Last year, a number of startups building OKR-focused software raised lots of venture capital, drawing TechCrunch’s attention.
Why is everyone making software that measures objectives and key results? we wondered with tongue in cheek. After all, how big could the OKR software market really be?
It’s a subniche of corporate planning tools! In a world where every company already pays for Google or Microsoft’s productivity suite, and some big software companies offer similar planning support, how substantial could demand prove for pure-play OKR startups?
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Pretty substantial, we’re finding out. After OKR-focused Gtmhub announced its $30 million Series B the other day, The Exchange reached out to a number of OKR-focused startups we’ve previously covered and asked about their 2020 growth.
Gtmhub had released new growth metrics along with its funding news, plus we had historical growth data from some other players in the space. So let’s peek at new and historical numbers from Gtmhub, Perdoo, WorkBoard, Ally.io, Koan and WeekDone.
Growth (and some caveats)
A startup growing 400% in a year from a $50,000 ARR base is not impressive. It would be much more impressive to grow 200% from $1 million ARR, or 150% from $5 million.
So, percentage growth is only so good, as metrics go. But it’s also one that private companies are more likely to share than hard numbers, as the market has taught startups that sharing real data is akin to drowning themselves. Alas.
As we view the following, bear in mind that a simply higher percentage growth number does not indicate that a company added more net ARR than another; it could be growing faster from a smaller base. And some companies in the mix did not share ARR growth, but instead disclosed other bits of data. We got what we could.
Gtmhub:
- 400% ARR growth, 2019.
- 300% ARR growth, 2020.
- More: The company has seen strong ACV growth and its reportedly strong gross margins from 2019 held up in 2020, it said.
- TechCrunch coverage
Perdoo:
- 240% paid customer growth, 2020.
- 340% user base growth, 2020.
- Given strong market demand, a company representative told The Exchange that Perdoo had to restrict its free tier to 10 users.
- TechCrunch coverage
WorkBoard:
- 350% ARR growth in 2018.
- 300% ARR growth in 2019.
- Over 100% growth in 2020.
- Net revenue retention (NRR) of more than 150% in 2020.
- CEO and co-founder Deidre Paknad told TechCrunch that her company’s NRR has been above 150% for the last three years, adding that “over half” of her company’s growth “each year comes from customers buying more, and over 70% of [her] 2020 customers did so.”
- TechCrunch did some mathmagic in early 2020 when WorkBoard raised more capital, saying that if the company could “double [in 2020], the startup may begin to approach IPO scale in 2021, provided that its growth can keep up.” Let’s see.
- TechCrunch coverage
Ally.io:
- 330% growth (3.3x).
- 500 new customers in 2020, and the company noted in a release that “nearly 150 Ally.io customers have expanded their use” in 2020. Do your own math there.
This is our first time covering Ally.io in any capacity.Wrong: TechCrunch covered Ally.io here
Koan:
- “Double-digit percentage revenue growth” in 2020, now with “hundreds of paying customers,” per Koan.
- Koan CEO and co-founder Matt Tucker said via email that “no company in the space is going to build a lasting and interesting business unless they crack the engagement problem” that he thinks his company has sorted. More here on that from our coverage of its latest venture round if you are curious.
- TechCrunch coverage
WeekDone:
- “While we don’t publish exact growth numbers, I can say it was still a good year for us,” said Jüri Kaljundi, WeekDone’s CEO and co-founder. He added that his company has been “profitable since January 2015.”
- Kaljundi also wrote TechCrunch an explanation of where he sees the OKR software market going, namely that as the number of players with OKR software has grown, “2020 was the year where we started to see real differentiation among OKR players both in features focus as well as target groups.”
- WeekDone, Kaljundi wrote, “kept its strong focus in serving SMEs and regular weekly work management usage,” while others targeted the enterprise. This segmenting of the OKR market is a useful rubric for us to keep in mind.
- TechCrunch coverage
Some OKR-focused startups didn’t get back to us, and some leaders wanted to share the best stuff off the record, which we grant at times for candor amongst startup executives. We’ll check back in in a few quarters to see how 2021 is going for the cohort. Not all will survive, some will thrive, perhaps one or two will go public.
Let’s see who wins!