
The Fastest Growing SaaS Companies of 2018 - vladimirpolo
https://academyocean.com/blog/post/the-fastest-growing-saas-companies-of-2018
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paulsutter
I tried to find how the ranking is calculated, tried signing up for the
sources they used, which in turn led to email like below.

This is just PR-spam several levels deep.

> Reply back to this email, and copy 2 of your friends who are SaaS CEO's,
> investors or just studying SaaS. I'll reply back and give you and your
> friends a full .CSV download of these rankings.

~~~
vladimirpolo
Hi Paul, I'm CEO of the company which has created this list. As you might
notice, it is voting for the most popular SaaS company among the Fastest
Growing. How we found which companies are the Fastest Growing? First, we took
a list of Nathan Latka, who hosts on the most popular SaaS podcast and has a
huge database of SaaS companies with their metrics. Second, we took a list of
the companies that have shown massive growth on Linkedin in 2018. And we also
added the data provided by Similarweb. It sounds very simple, but it took more
than a week of our team just to make this list of TOP50 companies the most
accurate way. Now we welcome everybody to vote for the companies from this
list. Hope that helps. Vlad

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thejohnconway
I guess it shouldn't be surprising that a list of SaaS companies are mostly in
the surveillance economy, but it is a little depressing that only a few aren't
in the business of collecting consumer data.

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scirocco
Agree.. Very narrowed niche towards crm

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3jckd
It's quite sad that most of them are traffic/ad optimization/analysis
companies. Clicking on the link I was hoping for a nifty list of tools that
benefit various (web-connected) industries.

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mrfusion
I think we’re finally out of saas ideas. Most of these seem to be sales, logs,
or analytics.

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devmunchies
and lots of them are just parrots of bigger saas companies that have become
bloated so there is room for a smaller, lighter competitor.

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mrfusion
Do you have some examples? I’d be curious.

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devmunchies
cloudcherry. they even have a comparison of bigger SaaS competitors on their
homepage (e.g Qualtrics).

close.io, a smaller, lighter Salesforce.

Piwik Pro, the description of the company sounds like google tag manager and
google analytics

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burger_moon
here's the top 15 from the list if you just want to know the company names.
I'm not going to post all 50. Sales and analysis/analytics are pretty dominant
keywords it looks like.

1\. ClickFunnels 2\. Lucky Orange 3\. CloudCherry 4\. Vainu 5\. Instapage 6\.
Proposify 7\. Piwik PRO 8\. Backblaze 9\. Chargify 10\. SaleСycle 11\.
ChurnZero 12\. GetResponse 13\. Logz.io 14\. Talkable 15\. Front

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thecleaner
Is it just me or does Click Funnel have an extremely stressful website ?

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davidivadavid
They've used the "sales letter" approach for a while. The reason is probably
that it's very effective. Rubs some people the wrong way, but results are
results.

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scirocco
So much CRM and marketing

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dawhizkid
I feel like consumer SaaS has not really caught on yet

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tirumaraiselvan
Good to see diversity in most of the teams :) Things are definitely changing.

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vladimirpolo
You are right! That was one of the reasons we've launched this list — we
wanted to show how different are the personalities in these SaaS product
teams.

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jimmy1
with few exceptions from this list, ageism still seems like it is in full
flight. I dread growing old in tech.

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john_of_peaches
Because we all know unequal results equals discrimination, every time. No
other variables

Less women? Sexism - Less old people? Ageism - Less cats? Dogism

Sounds good to me

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beaconstudios
there is a legitimate economic (I'm not advocating this) argument for hiring
younger. Younger devs are cheaper, often more idealistic and more willing to
work unpaid overtime. Throw some cheap perks in there (catering, beanbags etc)
to encourage them to spend all their time on company turf and I'm sure it adds
up to a greater company benefit than hiring an older dev even allowing for
experience/skill difference.

~~~
bendotero
There is a lot of wisdom to be found in people who do not make their place of
employment the end all be all of their existence, even if for a period of
time.

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beaconstudios
There's certainly a lot more to life than work. Doubly so in your 20s.

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Arkdy
I took two passes, and only spotted 2 black women on the teams. Which is
unsettling because:

1\. These are the people building the tools that'll be a part of _everyone's_
lives.

2\. If these companies continue to be successful, these are the people who'll
have the capital to continue to shape the future

3\. They're often already at the point where it's really awkward (and
uncomfortable) for a person of colour to join and be the _first and only_ one
there.

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fnord123
I don't disagree with your point, per se. But...

>only spotted 2 black women

>a _person of colour_ to join and be the first and only one there.

Based on just guessing from the photos, ClickFunnel, CloudCherry, Instapage,
Proposify, Chargify, and quite a few others have women of colour.

