The cloud economy jobs report

Entrepreneurship is gaining momentum around the globe as VC investments hit record levels in the first half of 2021: With more than $288 billion dollars raised, half of the venture capital dollars went to startups based outside of the United States. The spirit of Silicon Valley can be found anywhere that a founder decides to build and the cloud serves as the backbone for the new emerging tech communities across the globe as startup teams have more flexibility and agency than ever before. 

The tech sector continues to drive value and wealth creation in the broader global economy, and the cloud represents a source of economic opportunity across almost every industry you can think of. Since January, Cloud 100 companies grew their employee ranks by a net average of 26% — that translates to a total of more than 17,000 new hires. And it’s probably no surprise to learn that after the Fintech sector raised a record $33.7 billion dollars from venture capitalists in Q2 alone, Fintech companies on the Cloud 100 list also created the greatest number of new jobs this year to date. Read more.

In case you missed it

Otonomo goes public: Otonomo is paving the way for new apps and services that benefit drivers, passengers, service providers, and the transportation ecosystem. Congratulations to the entire team on this milestone accomplishment! Read more.

Spire’s IPO: Congrats to the Spire team on going public today! When David Cowan met Spire CEO Peter Platzer in 2015, the company had only run two satellites in orbit at the same time. Now it operates the largest general-purpose cubesat constellation. Watch Peter discuss the opportunities of a multipurpose constellation in our SPACs in Space panel. See more.

Bessemer's 2021 Fellowship Class: The Bessemer Fellows Program aims to connect university students to the world’s most innovative and fastest-growing technology companies. This year we appointed 25 students from over one thousand applications—discover how they believe Gen Z will change the next decade. Meet the Fellowship Class.

CEO of UiPath on building in Romania, scaling across the globe, and how he stays mentally fit: Daniel Dine’s vision is to make software robots, powered by computer vision and AI, as common as PCs in the workplace. On Cloud Giants with Byron Deeter, Daniel shares the challenges and opportunities of starting a business in Bucharest, Romania, and the unique way of leading and managing his own mindset in order to drive success for UiPath. Hear more.
 

Why gaming platforms could be prototypes for the next great education platform: “If there’s any entity that could transform the virtual distance learning space into a seamless and likeable experience for kids of all ages—a tall order—it’s the gaming industry,” writes Ethan Kurzweil. Read more.

Pave makes its compensation data free for the world: Pave has announced its Series B financing, and is making its compensation benchmarking data 100% free for all companies who join. Read more.

Lithic’s new customer: With total funding at $110 million, Lithic’s rapid funding matches its rapid growth. Learn more about Lithic and the lessons it offers on primitives, first and best customers, APIs, market segmentation, growth, and how card payments work. Read more.

ForeVR Games raises $7M in additional seed financing: “With the recent funding round led by Bessemer, ForeVR Games will focus on building the best social games in VR by building out its team, developing new games, expanding to additional platforms, and continuing to upgrade the ForeVR Bowl. Read more.

Why the greatest entrepreneurial opportunities live across the clinical trials value chain: “The COVID-19 macroenvironment has highlighted procedural inefficiencies and technological disparities in trial administration,” write Andrew Hedin, Sanjay Patil, and Chuka Esiobu. “An emerging class of startups now has the opportunity to revamp clinical trials as digitization becomes an urgent priority within the pharma industry.” Read more.

The struggle to move upmarket—and the enormous potential reward for SMB SaaS companies: It’s easier than ever to build and sell SaaS focused on small to midsize businesses, but achieving a meaningful scale often requires moving upmarket in today’s competitive environment. Adam Fisher shares GTM strategies for SMB SaaS. Read more.

The appetite for cloud assets continue to grow

Best-in-class cloud companies are reaching the unicorn milestone faster than ever before. When we look at the 2021 basket, it took the average Cloud 100 Honoree 8.6 years from founding to become a unicorn, as compared to 12.1 years in 2016. The two companies that were the fastest to achieve the unicorn milestone on this year’s list were Hopin and Axonius, which have both experienced explosive growth at record-breaking speed. Founded in 2019, Hopin reached unicorn status by the end of 2020, propelled by unprecedented demand for its event technology platform. Axonious was not far behind — founded in 2017 with Bessemer leading its Series A in 2019, the cybersecurity leader entered the unicorn herd in early 2021.

Investor excitement for strong cloud businesses has led to the growth in mega-rounds in Cloud 100 companies. Three-quarters of this year’s Cloud 100 companies have raised $100 million or more in their most recent financing rounds, with the average latest round size of a Cloud 100 company exceeding $225 million. Cumulatively, the Cloud 100 2021 basket has raised more than $50 billion over its lifetime! Read the report.