There’s a lot of value in public companies 10K’s and 10Q’s. And sometimes it’s what’s not included in them.
Over the past 5 years, there has been a public company in the sector where I competed. Sometimes the learnings were immediately helpful other times it was interesting to see how a larger company in the space operated their P&L.
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TrustSpot.io had Stamped (acquired by WeCommerce)
While the reports focused on WeCommerce as a whole, we were able to glean a little into Stamped’s product focus. It was focused on being a direct competitor to YotPo and grabbing more larger DTC brands (the big logos with significant VC dollars). This was reassuring as we were unable to compete there. And instead we continued down the road of building a better experience collection tool (UGC).
Clearscope had SEMrush
SEMrush is a juggernaut in the martech space. They’ve been around awhile and have fought many battles. As Clearscope and the SEO optimization market continued to grow (and mature), it seemed that SEMrush was the biggest threat. The reports shed light on their acquisition strategy and product focus. They were less innovators and more lego builders (think Google). During my tenure, they acquired Traffic Think Tank (media) and several other SaaS tools. They also hired Nick Eubanks to run their acquisitions.
When I joined Clearscope, I believed SEMrush would be an excellent company to acquire us. However, the speed of commercial AI changed my mind. It flattened the competitive landscape. SEMrush no longer needed to purchase a tool plus customer base they could just acquire the talent with some tech then roll into SEMrush. They’ve done this. While it’s not at the level of Clearscope or MarketMuse, it’s on its way.
Tovuti had Docebo
This was perhaps the most exciting as Docebo was a direct competitor at the high-end of the market. They had a large global team and customer base. The biggest and best logos used their tool. Their reports highlighted their expansive product list and deep marketing pockets. It also tipped their hand on where they were going – further up market and to the feds.
They shared how they were thinking of applying AI in their business and in their product. And their earning calls were incredibly helpful in understanding how they talked about the industry, their customers, and what they believed was their differentiation.
Sometimes a public company doesn’t exist
When we were building Harmony Venture Labs in the early days, we looked at other venture labs. Hims was an idea from the Atomic Labs company. I liked to study them as this was a significant success (and a lot different than a SaaS play). Other venture studios build SaaS then sold it within a couple of years to a larger player. But Atomic built Hims and took it public. And Hims continues to push their market forward.
And their ads in the early days were quite provocative which helped them gain traction.