European SaaS Intelligence Market Analysis

1. The Market — European SaaS by the Numbers

Why European SaaS Is the Opportunity

1. $60B+ and growing at 18%. European SaaS is not a niche — it’s a massive, fast-growing market that produces world-class companies (Personio, Celonis, Pennylane, Pigment).
2. 10,000+ companies with almost zero intelligence coverage. Nobody does deep, ongoing business model analysis of individual European SaaS companies. Sifted covers funding rounds. Dealroom sells database access. Nobody does Stratechery-style analysis.
3. 2,500+ VCs need intelligence. European VCs use Dealroom for data, read Atomico’s annual report, and then mostly rely on their own networks. No ongoing intelligence product serves their SaaS diligence needs.
4. US companies expanding to Europe need guides. Every major US SaaS company eventually expands to Europe. They need market intelligence on competitors, pricing, go-to-market approaches, and regulatory differences.
5. The audience is professional and can expense subscriptions. B2B intelligence subscribers expense costs through their companies. This enables premium pricing ($300–$600/year individual, $5,000+/year institutional).

2. The Ecosystem: Country by Country

Key insight: Nobody publishes ongoing, comparative analysis of these ecosystems. An annual “State of European SaaS” report with quarterly updates, broken down by country and vertical, would become the reference document for the entire industry.

3. European Tech Media Landscape

Tier 1: Major Players

Sifted (sifted.eu)

Founded

2018 in London by John Thornhill (FT columnist). Backed by the Financial Times. Raised $9.17M total ($7.11M Series A in Nov 2021).

Scale

Estimated revenue ~$15.4M. 66–87 employees. The largest startup reporting operation in Europe.

Products

Free tier, Sifted Plus, Sifted Pro (pricing not public, estimated €20–50/month Plus, higher for Pro). Sifted Summit (London, October). Sifted 250 (fastest-growing startups), B2B SaaS Rising 100, regional rankings.

What they do well

Data-driven journalism. Leaderboard products. VC relationship coverage. Investor surveys.

What they don’t do

Deep business model analysis of individual SaaS companies. Sifted covers funding rounds, publishes rankings, and writes features — but nobody at Sifted is doing 5,000-word teardowns of Pennylane’s pricing strategy or Personio’s go-to-market engine. That’s the gap.

Tech.eu

What they do

European tech funding news. Comprehensive annual reports (2025: 42 pages, €72B in investment across 3,740+ deals).

Revenue model

Premium reports, newsletter, events (Tech.eu Summit London).

Limitation

Stronger on aggregate data/reporting than individual company analysis. Funding-announcement-heavy.

EU-Startups (eu-startups.com)

Scale

300,000+ monthly readers. 78,000 newsletter subscribers. Founded 15 years ago by Thomas Ohr (who exited in 2025).

Events

EU-Startups Summit (moved from Barcelona to Malta).

Limitation

Primarily news and lists, not deep analysis. Covers all sectors, not SaaS-specific.

Tier 2: Regional & Niche

The Cautionary Tale: The Next Web (TNW)

Amsterdam-based. FT acquired majority stake in 2019. Shut down media and events operations in September 2025 (attendance dropped from 10,000 to 4,500 post-pandemic). Acquired by Romanian software marketplace Tekpon in December 2025. Restarted publishing under new ownership.

The lesson: Broad European tech media is challenging. TNW failed with a general-interest model. The survivors (Sifted, Tech.eu) have premium/subscription models. The opportunity is in niche B2B intelligence with premium pricing, not broad tech news with advertising.

Media Landscape Summary

4. Data & Research Platforms

Dealroom.co (Amsterdam)

Revenue

~$13.1M (2024). 87–92 employees. Founded 2013. Raised $16.7M total.

Pricing

Premium: €12,500/year for 3 users. Premium Plus: €17,000/year. Enterprise: €25,000–40,000+/year. Annual commitment required.

What they offer

Verified, curated startup data with local partnerships. Partnered with European governments and institutions for data verification.

Advantage over Crunchbase

“For European markets, you have the best coverage and the most intuitive platform.” Crunchbase reportedly has 34% error rate in European funding data.

Limitation

Company profiles and funding data, not business model analysis. No revenue intelligence. No operating metrics for private companies. Data platform, not intelligence product.

Sacra (sacra.com)

What they do

Premium research on private companies with revenue estimates, growth analysis, and business model teardowns.

Pricing

$350–$1,500/month. 10 employees. $1M raised.

European coverage

Minimal. US-focused. Covers very few European companies. The Sacra model (deep private company analysis) applied to European SaaS does not exist.

Other Data Sources

European SaaS Indices

Key insight: No comprehensive, continuously updated index of European SaaS companies exists. The E-Spring, CEE, and Aventis indices are small, partial efforts covering public companies only. A “Bessemer Cloud Index for Europe” covering both public and private companies would be the reference benchmark for the industry.

5. VC Research & Annual Reports

The Big Three Annual Reports

Atomico — State of European Tech (stateofeuropeantech.com)

What it is

THE definitive annual report on European tech. 10th edition in 2025. Co-produced with Dealroom and HSBC Innovation Banking.

Key 2025 findings

• $44B projected investment in European tech
• Ecosystem worth ~$4T (15% of European GDP)
• 36% of VC dollars going to deeptech
• $375B underfunding gap over past decade vs. US
• 50% optimism at 10-year high

Limitation

Published once a year. Data ages quickly. Broad tech, not SaaS-specific.

GP Bullhound — European SaaS Report (4th annual, 2025)

What it is

Benchmarks 100+ private European SaaS companies. The closest thing to European SaaS-specific intelligence.

Key 2025 findings

• European SaaS trades at ~6x forward revenue vs. ~7.2x for US peers
• EBITDA margins in high-20s
• M&A volumes declined in 2025

Limitation

Annual publication. Aggregate metrics, not individual company teardowns. GP Bullhound is an investment bank, so the report serves deal sourcing.

Serena Capital — European SaaS Benchmark (europeansaasbenchmark.com)

What it is

Most comprehensive public European SaaS metrics dataset. 3rd edition (2023). Surveyed 700 participants from European B2B SaaS startups.

Key findings

Covers ARR by stage, YoY growth, NRR, burn multiples, Rule of 40/60. Recommends 80%+ gross margin for B2B SaaS.

Limitation

Annual and survey-based. Data is self-reported. No individual company analysis.

VC Content Strategies

Pattern: European VCs publish great research — but annually, sporadically, and in service of their own deal sourcing. No VC is producing ongoing, weekly European SaaS intelligence. The annual reports create the appetite; an ongoing newsletter/platform would satisfy it.

6. Newsletters & Substacks

European SaaS-Adjacent Newsletters

What the Newsletter Landscape Tells Us

The European SaaS newsletter space is nearly empty. Euro SaaS Edge and Overlooked are solo efforts. EUVC covers VC, not SaaS operations. The French Tech Journal covers one country. SaaSiest covers one region. Nobody publishes a comprehensive, pan-European, SaaS-specific intelligence newsletter with deep company analysis.

Compare this to the US, where SaaS founders read:

• Lenny’s Newsletter — $2.5M+/year, 1M subscribers, 18K paid
• Stratechery — ~$5M/year, 40K paid subscribers
• Not Boring — ~$3.5M/year, 250K+ subscribers
• The Information — $20M+ revenue, $399/year
• Newcomer — $1.6M (2023), 101K total subscribers

The European equivalent of any of these does not exist. The audience does — 10,000 SaaS companies, 2,500 VCs, thousands of operators. The content doesn’t.

7. Communities & Events

Events

Only SaaStock, SaaSiest, SaaStr London, and B2B Rocks are SaaS-specific. The rest are broad startup/tech events. This means SaaS-specific content and community has limited event distribution — another gap.

Communities

8. European SaaS Success Stories

These are the companies an intelligence product would analyze in depth:

Nobody has written a Stratechery-style deep analysis of any of these companies. A 5,000-word teardown of Pennylane’s business model, pricing strategy, competitive positioning, and growth engine would be the first of its kind. The same for Personio, Pigment, Factorial, or any of the others. Each analysis would be widely shared within the European SaaS community because nothing like it exists.

9. Europe vs. US: The Structural Differences

The key insight for content: European SaaS companies face fundamentally different challenges than US companies (fragmentation, localization, pricing pressure, lower multiples, harder fundraising). US-centric SaaS advice (from SaaStr, OpenView, Bessemer) doesn’t directly apply. European founders need European-specific intelligence. This is the content moat.

10. The Intelligence Void — What Does NOT Exist

After mapping the entire landscape, here is what specifically does not exist:

1. No “Bessemer Cloud Index” for Europe. The E-Spring and CEE indices are small, partial efforts. No comprehensive, continuously updated index tracks European SaaS company revenue, growth, and multiples across public and private companies.
2. No deep business model analysis of individual European SaaS companies. Sacra does this for US companies ($350–$1,500/month). Nobody does it for European companies. No one has published a business model teardown of Pennylane, Personio, Pigment, or Qonto.
3. No European SaaS metrics benchmarking database. Serena’s benchmark is annual and survey-based. ChartMogul is global, not Europe-specific. No continuously updated, European-focused SaaS metrics platform exists.
4. No bilingual (English/French) SaaS intelligence. The French Tech Journal is the only English-language publication on French tech, and it’s a solo Substack. No publication serves both Anglophone and Francophone European SaaS communities.
5. No “SaaS-specific Sifted.” Sifted covers all European startups. No publication focuses exclusively on B2B SaaS with equivalent rigor.
6. No European SaaS company database with revenue estimates. Nobody systematically estimates and tracks revenue for European SaaS companies the way Sacra does for US companies.
7. No cross-country European SaaS ecosystem comparison. Nobody publishes ongoing analysis comparing France vs. Germany vs. UK vs. Nordics vs. CEE with real metrics.
8. No “must-read” weekly source. European SaaS founders read: Sifted (news), SaaStr (US operational advice), Bessemer/KeyBanc (US benchmarks they try to apply), Serena benchmark (once a year). There is no single indispensable source for European SaaS intelligence.

11. Business Model Comparisons

Solo/Small-Team Intelligence Businesses

B2B Data/Intelligence Platforms

The Pricing Sweet Spot

For European SaaS intelligence, the market validates several price points:

• $15–$25/month ($150–$300/year): Individual subscribers (founders, operators). The Stratechery/Lenny tier.
• $500–$2,000/year: Team subscriptions, small VCs. The Axios Pro tier.
• $5,000–$25,000/year: Institutional (large VCs, PE firms, corporates). The Dealroom/Sacra tier.
• $10,000–$20,000 per piece: Sponsored deep dives (the Not Boring model).

12. 10 Market Gaps & Opportunities

1. The Weekly European SaaS Intelligence Newsletter

   Gap: No weekly, in-depth newsletter covers European B2B SaaS specifically. Euro SaaS Edge and Overlooked are solo efforts. Sifted covers all startups broadly.

   Opportunity: The “Stratechery of European SaaS.” Weekly deep analysis of one European SaaS company (business model, pricing, GTM, competitive positioning, metrics). Plus a weekly briefing on funding, M&A, and ecosystem trends. $15–$25/month. Bilingual (English + French editions).

2. European SaaS Company Teardowns (Sacra Model)

   Gap: Sacra produces deep research on private US companies ($350–$1,500/month). Nobody does this for European SaaS. No business model teardown of Pennylane, Personio, or Pigment exists.

   Opportunity: Premium research reports on individual European SaaS companies. Revenue estimates, growth analysis, competitive mapping, pricing teardowns. Sold as subscription ($300–$600/year individual, $5,000+/year institutional) or per-report.

3. European SaaS Benchmarking Index (Continuously Updated)

   Gap: No “Bessemer Cloud Index” for Europe. Serena’s benchmark is annual. E-Spring covers 40 companies. No ongoing, comprehensive index exists.

   Opportunity: A public index tracking 100–200 European SaaS companies (public + notable private) with revenue estimates, growth rates, and multiples. Updated quarterly. The free index drives traffic and credibility. Premium tier gets detailed company profiles and downloadable data.

4. Cross-Country European SaaS Ecosystem Reports

   Gap: Nobody compares France vs. Germany vs. UK vs. Nordics vs. CEE SaaS ecosystems with real metrics on an ongoing basis.

   Opportunity: Quarterly “State of European SaaS” reports, country by country. Which ecosystem is growing fastest? Where are the best valuations? Which verticals dominate each country? Becomes the reference document the entire industry cites.

5. French Tech ↔ Global Bridge (Bilingual Advantage)

   Gap: France has the fastest-growing SaaS ecosystem in Europe (Pennylane, Pigment, Qonto, Spendesk, Algolia, ContentSquare, Mirakl). Most French SaaS content is in French. Most global SaaS content ignores France. The French Tech Journal is the lone bridge, and it’s a solo Substack.

   Opportunity: A bilingual publisher who can read French press releases, interview French founders in French, and write analysis in English has a structural advantage nobody else in the market possesses. Publish English analysis of French SaaS for a global audience. Publish French summaries of global SaaS trends for the French market.

6. European SaaS Pricing Intelligence

   Gap: European customers are 20–25% more price sensitive than US customers. Yet no tool or publication tracks pricing strategies across European SaaS companies. How does Personio price vs. BambooHR? How does Pennylane compare to QuickBooks?

   Opportunity: Pricing teardowns as a content vertical. Track pricing pages, analyze packaging, compare European vs. US pricing for equivalent products. Extremely useful for founders setting prices and VCs evaluating markets.

7. European SaaS M&A Intelligence

   Gap: GP Bullhound covers M&A annually. Nobody covers European SaaS M&A on an ongoing basis. Which companies are being acquired? At what multiples? Who is buying?

   Opportunity: Weekly or monthly M&A digest. Track every European SaaS acquisition with estimated multiples, strategic rationale, and implications. Extremely valuable for PE firms, corporate development teams, and founders considering exits.

8. Sponsored Deep Dives (Not Boring Model for Europe)

   Gap: Packy McCormick earns $3.5M/year from sponsored deep dives at $20K+ each. No European equivalent exists. European SaaS companies raising rounds need visibility.

   Opportunity: Publish deep, analytical profiles of European SaaS companies. Companies pay €10,000–20,000 for a deep dive that doubles as high-quality content for your audience. The content must be genuinely analytical (not advertorial) to maintain credibility.

9. European SaaS Community (Curated)

   Gap: SaaSiest Slack has 1,000+ companies. {Tech: Europe} has 6,000+ members. No curated, premium community specifically for European SaaS founders/operators exists with ongoing intelligence.

   Opportunity: A Slack/Discord community (€500–2,000/year) for European SaaS operators. Expert AMAs, benchmark sharing, hiring referrals, partnership introductions. The community becomes a data source (anonymous surveys) that feeds the intelligence product.

10. European SaaS Events (Intimate, Operator-Focused)

    Gap: SaaStock (6,000+) is the biggest European SaaS event but is broad. No intimate, high-quality events for European SaaS operators (50–150 people, no pitching, pure content and networking).

    Opportunity: Quarterly dinners in Paris, London, Berlin, and Stockholm. 50–100 SaaS operators per event. Invite-only. Companies sponsor (€5,000–15,000 per event). The newsletter audience is the attendee pipeline.

13. The Playbook: Building the Definitive European SaaS Intelligence Platform

Phase 1: The Newsletter (Months 1–6)

1. Name and positioning. Something like “European SaaS Dispatch” or “Continental SaaS” or simply your name as brand (the Stratechery model). Position: “Deep, independent analysis of Europe’s best SaaS companies — the intelligence European founders, operators, and investors actually need.”
2. Format: 2x/week.
   • Tuesday: Company Deep Dive. One European SaaS company analyzed in 3,000–5,000 words. Business model, pricing, GTM, competitive positioning, estimated metrics, what makes it work (or not). This is the flagship content. Nobody else does this.
   • Friday: European SaaS Briefing. 5–10 items: funding rounds, M&A, product launches, hiring signals, ecosystem trends. Concise, opinionated, useful.
3. Bilingual from day one. Publish in English (primary). Publish a French summary/adaptation weekly. This doubles your addressable audience and creates a structural moat no English-only competitor can replicate.
4. Platform: Substack or Beehiiv. Substack for built-in discovery in the business/tech category. Beehiiv for better analytics and referral program. Either works.
5. Distribution: LinkedIn-first. Your 15,243 connections (2,405 founders, 6,092 engineers, 1,000 CTOs) are the distribution engine. LinkedIn rewards long-form posts and carousels. Every Tuesday deep dive becomes a LinkedIn post with key takeaways. Every Friday briefing becomes a short LinkedIn post with the most interesting items.

Phase 2: Monetize + Build the Index (Months 6–12)

1. Launch paid tier at €15–25/month (€150–250/year).
   • Free: Friday briefing + occasional free deep dive
   • Paid: All deep dives + data tables + European SaaS Index access + quarterly ecosystem reports
2. Build the European SaaS Index. Start tracking 50 companies, expand to 200. Revenue estimates, growth rates, valuations, key metrics. The free public version shows top-level data. Paid subscribers get full details and exports.
3. First sponsored deep dives. European SaaS companies raising Series A/B want visibility. Charge €10,000–15,000 for a deep dive that’s genuinely analytical (not a puff piece). 3–4 per quarter = €30K–60K additional revenue.
4. Target: 5,000 free subscribers, 200–500 paid. Revenue: €50K–125K/year from subscriptions + €30K–60K from sponsored deep dives.

Phase 3: Platform + Community + Events (Months 12–24)

1. Launch the community. Slack or Discord for European SaaS operators. Free channel + paid tier (€500–1,000/year). Use community for anonymous surveys that feed your data products.
2. Launch intimate events. Quarterly dinners in Paris and London. 50–100 operators. Sponsor-funded (€5K–15K per event). Builds relationships and generates content.
3. Institutional tier. €5,000–15,000/year for VC firms, PE firms, and corporate development teams. Includes all content, index data, custom briefings, and event access.
4. Podcast. Interview European SaaS founders and operators. The deep dive research gives you better questions than any other interviewer. Cross-promote with newsletter.

Revenue Model at Scale

14. Content & Distribution Playbook

Deep Dive Template (The Flagship Content)

Every Tuesday company deep dive follows this structure:

1. The Company in 30 Seconds — What they do, when founded, HQ, key metrics, last round.
2. The Market — European TAM, competitive landscape, US equivalents.
3. The Business Model — Revenue model, pricing teardown, customer segmentation, unit economics estimates.
4. The GTM Engine — How they sell in Europe (PLG vs. sales-led vs. hybrid), geographic expansion strategy, localization approach.
5. The Metrics (Estimated) — ARR estimates, growth rate, headcount analysis, Glassdoor/job posting signals.
6. What’s Working — Strategic strengths, competitive moats, product differentiation.
7. What’s Not — Risks, competitive threats, scaling challenges.
8. The Verdict — Assessment of trajectory. Comparison to US peers. What founders/investors should learn from this company.

Company Pipeline (First 50 Deep Dives)

One year of Tuesday deep dives (~50 companies), organized by country and vertical:

Distribution Channels (Prioritized)

1. LinkedIn (primary)

15,243 connections. 2,405 founders. 6,092 engineers. 1,000 CTOs. This is your unfair advantage. Every deep dive becomes a LinkedIn post. LinkedIn rewards original business analysis. European SaaS operators live on LinkedIn (more than Twitter). Post key takeaway charts, data tables, and insights. LinkedIn is the distribution engine.

2. Twitter/X

VC Twitter and SaaS Twitter are active but US-dominated. Position as the European voice in the conversation. Thread format works well for deep dive summaries. Tag companies and founders for amplification.

3. Newsletter cross-promotion

Partner with EUVC, Overlooked, Euro SaaS Edge, French Tech Journal. They cover adjacent topics. Cross-promote to each other’s audiences. Small newsletters grow faster together.

4. VC amplification

When you deep-dive a company, the company’s investors will share it. Point Nine, Notion Capital, Index Ventures, Balderton all share quality analysis of their portfolio companies. Built-in distribution from the companies you cover.

5. Event presence

SaaStock Dublin, SaaSiest Malmö, SaaStr London. Attend, network, interview founders. Turn conversations into content. Build reputation as “the person who deeply understands European SaaS.”

SEO Opportunities

15. Verdict & Best Bets

The Opportunity in One Sentence

A $60B+ market with 10,000+ SaaS companies, 2,500+ VCs, and ecosystems in five countries — with virtually zero deep, ongoing intelligence coverage. The audience is professional, can expense subscriptions, and currently has nowhere to go for European SaaS business model analysis. A bilingual founder with a 15K LinkedIn network and AI-augmented research speed is uniquely positioned to become the Stratechery of European B2B SaaS.

Your Unfair Advantages

The Week 1 Action Plan

Success Metrics

Why This Compounds

• Every deep dive is an evergreen asset. Your Pennylane analysis will be the top Google result for “Pennylane business model” for years. 50 deep dives = 50 SEO pages driving organic traffic forever.
• Every company you cover amplifies you. When you publish a Personio deep dive, Personio’s investors share it, their employees share it, their competitors read it. Built-in distribution from the companies you analyze.
• Your data gets better over time. Each deep dive adds to your European SaaS Index. After 50 companies, your dataset is more comprehensive than anything publicly available. After 200, it’s an institutional-grade product.
• Your network grows with every piece. Every deep dive leads to conversations with founders, operators, and investors. These conversations generate insights for future deep dives. The flywheel spins.
• The bilingual moat is permanent. No English-only competitor can replicate your French market access. No French-only competitor can match your global English distribution.

The One-Line Pitch

“Deep, independent analysis of Europe’s best SaaS companies — the intelligence that European founders, operators, and investors actually need, published in English and French by someone who understands both worlds.”