10 Fastest-Growing SaaS Startups in 2023

Rating — 5·13 min·July 21, 2023
10 Fastest-Growing SaaS Startups in 2023
10 Fastest-Growing SaaS Startups in 2023
Discover the top ten SaaS startups that are worth looking into in 2023. Learn from the best to build a world-class product of your own, or simply stay abreast of the latest SaaS trends.
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Investment in SaaS startups has been showing continuous growth over the last decade. According to Silicon Valley Bank’s State of SaaS 2022 report, in 2010, the total invested in SaaS startups was $6 billion. In 2021, this number rose to an incredible $90 billion. The biggest jump was between 2020 and 2021, when investments increased by $55 billion year over year.

us saas vc deals and investments

SVB’s State of SaaS 2022 report

There’s nothing surprising about this: the SaaS model is profitable for both users and service providers.

Why do users prefer SaaS products?

  • The software is not hosted locally, so there’s no need to maintain hardware.
  • The software is easy to use and maintain thanks to incremental backups and regular automatic updates.
  • SaaS tools operate in the cloud, which enables users to access them from any device connected to the internet.
  • Business owners can pay for using comprehensive, universal SaaS services instead of investing in the creation of custom software with complex web app architecture.
  • SaaS products may offer a free trial period (from 7 to 30 days on average) so companies can assess the software’s functionality.
  • Software as a service offers a flexible payment model with various service bundles, so companies can pay only for functionality they need, allowing them to save a lot of money.
  • SaaS vendors support, update, and maintain their software and work to ensure its smooth and bug-free operation on a daily basis so their customers don’t have to create a separate team for these purposes.

Why do SaaS startups become successful?

  • Thanks to the licensing flexibility offered by the SaaS model, founders can cover various market segments, meeting the needs of customers looking for both basic and more extended SaaS solutions.
  • SaaS startups provide loyal users: if people are willing to pay for using your product on a regular basis, you’re on solid ground. Additionally, such a payment model provides regular predictable income, which helps planning budget.
  • Low upfront costs allow attracting customers with minimal effort. It’s much easier to convince users they should pay a little money to test the benefits of the product for one month without a commitment than it is to convince someone to invest in custom app development that may take years.

SaaS startups definitely offer a beneficial delivery model. If you’re thinking of joining the market with your own startup idea, it’s worth learning from successful business cases. That’s exactly what you’ll do in this article.

10 best SaaS startups to inspire you in 2023

We’ve identified ten best products that may be an inspiration for your own business. We will take a look at both new SaaS startups and those with a longer history that have kept innovating in 2023.

Read our list of top SaaS startups to watch and analyze some of the ideas and approaches that have brought the most benefit to the owners and build a plan to implement your own unique idea.

  1. Setapp

Setapp

Type: Collection of macOS and iOS software

Year founded: 2017

Country: Ukraine

CEO: Oleksandr Kosovan

Setapp is a service for macOS and iOS that provides access to a growing collection of software from various developers, allowing users to access many apps through a single subscription and user interface without having to buy separate licenses and download and install applications manually. As of July 2022, Setapp provided access to 200+ macOS and iOS apps combined.

Currently, Setapp has over one million users. This SaaS product achieved $1 million in annual recurring revenue at the initial startup stage six months after launch.

Setapp was awarded “Best SaaS Product for Productivity” at the SaaS Awards in 2019. In 2018, it also was a finalist in the 21st annual Interactive Innovation Awards in the New Economy category.

MacPaw developers keep expanding Setapp with new features on a regular basis, and the collection of available apps keeps growing. For example, in June 2022, Tripsy, a trip planner app, was added to the collection. Setapp is on its way to becoming one of the largest and fastest-growing collections of macOS and iOS software on the market.

MacPaw, the product development company behind Setapp with headquarters in Kyiv, continues to work and evolve the product despite Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. MacPaw does everything possible to ensure the safety of their workers, uninterrupted and flawless work, and updates to all of their products, including Setapp. On top of that, MacPaw does all they can to help Ukraine by donating funds for the military and humanitarian needs, supporting the army, volunteering, and helping to share the truth about the war in Ukraine, including by giving journalists and media outlets covering the war free access to CleanMyMac.

The services MacPaw provides to their users remain unchanged despite the harsh conditions in which the company has found itself in the aftermath of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.

  1. Copy.ai

Copy.ai

Type: AI-based content generator

Year founded: 2020

Country: United States

CEO: Paul Yacoubian

Copy.ai is one of top SaaS startups for marketing purposes. It’s an AI-based tool that generates sentences, texts, and slogans. This service is great for companies, agencies, and brands that need to create business texts (high-converting posts, engaging emails, etc.) quickly and easily. Users can simply put in a title and keywords, set the tone and goal, and outline the main points of the text. Then Copy.ai generates text and allows the user to edit it and paste the polished copy into their CMS for publishing.

This SaaS product offers more than 90 tools and templates. For example, a bio generator helps you create social media bios in just a few seconds. There are also title generators for webinars, blogs, and SEO posts; a content idea generator aimed at helping users come up with the next blog or social media post; and more.

During its first year, more than 380,000 people used Copy.ai to create marketing copy for their businesses. Thanks to that, Copy.ai made $2.4 million in recurring revenue from over 5,000 paying customers in over 50 countries. Currently, Copy.ai claims the service is used by more than one million teams and professionals, including large companies such as Microsoft, Nestle, and eBay.

In 2021, Copy.ai raised $11 million in Series A funding.

  1. Sparrow Charts

Sparrow charts

Type: Marketing analytics tool

Year founded: 2019

Country: United States

CEO: Braden Ericson

Sparrow Charts is a social media marketing tool based on machine learning algorithms that gather information from different sources about users’ actions and behavior. The idea behind Sparrow Charts was to develop a web application that would allow marketers to monitor analytics from different social platforms in a single tab instead of switching between multiple marketing tools.

Users can connect their data sources to Sparrow Charts; the tool then gets access to all available metrics and gathers data within a single customizable dashboard. This way, users can keep, review, and analyze all their data in one place.

Currently, the Sparrow Charts platform has 13 integrations including with Google Analytics, Twitter, Instagram, and Mailchimp. The Sparrow Charts team promises to introduce new integrations on a monthly basis. Users can access all data in dedicated dashboards and export it directly to Google Sheets, Google Slides, or Google Docs, so there’s no need to input data manually. Sparrow Charts also allows for the creation of an unlimited number of workspaces for managing and organizing data.

In June 2022, it was selected as a semifinalist for the Minnesota Cup in the High Tech division. The WebApp Market has rated the platform 4.9 out of 5 stars.

Sparrow Charts saw the light of day because CEO Braden Ericson couldn’t find a proper tool for gathering analytical data from several resources at once when he was working with analytics. So he decided to create such a tool. If your business needs some type of tool that doesn’t exist yet or if commercially available products don’t perfectly match your requirements, chances are that other businesses face the same problem. Think about turning the gap you’ve identified into a startup idea. And maybe it will become one of the best SaaS products in its industry. Don’t let a lack of technical background stop you: you can always outsource web development and concentrate on business tasks.

  1. OrdersCo

Orders.Co

Type: Online order management for restaurants

Year founded: 2020

Country: United States

CEO: Arsen Stepanyan

OrdersCo is a startup that was founded in the midst of the pandemic. It provides restaurants with the tools and partnerships needed to manage and automate food delivery processes. OrdersCo integrates with popular local delivery services (Postmates, GrubHub, DoorDash, etc.) and provides restaurants with a unified order list.

With OrdersCo, restaurants can manage menus and orders via one device and increase takeout profit even if they didn’t offer delivery or didn’t make significant income from delivery before the pandemic. OrdersCo seems to be a startup that had the right idea at the right time, when almost every restaurant was searching for opportunities to provide food delivery services.

Since its launch, OrdersCo hasn’t stopped developing. In June 2023, the company added the opportunity for users to customize dishes they want to order, i.e. exclude or include ingredients. A month before, the menu management system received an interface update: it became simpler and more intuitive.

As you can see, the crisis caused by the pandemic didn’t stop the OrdersCo founder from launching a startup and now this product has everything to become one the top SaaS startups in its niche. Even a crisis can give you new business opportunities that you can capitalize on. Just make sure to start with market research and create a product roadmap to avoid risks related to feature prioritization.

  1. Virtually

Vitually

Type: Online learning platform

Year founded: 2019

Country: United States

CEO: Ish Baid

Virtually founder Ish Baid caught the wave when demand for online learning platforms increased due to the massive transition to distance learning in 2020. Virtually provides all the tools needed to organize online learning for groups or individuals: dashboards, online classrooms, chat, a simple payment system, and more. Users can choose among a large variety of online programs, including live classes and training camps. Virtually integrates with Zoom, Slack, Google Calendar, and Stripe.

The great advantage of Virtually is its high level of customizability. Mentors, instructors, and owners of online schools or other educational institutions can create custom brands and domains, develop their own color schemes, and customize the functionality. The platform also allows for monitoring each student’s engagement, tracking attendance, and automating personalized outreach.

The Virtually startup raised $1.9 million in 2020. The team plans to develop a Virtually API soon to simplify integration with other services.

  1. Qobra

Qobra

Type: Automation of commission calculations

Year founded: 2020

Country: France

CEO: Antoine Fort

Qobra, a sales compensation platform for businesses that work on a commission model, seems to be one of the best enterprise SaaS startups. The main idea of this SaaS product is to reduce time-consuming manual processes that often lead to multiple mistakes (especially when data is spread across different databases and departments) with the help of automated, centralized tool. Qobra has useful functions that allow you to set rules for commission calculations, manage disputes, and control approval workflows.

The platform is designed as a helpful tool for VPs, heads of sales, sales operations managers, and sales teams. First, Qobra syncs with your data sources (Salesforce, Snowflake, Google BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Hubspot, and Slack). Then you can set commission calculation formulas. As a result, you can generate real-time commission statements.

Just a year after Qobra was presented to the market, it had helped process over €100 million in commissions from various large clients, including Doctolib and Spendesk.

In 2022, the startup secured €5.1 million in a financing round led by Breega. The Qobra founder plans to make commision calculations even more efficient and transparent and add integrations for HRIS (Human Resources Information System), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning tools) and data warehouse tools. The ambitious Qobra team aims to make Qobra one of top SaaS startups for businesses across Europe that use a commission model.

  1. Yac

Yac

Type: Communication platform for remote teams

Year founded: 2019

Country: United States

CEO: Justin Mitchell

Yac is a messaging platform for remote teams that boomed during lockdowns. It allows for recording quick voice messages and has a searchable audio transcription system, which is a nice benefit over other workplace messaging platforms like Slack.

Yac focuses on helping to integrate asynchronous meetings into a company’s daily workflow. It lets users communicate and discuss different topics without depending on the scheduled meetings. This means that discussion participants don’t communicate in real time but instead share their ideas by voice, video, and text messages. This introduces a convenient alternative to traditional online meetings for teammates distributed across time zones.

Yac is used by remote teams of large companies such as Spotify and HubSpot.

It has already received $11 million in funding from eight investors.

  1. Seedata.io

Seedata.io

Type: Cybersecurity platform

Year founded: 2021

Country: United Kingdom

CEO: Enrico Faccioli, Matt Holland

Data leaks may remain undetected for months, and Seedata.io offers a solution to this problem. Seedata.io is an innovative AI-based cybersecurity platform aimed at helping enterprises reduce threats from data leaks. It uses artificial intelligence to detect invisible risks and eliminate them before they can harm the system.

The platform uses deception technology, trapping hackers into interacting with fake data that mimics customers’ real data. Then it analyzes all interactions with this data. As a result, alerts are sent to the client enabling an immediate threat response.

Seedata.io is targeted at businesses that can potentially suffer from cyber attacks and don’t know how to detect and block them before they happen. It can be integrated with Office 365, Google Drive, Slack, and other services.

Currently, Seedata.io is one of top SaaS startups in the cybersecurity industry that

has 10 investors. The company raised £640,000 in a pre-seed investment funding round that will allow the founders to hire new team members and update the platform. Seedata.io founders plan to add new integrations in the near future.

  1. Phyllo

Phyllo

Type: Data integration platform for creators

Year founded: 2021

Country: United States

CEO: Akhil Bhiwal

Phyllo works on a universal API for creator data. It targets companies delivering financial, influencer marketing, content creator, and other services. With the help of the Phyllo API, companies get access to verified information about the creators they work with, data from their user profiles across various social platforms, engagement with published content, and generated income.

The APIs can be easily integrated across web apps, native iOS and Android apps, and cross-platform Flutter and React Native apps with only several lines of code. Currently, Phyllo connects a vast number of platforms including Patreon, Pinterest, Medium, Twitch, OnlyFans, Cameo, Udemy, Dribbble, and Fiverr.

According to Crunchbase, Phyllo raised $2.8 million through pre-seed investment in 2021. In 2022, it hit $594,000 in revenue despite being new on the market. Phyllo is on the way to becoming a powerful player in the creator economy.

  1. Lately

Lately

Type: AI-based content management tool

Year founded: 2014

Country: United States

CEO: Kate Bradley Chernis

Guessing what platform visitors want to see is a tricky task, and Lately is one of those SaaS startups that offer a solution: an AI-powered platform that helps you make your social media posts more effective.

Lately analyzes your content to spot what causes the most engagement with your audience, then builds a custom writing model based on this analysis. Next, you can upload your text, video, or audio to Latelyand apply your custom writing model to get more shares, likes, and comments. In this way, Lately helps to increase user engagement. Lately also offers a bunch of other useful tools including post scheduling, metrics analysis, and video and audio transcription.

A powerful and smart marketing tool, Lately keeps getting into different lists and ratings of the best marketing tools (#1 Best AI social media tool by Unite.Ai,10 tools to save time by Hootsuite, 39 Instagram tools marketers should use in 2022 by Hootsuite). In June 2022, Lately hit 98% sales conversion. In the latest funding round (January 2021), Lately raised $405,000.

Learning from top SaaS startups

The SaaS industry is growing. It managed to benefit from the pandemic period while the vast majority of other businesses experienced tough times. New software as a service startups are appearing and evolving more actively than ever.

This article may have convinced you to consider SaaS app development as your next big project. While exploring the patterns of successful SaaS startups, we recommend focusing on the following set of criteria:

  • Funding potential
  • Product-market fit
  • Unique characteristics when compared to competitors
  • Ability to satisfy your target buyers’ expectations

Many of the top SaaS startups we listed above adapted to new market conditions as a result of the pandemic, responding to emerging user demands. They learned new lessons and became successful.

There are a lot of reasons why startups fail, but also many reasons why they succeed. This list of B2B and B2C SaaS companies will help you figure out how to create and deliver value via software development in 2023 – smartly and hassle-free.

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