Story
Veeva: the first multi-billion-dollar bet on vertical SaaS
Zak Kukoff explains that a decade ago nobody thought vertical SaaS was investable; the conventional wisdom was to go horizontal. Veeva, a Salesforce-for-pharma, was the first multi-billion-dollar vertical SaaS hit, going straight from Series A to IPO with Emergence as the only institutional Series A lead.
“And Veeva was the first multi-billion-dollar hit in vertical SaaS. It was kind of Salesforce, but just for pharmaceutical companies. And they've done phenomenally well. We were the only institutional investor who led their Series A, and they went straight from Series A to IPO. So a huge, huge outcome there.”
Fact
80% of workers are deskless, but only 1% of VC funds them
Kukoff frames Emergence's 'deskless workforce' thesis: 80% of workers don't sit behind a desk every day (nurses, doctors, teachers, factory workers), yet only 1% of venture funding goes to companies selling to that category because VCs invest in what they viscerally understand.
“you think about the fact that 80% of workers don't work behind a desk every day, and that doesn't mean they're all blue collar, but it means they might be like a nurse, they might be a doctor, might be a teacher, don't have desks, right? There's a huge segment, particularly in enterprise or in, um, B2B SaaS, a huge segment of folks who fall into that category. And right now 1% of venture funding goes to companies that sell to that category.”
Number
$25K ACV is where a sales team starts to pay off
Kukoff says Emergence wants its companies at a minimum $25K ACV (annual contract value); that's roughly where you begin to see real leverage from adding a sales team. Below that, breaking even on sales gets tough.
$25K
Minimum ACV for a sales team · USD/year
“And generally, like the companies we work with, we wanna see them at a minimum, like $25K ACV. That's like, if you're having, if you have $25K accounts, like that's $25,000 a month. Accounts rather, that's where— A year? Yeah, a year. That's where you start to see some real leverage from putting on a sales team.”