Linear #024: Wrapbook, Customer Retention Benchmarks, Top 50 Emerging Vertical SaaS Companies
Linear #024: Wrapbook, Customer Retention Benchmarks, Top 50 Emerging Vertical SaaS Companies
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One Vertical SaaS Breakdown:
Wrapbook
A software company backed by the who's who of Hollywood and Silicon Valley recently achieved a BILLION dollar valuation.
Exclusively focused on the entertainment industry, they've gone on to raise ~$130M in 5 short years.
The fascinating story of Wrapbook:
Wrapbook offers industry-specific production management and payroll software for the Entertainment Industry. Producing a TV show, commercial, or movie? You're probably doing it with Wrapbook's software suite.
Cameron Woodward, a former producer, saw firsthand how production teams lacked industry-specific software. He teamed up with Ali Javid, a business mind from Intel, and two software professionals, Hesham El-Nahhas and Naysawn Naji, to found Wrapbook in 2018.
Unions, contractors, project-based work, and a lot of different locations, production payroll is COMPLEX. Horizontal payroll companies like ADP and Paychex have been unable to meet the need. Enter Wrapbook's first product offering: payroll designed for production companies.
Insurance is a also huge requirement in the entertainment world:
stunts
errors & commissions
even drone coverage (!)
Wrapbook expanded their product line to also offer insurance to production companies.
And most recently, they launched production management software. Production management enables entertainment companies to manage their projects and crews from beginning to end. This module puts them on the path to becoming an end-to-end vSaaS solution.
Wrapbook says that more than 1,000 projects run on its platform every month. College Humor and London Alley are examples of some of the better known companies Wrapbook advertises as customers.
In 5 years, the company has also developed quite an investor bench. They've raised $130M from Hollywood and Silicon Valley Titans. Notable investors include Tiger Global, Andreesen Horrowitz, Jeffrey Katzenberg (Former Chairman of Disney), and Michael Ovitz (Founder of CAA).
Wrapbook hasn't disclosed their revenue, but $100M of their VC money came during the SaaS gold rush of 2021/2022.
While it's unclear what type of ARR multiple they raised at, many companies that raised big rounds during this time are struggling to grow into monster valuations.
Wrapbook is one of the pioneers of industry-specific payroll. I'm excited to continue to watch them innovate and become the dominant player in the Entertainment software space.
What do you think they will do next?
One ‘How To’: A Guide To SaaS Customer Retention Metrics & Benchmarks in 2023 (ChartMogul)
One Biz Story:
BCV & Headline Release Top 50 Emerging Vertical SaaS List
