integrate MessageBird's communication channels into their apps and websites.

This makes the SaaS startup a competitor to US giant Twilio (here in OMR portrait), which currently has a market value of almost $65 billion. But also due to the upswing in the Corona crisis, MessageBird is more valuable than ever. In October 2020, the company announced a financing round of $200 million, which pushed the valuation to $3 billion.

Celonis: As much SaaS business as it gets

We've arrived at the German representative of the list: Celonis builds on SaaS and Enterprise software solutions like those from SAP, Oracle and Salesforce and analyses the effectiveness of the processes taking place there. Celonis indicates bottlenecks in the operations and assists in speeding them up. This so-called Process Mining is used by Bayer, Vodafone, Siemens, Dell, Lufthansa, and other big names. The customer list seems to have impressed investors as well: in 2019, the company's valuation rose to $2.5 billion through a $290 million investment.

Collibra: Dealing intelligently with data

Many of the SaaS startups already presented base their success on data processing and analysis. And this is central for Collibra from Brussels as well. The company's tools assist in gathering company data and making it centrally available. For instance, large insurers collect data about their customers in the Collibra platform so that teams all around the world can access it and use it for offers. And since working from home and a decentralized structure are currently unavoidable, the company should continue to benefit. Collibra recently raised over $112 million in April 2020 – at a valuation of $2.3 billion.

Kaseya: Digital infrastructure with several brands

Dublin is home to a long-standing SaaS unicorn. Kaseya was founded back in 2000 – today the company is worth about two billion US dollars. Kaseya sees itself as a comprehensive solution for the IT infrastructure of companies of any size. Various subsidiary brands then offer the respective software services under their own names. From remote management of IT (VSA), to service automation (BMS), to an IT Service Desk (VOREX).

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Personio: HR Champion from Germany

The latest member of the SaaS billion-dollar valuation club is German HR startup Personio. Just on January 18, 2021, the team announced an investment of $125 million, giving the company a valuation of $1.7 billion. Personio offers small and medium-sized firms (between 10 and 2,000 employees) a comprehensive HR platform. It is designed to centrally bundle recruiting, onboarding, salary payments, vacation planning, and other functions. Just last year, Personio doubled its sales and now has 3,000 customers in Europe. The pandemic is likely to give the startup another boost. After all, the otherwise rather challenging target group of medium-sized companies is currently being pushed even more strongly into digitization.

Pipedrive: Freshly baked Unicorn

Also not in the club of value billionaires for long is Pipedrive. However, we cheat here – as we do with Veeam – a little bit. At the end of 2020, the Estonian startup goes for a rumored price of 1.5 billion US dollars to the American private equity firm Vista. Why would Pipedrive be worth so much to the investor? The company offers a sales CRM software, which allows users to create and visualize a "sales pipeline". This way, sales employees can clearly see at which stage their deals are currently at and where action is needed. More than 95,000 sales teams are already using the tool according to company data.

Also worth mentioning:

We know that such a list can never be complete and in the rather unclear SaaS business, a notable company can always slip through. Here are a few more emerging candidates of the European SaaS scene that we didn't want to withhold from you:

Mirakl from France helps e-commerce companies manage their marketplace. Contentsquare, also from France, provides an analytics tool for evaluating the user experience on websites. Brevo, the next Frenchmen, offer an email marketing tool and position themselves as a competitor to Mailchimp. Commercetools from Germany is on the trail of Shopify Plus with its shop solution for larger companies a bit. And Contentful from Berlin helps large companies like Urban Outfitters manage their content across all channels.