Understanding the SaaS Investment Model

The Interview ·
Featuring Gordon Ritter

Published on: November 10th, 2020 • Duration: 69 minutes

Cloud investor Gordon Ritter, founder of Emergence Capital, one of the first venture capital firms to invest exclusively in software-as-a-service, or SaaS, manages portfolio companies that have a market cap of $400B+ and 13 IPOs or exits greater than $500 million, including high-profile exits like Zoom and Salesforce. He joins Real Vision founder and CEO, Raoul Pal, for a conversation about the evolution of the software sector, how fast the SaaS investing market is today, the future of machine learning, the challenges ahead in data privacy, and the digitization of education. Filmed November 5, 2020. Key Learnings: The premise of SaaS is that a piece of software is hosted on a cloud infrastructure (operated through a web browser), and businesses pay a monthly fee to get access to this software. Investors in SaaS companies have reaped huge benefits, and the widespread adoption of SaaS platforms across business and personal applications doesn't appear to be slowing down.