Think the martech landscape is big? Here’s the size of the software industry overall

In excess of the 11 a long time that I have been publishing the martech landscape, as it mushroomed from ~150 options to ~10,000, I’ve found a lot of persons respond to it as an anomaly. “What is it about marketing that spawns so lots of software program applications? Absolutely no other occupation has to deal with these kinds of sprawl!”

To which computer software critique web-site G2 responds in this article, “Hold my beer.”

Even though there are absolutely dynamics specific to internet marketing that feed the frenzy of new martech startups, the truth of the matter is that martech is just a component of a significantly larger software program revolution. Marc Andreessen identified as it “software feeding on the planet.” I simply call it The Fantastic Application Explosion. Computer software is in all places (and, more and more, almost everything is software package).

But precisely how quite a few commercially packaged software package apps are there in The Excellent App Explosion?

Let us consider games and shopper-oriented apps off the desk. We know there are hundreds of thousands of these types of applications for cell equipment on the Apple App Shop and Google Participate in Store. It is fair to say that is a unique kettle of fish than B2B software, these types of as martech.

Effectively, at least nowadays. Frankly, purchaser and company computer software applications are run by a great deal of the exact same underlying technology. And you see expanding cross-pollination concerning those people domains. The consumerization of IT continues to be a massive motion underway. I individually see similarities amongst creators on customer platforms and “makers” inside organizations leveraging no-code resources. And if you consider the hoopla of the metaverse — which will 1 working day rise from the trough of disillusionment — the convergence of organization and client experiences will blur even further.

But for now, let’s stick to a slim interpretation of how many company computer software apps are there in the globe?

The remedy: at the very least 103,528.

That is the amount of software program goods profiled on G2’s web page as of last week. It’s not a theoretical guesstimate. It’s an empirical rely — like the martech landscape, but spanning all small business application classes.

I emphasised the phrase “at least” in front of that selection for two good reasons:

To start with, G2 acknowledges that they haven’t uncovered all of the company software program applications out there nevertheless. My effect is that in particular in markets outside of North The usa, there’s a ton nevertheless to learn. Believe of China and Japan, for instance.

Second, new software package startups retain getting released. (You could be mumbling beneath your breath, “Let’s see what the recent economic climate does to that merry-go-spherical.” Put a pin in that caveat for a moment – I’ll occur again to it.)

In other words and phrases, that 103,528 quantity is a lessen sure of the B2B software package merchandise universe. The true amount is undoubtedly bigger, and likely substantially bigger. 150,000? 200,000? Extra?

G2’s databases is absolutely however developing, including on average 945 application solutions for each month.

What about consolidation, you say? These quantities from G2 are inclusive of the fact that they’ve dealt with about 760 merger and acquisition situations given that January of this calendar year. So, sure, consolidation is taking place. But the paradox of simultaneous consolidation and enlargement in software markets holds correct. It’s not just martech.

Speaking of martech, the people at G2 also shared with me the counts of 9,365 martech solutions and 1,488 adtech products and solutions in their database. Mixed — which is how I’ve always believed of them — that’s 10,853 madtech apps in whole. Extra than what Frans and I came up with in our 2022 martech landscape launch in Could.

Our system is to share info amongst us and G2 to get a superset of all of them. But it is awesome to also have an independent corroboration that, indeed, today’s martech landscape genuinely is on the magnitude of ~10,000 merchandise.

Is 2023 the Calendar year of the Martech Cataclysm?

But let us get again to that query about the overall economy I dodged previously.

No sugarcoating it. This future calendar year or two is likely to exert a ton of strain on the current martech landscape. Funding will be tougher to appear by, and at substantially a lot more modest valuations. Marketing and advertising departments are likely to have tighter budgets and become a great deal more durable customers when it comes to thinking about and negotiating martech purchases. This is the initial time in above a 10 years of exponential martech development that the sector is experiencing a genuinely formidable economic setting.

Definitely, this will outcome in numerous a lot more acquisitions of smaller sized martech fish by even bigger martech fish, as nicely as the non-public fairness crowd betting on the other side of this cycle. But far more painfully, there will be an raising variety of early-phase martech ventures that just phone it quits following failing to possibly protected their next funding round, discover a eager acquisitor, or rebalance their operations to profitability.

My most effective guess? Up to 20% of the existing martech landscape could churn before 2024.

But it’s only the churn rate of current martech vendors that I have a darkish prediction about. As much as collective industry revenue goes, I believe that martech is likely to go on to develop for the foreseeable future. Maybe not as quickly as it has been for the upcoming few of yrs. But in the major photograph, nevertheless fairly rapidly. For a single simple motive: the digital transformation of advertising is far from above, and it stays one of the greatest levers each company on the planet has for successful and retaining buyers.

Specially in the tough moments ahead, good martech will be critical to survival good results.

Neglect valuations for now, which have been the semi-delusional yardstick of measuring martech ventures these past several yrs. Income is the ground real truth of sizing an market. And I’m 99.9% selected martech income will grow year-more than-year for the relaxation of this decade.

And to repeat the mantra of this put up: it’s not just martech. The complete software business has massive expansion in advance of it. The inspiring chart earlier mentioned from Battery Ventures (with my two annotations in orange) is both an precise appear-again at software package profits development around the earlier 5 many years, but also a reasonably conservative extrapolation of average compound once-a-year progress of program revenue for the subsequent two many years.

Two things pop out promptly from that chart:

Initially, holy cats, the measurement of what the software package business is very likely to develop to by 2050 dwarfs where we are today. “Software having the world” is software package getting about a lot more and a lot more of each aspect of the economic climate. Throughout the world GDP in 2020 was ~$85 trillion. By 2050, it’s expected to be ~$165 trillion. It’s actually not that mad to consider of software package producing up a mere $6 trillion of that, or ~3.6% of total GDP.

Next, the Dot-Com Bubble Burst in 2000 and The Excellent Economic downturn in 2008 barely register as very small dents in the upward slope of this mountain. That is not to trivialize the problems so lots of confronted in all those yrs. But placing those hurdles in perspective of the lengthy game, the total trajectory of the computer software industry has not been derailed by the ups-and-downs of macroeconomic organization cycles. I consider that is likely to continue being accurate for this era and probably the upcoming.

All of which leads me to conclude that The Fantastic App Explosion will go on through these future couple of many years. And on the up coming wave of restoration and growth, the expansion in new software applications could extremely very well hit gentle speed ludicrous pace.