Sep
04
2018
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Thoma Bravo buys majority stake in Apttus in unexpected ending

Apttus, a quote-to-cash vendor built on top of the Salesforce platform that looked to be heading toward an IPO in recent years has taken a different tack, instead being acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo today.

The company did not reveal the purchase price, but said it could be ready to share more details about the arrangement after the deal closes, probably next month. “What we can say is that Apttus views this development positively and believes Thoma Bravo can instill greater operational excellence, strengthen our market leadership and allow us to continue providing indispensable value to our customers,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

They are describing this not as a full on acquisition, but as ‘taking a majority stake’. However you describe it, it probably wasn’t the ending the company envisioned after taking $404 million in investment since launching in 2006, one of the earliest startups to build a business on top of the Salesforce platform.

If the company believed that Salesforce would eventually buy it, that never happened. In fact, that dream probably went out the window when Salesforce bought SteelBrick, a similar company also built on Salesforce, at the end of 2015 for $360 million.

In spite of this, in an interview in 2016, CEO Kirk Krappe still was confident that an exit was coming, either by IPO or a possibly a Salesforce acquisition.

“We will be IPOing this year. That may be a function to figure what Salesforce wants to do and they may think about that [after purchasing SteelBrick at the end of last year]. There’s no reason they can’t buy us too. For me, I have to run the business, and we’re growing 100 percent year on year. If Salesforce came to the table, that would be great if the numbers work. If not, we have an amazingly strong business,” he said at the time.

That never came to pass of course, and the company tried to separate itself from Salesforce in April of 2016 when it released a version of Apttus that would work on Microsoft Dynamics. Krappe saw this as a way to show investors he wasn’t completely married to the Salesforce platform.

While Salesforce provided a system of record around the customer information and all that involved, once the salesperson actually closed in on a sale, that’s when software like Apttus came into play, allowing the company to generate a detailed proposal, a contract once the deal was agreed upon and finally collecting and recording the money from the sale.

Apttus took its last funding rounds in Sept 2017 for $55 million and later a debt financing round for another $75 million in February this year, according to data on Crunchbase.

Thoma Bravo has bought a number of enterprise software products over the years including Qlik, Sailpoint, Dynatrace, Solar Winds and others. Apttus should fit in well with that family of companies.

Sep
21
2017
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Apttus is putting artificial intelligence to work on contract management

 It seems AI and machine learning are quickly becoming a must-have for today’s software. Apttus, the quote-to-cash service is putting AI to work in contract processing in an effort to speed up a highly inefficient system and close sales faster. Contracts have traditionally been a bottleneck in the sales process. As Apttus CEO and company founder Kirk Krappe explains it, there are a series… Read More

Sep
13
2017
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Apttus scores $55M as it closes in on an IPO

 Apttus, the unicorn quote-to-cash vendor built on the Salesforce platform, announced a $55 million round, which is likely its final private investment on the way to an IPO. While CEO Kirk Krappe wouldn’t definitively confirm the company was going public, he did say that today’s round was about gaining the confidence of future investors. “We decided we needed a certain amount… Read More

Oct
10
2016
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Apttus looks to the future with bots and virtual reality

ron-apttus-hololens Last year Apttus, which provides pricing, quoting and contract building on the Salesforce platform was growing at a crazy rate. It appeared to be headed to IPO or a Salesforce purchase when it got a punch to the gut. Salesforce bought Steelbrick instead.
Sources say, Apttus might have gotten greedy, thinking it was the only enterprise CPQ product out there that provided the best fit for… Read More

Apr
04
2016
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Apttus adds support for Microsoft Dynamics as it tries to expand its market reach beyond Salesforce

Apttus booth at Dreamforce 2015 Since its earliest days Apttus has always been a Salesforce shop. It’s built on the Salesforce platform and worked exclusively with Salesforce CRM, but that changed today when the company announced it would also be supporting Microsoft Dynamics in the future.
There seemed to be a shift in the company’s thinking at the end of last year when Salesforce bought SteelBrick, a fellow… Read More

Jan
19
2016
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Apttus CEO Kirk Krappe Chats Candidly About 2016 Exit

Sales quotation with fountain pen poised above it. In a frank conversation with TechCrunch last week, Apttus CEO Kirk Krappe talked about his company’s exit strategy, which could come to a head in the not-too-distant future. Krappe believes his company is in a good position to IPO or sell — possibly to Salesforce if it’s interested — some time later this year. “We will be IPOing this year. That may be a… Read More

Sep
01
2015
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Apttus Enjoys A $108M Round As Business Grows Leaps And Bounds

Salesman discusses terms with customer. Just a couple of years ago Apttus, a quote-to-cash SaaS company built on top of Salesforce.com, had a couple of hundred employees. Today it has 900 and projects more than 1,000 by the end of the year. And it’s not hiring all of those bodies for nothing. The company’s year-over-year growth is in the 60 percent range. While not willing to provide an exact figure, it claims to have… Read More

Feb
02
2015
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Salesforce Ventures Leads $41M Apttus Investment

Man signing a contract. Apttus, a company that helps customers manage the second half of the sales cycle involving quotes, contracts, and collecting the money, announced $41M in Series B funding today. The investment was led by Salesforce Ventures, the investment arm of Salesforce.com. It’s worth noting that it’s the largest investment ever in a company that Salesforce wasn’t buying outright,… Read More

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