Last week I traded emails with a McKinsey Partner who counts global AEC software firms among his clients. He was working on a new report to be released soon, and I shared a few editorial thoughts prior to release.
As we exchanged thoughts, one of the topics we had controversial thoughts over was the share of SaaS unicorns in construction vs. other sectors.
Let’s have the facts speak, and you tell me:
There are are 1’100 Unicorns in B2B. Of which 650 (59%) are SaaS.
We have 4’350 Soonicorns in B2B. Of which 2’100 (48%) are SaaS.
And we have 12’330 “Minicorns” in B2B (a loose definition by Tracxn/Pitchbook). Of which 6’980 (57%) are SaaS.
By comparison:
25% of ConstructionTech Unicorns are SaaS (Procore and Built). And it could actually be argued that Built has FinTech promise priced in, and the SaaS component is less driving the equity price.
41% of ConTech Soonicorns are SaaS.
While interestingly, 56% of ConTech Minicorns are SaaS.
Check out my deck for full numbers. Below is the side-by-side for easier comparison:
The TL;DR is this:
75% of ConstructionTech Unicorns are NOT SaaS, while 59% of all other B2B Unicorns ARE SaaS.
Yet founders raise venture capital for as many SaaS firms in ConTech (56%) as in all B2B sectors (57%).
And before you conclude that ConTech SaaS is just a new category and it’s just a time delay. Nope, that’s not it. ConTech SaaS exists for decades, and has been VC backed for the last 10+ years.
So what is happening along the way you think? I have my thesis from the past 4 years investing in AEC-Tech and experience from our early investment in one of the non-SaaS ConTech Unicorns (Infra.Market), but curious to hear your thoughts.
Join the discussion with your comment here, or drop me a message.
