Enterprise SaaS businesses continue to navigate a complex economic environment

It’s been a tough time for enterprise SaaS businesses. These organizations raked in profits and growth during the pandemic when offices shuttered and employees moved en masse to work from home. But as the economy turned last year and more workers returned to the office, their numbers slipped.

At the same time, enterprise SaaS businesses are dealing with several other major problems that have come together to knock them off their perches.

Over the last year, TechCrunch has worked to better understand the current climate for selling software. It’s the most common startup product, and SaaS is the most common business model. So we pay special attention to leading SaaS businesses on the public markets, hunting for trends, data and other pieces of information that we can apply to the private markets.

A changing economy, shifting investor expectations and other bumps have made the picture of the present-day software market hard to clarify. However, new data is sharpening our perspective.

We parsed earnings reports this week from Zoom, Salesforce, Box, Snowflake and Okta. The results were mixed, with some doing better than others. How do enterprise SaaS businesses fight the short-term economic turbulence and get to the other side (whenever that may be)? And what do one quarter’s numbers actually mean in the scheme of things? Let’s dig into the data.

Economic headwinds blowing hard