Rapid growth in 2020 reveals OKR software market’s untapped potential

Last year, a number of startups building OKR-focused software raised lots of venture capital, drawing TechCrunch’s attention.

Why is everyone making software that measures objectives and key results? we wondered with tongue in cheek. After all, how big could the OKR software market really be?

It’s a sub-niche of corporate planning tools! In a world where every company already pays for Google or Microsoft’s productivity suite, and some big software companies offer similar planning support, how substantial could demand prove for pure-play OKR startups?

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Pretty substantial, we’re finding out. After OKR-focused Gtmhub announced its $30 million Series B the other day, The Exchange reached out to a number of OKR-focused startups we’ve previously covered and asked about their 2020 growth.

Gtmhub had released new growth metrics along with its funding news, plus we had historical growth data from some other players in the space. So let’s peek at new and historical numbers from Gthmhub, Perdoo, WorkBoard, Ally.io, Koan and WeekDone.

Growth (and some caveats)

A startup growing 400% in a year from a $50,000 ARR base is not impressive. It would be much more impressive to grow 200% from $1 million ARR, or 150% from $5 million.

So, percentage growth is only so good, as metrics go. But it’s also one that private companies are more likely to share than hard numbers, as the market has taught startups that sharing real data is akin to drowning themselves. Alas.

As we view the following, bear in mind that a simply higher percentage growth number does not indicate that a company added more net ARR than another; it could be growing faster from a smaller base. And some companies in the mix did not share ARR growth, but instead disclosed other bits of data. We got what we could.

Gtmhub:

• 400% ARR growth, 2019
• 300% ARR growth, 2020
• More: The company has seen strong ACV growth and its reportedly strong gross margins from 2019 held up in 2020, it said.
• TechCrunch coverage

Perdoo:

• 240% paid customer growth, 2020
• 340% user base growth, 2020
• Given strong market demand, a company representative told The Exchange that Perdoo had to restrict its free tier to 10 users.
• TechCrunch coverage

WorkBoard: