Why We Invested in Vendr
Craft and SoftBank are co-leading the $150M growth round
We’re excited to announce that Craft Ventures’ growth fund along with SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 are co-leading the $150 million Series B for Vendr, the world’s first SaaS buying platform. Additional investors Sozo Capital, F-Prime Capital, Sound Ventures, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator also participated in the round. The size of the round relative to current market conditions is a testament to Vendr’s clear product-market fit, strong growth, and excellent burn multiple.
Craft was a seed investor in Vendr two years ago, and our conviction about the need for this product has only grown over time, as the company has met or exceeded its sales forecast every quarter. The market need is based on the explosion of SaaS: A typical mid-size company now has over 200 software vendors, all of whom need to be managed from original purchase to renewal and expansion. Managing hundreds of contract negotiations and licensing agreements with software companies is a significant headache for procurement and legal departments, who scarcely have time to negotiate the best price. Vendr takes over all of this work and gets its customers the best deal, which it knows based on a data network effect: the more customers it negotiates on behalf of, the more information Vendr has about the real price of software. Vendr helps navigate the initial decision-making and evaluation to the entire negotiation and purchasing process. Instead of 200+ contracts, customers have one contract with Vendr.
Moreover, with the recent acquisition of SaaS management solution Blissfully, Vendr can now manage IT functions like seat provisioning — discovering unused seats and maximizing a company’s investment in each product. This has transformed Vendr into a full Saas Management platform for the IT as well as Finance departments.
Current market conditions are forcing everyone — from CFOs of publicly-traded companies to early-stage founders looking to extend runway — to be more capital-efficient. Managing software costs, one of the largest categories of spend, is an obvious way to do so, but hasn’t been easy until Vendr. We repeatedly hear from customers that Vendr’s time to value is nearly immediate and that it solves an acute pain point. In their words, Vendr is a “no-brainer,” paying for itself quickly.
Since investing in Vendr two years ago, we’ve watched co-founder and CEO Ryan Neu continually level up as a leader, transform a useful service into a robust platform, and build a strong team and culture. We’re excited to be doubling down with him and the entire Vendr team on the next step of their journey.
Vendr is changing how companies find, buy, and manage their growing software stack in a single system of record. Looking forward, companies will increasingly be focused on operating smarter and more efficiently: Vendr does both.
