Sastrify Raises $7M to Simplify SaaS Buying for SMEs

Streamlining SaaS Management with Sastrify

The proliferation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions presents a significant challenge for many businesses. Determining which SaaS offerings deliver genuine value and justify ongoing expenditure can be difficult. Sastrify, a startup headquartered in Cologne, Germany, aims to address this issue by providing a highly automated platform for SaaS procurement and management.

Rapid Growth and Funding

Despite launching earlier this year, Sastrify has already achieved cash-flow positivity and reports a recurring revenue in the high six-figure range. This success is particularly noteworthy considering the company was founded just last summer.

The company recently announced the successful closure of a $7 million seed funding round led by HV Capital, alongside contributions from the founders of FlixMobility, Personio, and SumUp. This investment follows a $1.3 million pre-seed round secured in late 2020, prior to the platform’s official launch.

Customer Base and Target Market

Sastrify currently serves approximately 50 customers, including prominent “unicorn startups” such as Gorillas. The platform is designed to be most effective for growing companies with 100 or more employees, with a particular focus on European tech scale-ups.

In terms of competition, Sastrify identifies U.S.-based companies Vendr and Tropic as key players, which informs its strategic emphasis on the European market, although its services are not limited to Europe.

Demonstrated Value Proposition

Sastrify asserts that its customers experience an average 6.5x return on investment when utilizing the platform. Furthermore, the company claims to save clients “thousands of working hours” by eliminating inefficiencies associated with SaaS procurement processes.

Significant cost reductions are also highlighted, with customers reportedly saving 20-30% on their overall SaaS expenditures.

How Sastrify Simplifies SaaS Procurement

“Our core principle is to ask the correct questions at the appropriate stages of the procurement process,” explains co-founder Sven Lackinger, who previously founded and exited the SaaS company evopark in 2018.

“To realize this, we’ve integrated a five-step process into our platform, encompassing the entire lifecycle of SaaS applications within an organization. Clients can identify suitable SaaS solutions, and we guide them through a structured evaluation process tailored to their specific needs and use cases, including insights into solutions used by comparable companies.”

“We then manage the entire purchasing process, automatically contacting vendors and utilizing AI and OCR technology to compare and benchmark offers. Post-implementation, we continuously monitor usage through automated surveys and periodic re-evaluations to prevent license waste.”

Competitive Advantages

“Our platform offers a greater degree of automation compared to Vendr and Tropic, and we can directly resell licenses for services like Google and Microsoft, ensuring optimal pricing and swift delivery,” Lackinger adds. “This enables us to provide a more efficient and cost-effective solution, particularly well-suited to the European market, where average SaaS spending per company remains lower than in the U.S.”

The underlying premise is that if businesses are increasingly reliant on external SaaS providers, leveraging a specialized service to optimize that management is a logical step.