Friday, July 12, 2019

The rise of European SaaS: apply now to be included in the Accel Euroscape 2019


-This article was co-authored with my colleague Maxim Filippov and published initially on Tech.eu.
Nominations are now open for the 2019 Accel Euroscape, the annual list of the top 100 cloud companies originating from Europe & Israel. You can apply HERE – applications will be open until 6th September 2019.
The growth of the cloud ecosystem in Europe over the past few years has been explosive. We first started capturing the growing momentum in 2016 with our list of the top European SaaS companies emerging from Europe.
Fast forward three years – Europe has proven that it can produce amazing global software companies. For example, UiPath, the leading Robotic Process Automation company from Romania, valued at $7 billion, may well be one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies of the decade, with revenues growing from $5 million to $200 million in around 30 months.
In just the past couple of years, companies from our 2017 Top 100 list have raised $4.6 billion, including several nine-figure rounds with UiPath ($568 million and $225 million both in 2019), Doctolib ($174 million in 2019) and Jfrog ($165 million in 2018). These financings have generated seven new unicorns, including UiPath, Darktrace, Doctolib, Intercom, TalkDesk, Celonis and WalkMe.
As researched by Tech.eu alongside Stripe, the SaaS category consistently ranks in the top 3 for funding in Europe, both for early-stage startups (more than €800 million invested from 2015 to Q2 2018) and growth-stage scale-ups (€2.5 billion+ invested from 2016 to 2018).
The strategic interest in European companies has also accelerated. Out of 100 companies from our 2017 list, 10 have been acquired, the largest acquisition being Datorama (acq. by Salesforce for $800 million), Demisto (acq. by Palo Alto Networks for $560 million), NewVoiceMedia (acq. by Vonage for $350 million) and Peopledoc (acq. by Ultimate for $300 million).
Accel has been on the ground in Europe backing the best founders and helping software companies go global for the past 20 years, believing strongly that the European software ecosystem would rise and reach the global stage. And this year, we can finally say that’s happened.
Calling the leaders
Applications for the 2019 Accel Euroscape, spotlighting the top 100 Cloud companies from Europe and Israel, are now open, and you can apply HERE.
To maximise exposure for the winning companies on the final list, they will be featured by Tech.eu on 15 or 16 October and announced live on stage at the 2019 edition of the SaaStock conference in Dublin.
Customer feedback will play a key role in our ranking this year. We will be working closely with G2 to include their ratings in our ranking. Winning companies will get mentions to their product profile on G2.
As the ecosystem is expanding, we will create two additional categories this year, next to the Top 100:
– The Champions League: list of pre-IPO companies close to or above the $100 million recurring revenue mark
– The Next Gen: list of 10 most-promising companies with recurring revenues run rate of less than $1 million
The core list of the Top 100 will have similar criteria as previous years. Any company with north of $1 million in recurring revenue run rate will be considered.
Our previous edition featured companies that have since gone on to re-define their categories. If you think your company deserves to be on the list, join us by applying HERE.

See you soon for more!

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