So it’s been a sloooow time in SaaS IPOs since the boom times ended in December 2021.
There have been just 3 SaaS IPOs since December 2021:
And all were strong ones, at $500m+ ARR or so, growing ~50% or so. And that’s it.
But it doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of good ones waiting.
From Stripe to Canva to Databricks to Dialpad and more, they are plenty at $300m-$3B ARR with strong enough growth to IPO. And plenty more at $200m+ ARR with maybe less strong growth, that still want to IPO:
The clock in the end ticks on liquidity, and it ticks faster for Private Equity-backed SaaS players. VCs want to get their money back in 10-12 years, ideally. Longer is suboptimal, but OK. Bootstrapped founders can be as patient as they want to be.
But Private Equity hopes to make their profit in 4-5 years ideally.
And so, Private-Equity backed SaaS companies may finally in 2025 say It’s Just Time. It’s Just Time to Finally IPO, even if valuations haven’t back. It’s just time. OneStream was arguably one of these, and PE made a big gain on the IPO. Others will have to accept much lower returns, at least for folks that invested in 2020-early 2022.
Genesys may be the first of a flood of these PE-backed SaaS IPOs in 2025. It just filed to IPO.
Genesys is no spring chicken, and it hasn’t even been a SaaS company most of its life. It dominated a large section of the “on prem” call center market. The Cloud came, and leaders like Talkdesk and Dialpad emerged to take large market share, and older folks like RingCentral and Five9 also rolled out Cloud contact centers. And then during lockdown, the space exploded further. And now, AI is fueling more growth, as contact centers replace some of their humans with AI agents.
Fast forward to today, and Genesys:
- $1.6 Billion+ ARR
- Growing 35%+, fueled by AI demand
- 10% of bookings from AI
- “Strong profitability”
- 6,000 Cloud Customers of 8,000 total customers
Not bad. Not Canva or Databricks or Wiz epic, but not bad.
But … but .. its last round was led by Salesforce Ventures in 2021 at a stunning 2021 valuation of $21 Billion.
It’s hard to imagine Genesys will be worth more than $21 Billion with today’s multiples.
An incentive for a while … to wait. To wait and see where the markets go, if multiple reflate.
For many though, it may Just Be Time. Time to take a haircut, time to take whatever valuation the market says makes sense. Because it’s time for liquidity.
The clock on no liquidity for many has been running for years.
Will it be a flood of these PE-backed IPOs in 2025? It could be.
