How COVID-19 has impacted business software spend

Last week, we talked about how COVID-19 reshaped consumer internet habits. This week, we’ll explore how the virus has affected business software spend. The data comes from research done by TrustRadius, a software review site.

The obvious winners

We all know that Zoom is winning. Web conferencing is up 5x overall. What’s notable, though, is that startups are starting to challenge Zoom. One of those challengers is Loom, a Sequoia-backed video platform founded in 2016. There’s been an almost 200x increase in traffic to the Zoom vs. Loom comparison page on TrustRadius.The secret winner in the category: the VC firm that backed both companies. Sequoia Capital led Loom’s Series B and Zoom’s Series D. 

The ones that make you say “oh, yeah, that makes sense”Interest in electronic signature companies like DocuSign and HelloSign is up 5x. People apparently don’t want to sign documents that other people have passed around, with pens that others have used. This might also explain the recent popularity of an open-source project called FalsiScan, which gives users a way to “make it look like a PDF has been hand-signed and scanned”. You didn’t hear it from us.

Other “oh, yeahs” include antivirus software (up 3.5x), because big companies are making their employees install it. Also, “web portal” software is up 2x. We’re still not quite sure what web portal software does, other than provide confirmation to its users that they do not work at a startup.