Today, IT teams must juggle numerous tools, applications, and systems simultaneously. According to Statista, the company is using an average of 130 software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications as of 2022, a volume that is impacting productivity. In a recent MuleSoft poll, eighty percent of companies said application integration challenges are slowing down work across their organizations, leading to data silos and departmental disconnects.
Michael Zuercher said he experienced the challenges of SaaS application integration firsthand when he launched his first startup, Zuercher Technologies, a software provider for public safety agencies.
“We had about 600 integrations with other customers’ software. It was absolutely necessary, but it became a huge burden and ultimately consumed more than half of our R&D capacity,” Zuercher told TechCrunch in an email interview. . “During this time, we have realized that integration remains a complex, unique and largely unsolved problem for software companies.”
One solution is so-called Integrated Platform as a Service (iPaaS), a type of cloud-based service that helps organizations bundle and unify their applications, processes and data from a single pane of glass.
The iPaaS market is currently quite mature, with revenue of $3.47 billion in 2020 and will exceed $9 billion by 2025. Companies have embraced iPaaS; a 2021 survey found that 66% of enterprises will invest in iPaaS to solve data integration and automation challenges.
iPaaS startups and existing products abound. Some of these include Integration.app, which uses artificial intelligence models to orchestrate disparate applications and services; Digibee, which recently raised $60 million in venture capital; and Amazon’s recently launched AWS AppFabric.
Zuercher, however, thought he could — and still thinks he can — do better.
Today, Zuercher leads Prismatic, an iPaaS startup that designs solutions to help business-to-business (B2B) SaaS companies connect their products to other products their customers already use. Zuercher co-founded Prismatic with Beth Harwood and Justin Hipple in 2019 to simplify application integration development and make it easier for SaaS companies to connect to third-party software.
Prismatic’s platform provides tools to connect applications through integrations and single dashboard hooks.
“SaaS companies spend a lot of time and resources on integration,” Zuercher said. “Prismatic relieves this burden by helping SaaS companies easily build integrations, deploy and manage these integrations at scale and embed them into their solutions so customers can self-service.”
Prismatic offers a low-code integration designer, a native development environment, a management console, and a marketplace where customers can switch and configure integrations. Zuercher said the platform recently launched an integrated designer and expanded with new API connectors to “double down” on more developer-centric features.
“We built Prismatic from the ground up to serve SaaS companies, rather than building an in-house integrated enterprise, so it includes the features SaaS companies need from day one, such as developer-focused tools, customer-specific configurations, Versioning, embedding and extensibility,” Zuercher said. “Prismatic’s embedded iPaaS gives SaaS providers a way to deliver powerful integrations as a native part of their products, relieving IT departments of the integration burden.”
Zuercher did not disclose how many customers Prismatic currently has. But he said the customer base, which ranges from startups to Fortune 100 companies, will drive growth in annual recurring revenue through 2023.
In a possible sign of optimism, Prismatic just closed a funding round today, a $22 million Series B led by Kansas City growth equity firm Five Elms Capital. Bringing Prismatic’s total funding to $29 million, the new cash will be used to expand the startup’s team of approximately 50 people, expand research and development, and enhance Prismatic’s existing tools and software.
Prismatic’s integration marketplace is designed to simplify the process of connecting applications to each other.
“We decided to raise equity to capitalize on growth in 2023 — a time when many SaaS companies were taking a step back,” said Zuercher. “We delivered strong, sustained growth throughout 2023. We are more productive than ever before. We are even more confident that our products are making an impact on B2B SaaS teams and this funding will accelerate and expand our efforts.”
Austin Gideon, principal at Five Elms Capital, added in a pre-statement: “Prismatic has achieved incredible growth in less than a year since its Series A round, solidifying embedded iPaaS as an integral part of B2B SaaS companies. role.” “We are seeing strong demand across our portfolio of B2B software companies for a platform that helps enhance integration capabilities. Expanding software companies are able to leverage Prismatic’s platform to achieve strong returns on investment, allowing teams to continue to focus on delivering to their customers New product. Working with the team again on this Series B round gives us the opportunity to make meaningful progress and improvements in the future of SaaS.”
