B2B SaaS has been exploding these past years. Although more SaaS accelerators and SaaS investors funding B2B ventures than there ever were, not all investors have the means and know-how to make great partners for B2B founders.
To help narrow your search, I created a list of the top B2B SaaS investors and SaaS accelerators using founder feedback and each firm’s track record in B2B as guiding lights. Here are the best venture capital firms:
B2B SaaS Investors
Accel Partners: VC firm investing in early-stage B2B startups. Accel Partners is one of the most well-known venture capital firms in the world. B2B investments include SaaS leaders like Slack, Dropbox, Atlassian, DocuSign, and Braintree; a real who’s who of the best SaaS businesses.
Bessemer Venture Partners: BVP is the creator of the Top 10 Laws of Cloud Computing and SaaS. They are one of the most respected B2B SaaS VC firms on the market with over $20 billion invested in over 200 companies worldwide. When Bessemer decides to invest, other SaaS investors tend to follow.
Emergence Capital: One of the oldest enterprise-focused VC firms in the US. Emergence’s first investment was in Salesforce in the 90s. They’ve since invested in Yammer, Veeva, Box, and many other SaaS market leaders. They were early SaaS investors in video-conferencing startup Zoom, which IPO-ed a few years back with a market cap of $17.7 billion.
Matrix Partners: The VC firm affiliated with SaaS economics expert David Skok. Skok creates the Private SaaS Survey completed by more than 400 companies each year. Matrix Partners invested in Carbon Black, HubSpot, and Zendesk, among many others. Matrix Partners tends to invest early-stage. They’ve been expanding their reach in China and India these past few years.
Point Nine Capital: A Berlin-based Angel Venture Capital firm focused on B2B SaaS and online marketplaces. One of the best VC firms in Europe with investments in Zendesk, Geckoboard, ChartMogul, etc. Christoph Janz, creator of The SaaS Funding Napkin, and Michael Wolfe, co-founder of Vontu, are both part of Point Nine’s leadership group.
SaaStr Fund: The investment arm of serial entrepreneur Jason M. Lemkin, the SaaStr Fund invested in many of the best SaaS businesses (Algolia, Mixmax, Talkdesk, etc). The fund dedicates between $500K to $6 million per startup. The team at SaaStr also manages SaaStr Annual, the largest independent SaaS conference in the world.
Scale Venture Partners: Scale VP often gets recommended by B2B entrepreneurs. They invested in more than 100 companies over the past 20 years. Their portfolio includes enterprise SaaS leaders like HubSpot, Box, and Exact Target.
Bonus Venture Capital Firm
In-Q-Tel: In-Q-Tel is the CIA’s investment arm. It’s widely perceived as a stamp of approval for technologies secure enough for government agencies. It’s never a bad idea to get In-Q-Tel to invest, especially if you’re going after enterprise clients. Palantir Technologies, Spotfire, and MongoDB received funding from In-Q-Tel among many others.
Get the Full List of 115+ B2B VC Funds & Accelerators for FreeB2B SaaS Accelerators
Alchemist: Dedicated to enterprise startups, Alchemist has one of the best training programs and an extremely high-caliber network of mentors. Great companies that passed through their program include Assemblage, Mobilespan, and Wise.io.
AngelPad: Although not entirely focused on B2B SaaS, AngelPad is the highest-ranked U.S. accelerator (sharing the top spot with Y Combinator). Some of the B2B startups that graduated from their program include Pipedrive, DroneDeploy, Buffer, and Periscope Data. Not a bad list to be on!
Forum Ventures: (formerly known as Acceleprise) has accelerators on both the East Coast and the West Coast. They have one of the most complete accelerator programs out there, and a great network of mentors. Forum Ventures also is an investment fund. Their overall focus is early-stage B2B SaaS and enterprise technology, perfect for B2B founders.
L-Spark: L-Spark is a Canadian enterprise SaaS accelerator. Their goal is to help enterprise SaaS and cloud startups secure Series A investment. They worked with 90+ B2B SaaS startups. Their startups have gone on to raise more than $120M in follow-on funding.
Y Combinator: Although not B2B-focused, YC is the largest accelerator (B2B and B2C combined). Stripe, Optimizely, Dropbox, Xobni, Docker, and Mixpanel are some of the startups that graduated from YC. These past few years, Y Combinator has been creating additional programs to fund more AI, hardware, biotech, and education startups.
Get the Full List of 115+ B2B VC Funds & Accelerators for FreeHow to Find the Right B2B SaaS Venture Capital Firm or SaaS Investors for Your Startup
A lot of the best VC firms have their roots in B2C.
As the demand for B2B SaaS venture capital grew in recent years, many of these firms expanded by adding B2B partners.
Although many of the biggest VC firms can ultimately be great partners for your business, the best B2B growth partners for B2B entrepreneurs will be true “B2B natives”.
Raising capital from B2B native investors ensures that:
- Your growth gets evaluated with realistic and appropriate B2B expectations;
- There’s no desire to shift your business to a B2C model to grow its total addressable market;
- Your investors have deep knowledge and appreciation for complex sales, customer success, account-based marketing, distribution, partnerships, and other strategies more common in B2B;
- Your investors already have large networks of folks in businesses. They can help you find partners and recruit talent.
Any investment from one of the best venture capital firms will fuel your B2B business. By selecting partners that understand your reality and market, you’ll increase your chances of accelerating your growth rate and reduce the risk of tension and friction down the road.
Looking To Raise Capital? Get Our List of 120 B2B SaaS Investors:
Get the Full List of 115+ B2B VC Funds & Accelerators for FreeDid we miss any B2B SaaS investors or a SaaS accelerator that entrepreneurs should know? Let us know by tweeting us at @LeanB2B.
More on the Best B2B SaaS Investors
- 65 VC Firms and SaaS Angel Investors to Fund Your B2B Startup
- How to Raise a Seed Round in B2B
- 14 Ways B2B Entrepreneurs Can Extend their Startup Runway to Go the Distance
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