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

Above the 11 several years that I’ve been publishing the martech landscape, as it mushroomed from ~150 options to ~10,000, I’ve found lots of people today respond to it as an anomaly. “What is it about advertising and marketing that spawns so many computer software applications? Surely no other career has to offer with these types of sprawl!”

To which program evaluate web page G2 responds in this posting, “Hold my beer.”

Whilst there are surely dynamics unique to promoting that feed the frenzy of new martech startups, the real truth is that martech is merely a portion of a substantially larger software revolution. Marc Andreessen identified as it “software having the planet.” I contact it The Good Application Explosion. Software package is almost everywhere (and, progressively, anything is software package).

But particularly how many commercially packaged application apps are there in The Terrific App Explosion?

Let us just take video games and purchaser-oriented apps off the table. We know there are thousands and thousands of this sort of applications for mobile devices on the Apple Application Retail outlet and Google Perform Shop. It’s reasonable to say which is a distinct kettle of fish than B2B program, these types of as martech.

Well, at minimum nowadays. Frankly, customer and organization software program apps are driven by a great deal of the exact same fundamental engineering. And you see growing cross-pollination between people domains. The consumerization of IT remains a significant motion underway. I personally see similarities between creators on client platforms and “makers” inside providers leveraging no-code instruments. And if you believe the hype of the metaverse — which will 1 working day rise from the trough of disillusionment — the convergence of enterprise and purchaser experiences will blur even further.

But for now, let us adhere to a slim interpretation of how numerous enterprise software applications are there in the world?

The remedy: at minimum 103,528.

That is the variety of software goods profiled on G2’s site as of last 7 days. It’s not a theoretical guesstimate. It is an empirical rely — like the martech landscape, but spanning all small business software package types.

I emphasized the phrase “at least” in entrance of that amount for two reasons:

Very first, G2 acknowledges that they haven’t uncovered all of the business enterprise software package apps out there nonetheless. My impression is that in particular in marketplaces outside the house of North America, there’s a ton even now to learn. Feel of China and Japan, for instance.

Second, new software startups hold staying launched. (You may be mumbling below your breath, “Let’s see what the present economic system does to that merry-go-spherical.” Put a pin in that caveat for a minute – I’ll arrive again to it.)

In other words and phrases, that 103,528 quantity is a reduce certain of the B2B software program product or service universe. The genuine range is definitely better, and most likely considerably greater. 150,000? 200,000? A lot more?

G2’s database is definitely nevertheless expanding, adding on ordinary 945 software goods for every thirty day period.

What about consolidation, you say? These numbers from G2 are inclusive of the fact that they’ve handled around 760 merger and acquisition cases considering the fact that January of this yr. So, certainly, consolidation is occurring. But the paradox of simultaneous consolidation and enlargement in software program marketplaces holds genuine. It’s not just martech.

Talking of martech, the individuals at G2 also shared with me the counts of 9,365 martech goods and 1,488 adtech goods in their databases. Combined — which is how I’ve normally imagined of them — that’s 10,853 madtech applications in full. More than what Frans and I arrived up with in our 2022 martech landscape launch in May perhaps.

Our program is to share information among us and G2 to get a superset of all of them. But it is pleasant to also have an unbiased corroboration that, sure, today’s martech landscape actually is on the magnitude of ~10,000 products.

Is 2023 the 12 months of the Martech Cataclysm?

But let’s get back again to that concern about the economic system I dodged earlier.

No sugarcoating it. This following yr or two is going to exert a ton of force on the existing martech landscape. Funding will be more challenging to appear by, and at considerably extra modest valuations. Marketing and advertising departments are heading to have tighter budgets and turn into substantially tougher shoppers when it arrives to contemplating and negotiating martech buys. This is the initially time in more than a ten years of exponential martech development that the industry is going through a genuinely formidable economic environment.

Undoubtedly, this will end result in quite a few much more acquisitions of smaller martech fish by more substantial martech fish, as properly as the private fairness group betting on the other aspect of this cycle. But extra painfully, there will be an rising number of early-stage martech ventures that basically simply call it quits after failing to both protected their upcoming funding spherical, obtain a prepared acquisitor, or rebalance their operations to profitability.

My ideal guess? Up to 20% of the existing martech landscape could churn in advance of 2024.

But it is only the churn charge of existing martech suppliers that I have a dark prediction about. As significantly as collective sector earnings goes, I imagine martech is heading to continue to expand for the foreseeable long term. Probably not as fast as it has been for the following couple of decades. But in the huge image, continue to pretty rapid. For just one simple rationale: the electronic transformation of marketing and advertising is much from over, and it stays a single of the best levers each and every corporation on the world has for profitable and retaining clients.

Specially in the complicated situations in advance, great martech will be very important to survival results.

Neglect valuations for now, which have been the semi-delusional yardstick of measuring martech ventures these earlier couple many years. Revenue is the ground reality of sizing an marketplace. And I’m 99.9% sure martech income will expand year-over-calendar year for the rest of this decade.

And to repeat the mantra of this put up: it is not just martech. The whole software business has tremendous growth ahead of it. The inspiring chart higher than from Battery Ventures (with my two annotations in orange) is the two an precise search-again at software program earnings progress in excess of the earlier five decades, but also a reasonably conservative extrapolation of typical compound annual progress of software package revenue for the following two a long time.

Two items pop out instantly from that chart:

Very first, holy cats, the size of what the software marketplace is possible to mature to by 2050 dwarfs in which we are nowadays. “Software having the world” is software program taking around far more and a lot more of each facet of the overall economy. All over the world GDP in 2020 was ~$85 trillion. By 2050, it is expected to be ~$165 trillion. It is truly not that insane to consider of software program creating up a mere $6 trillion of that, or ~3.6% of full GDP.

2nd, the Dot-Com Bubble Burst in 2000 and The Great Recession in 2008 barely sign up as tiny dents in the upward slope of this mountain. Which is not to trivialize the problems so a lot of faced in those people years. But putting individuals hurdles in viewpoint of the extended recreation, the all round trajectory of the software package business hasn’t been derailed by the ups-and-downs of macroeconomic business enterprise cycles. I feel that’s heading to continue being legitimate for this generation and likely the upcoming.

All of which qualified prospects me to conclude that The Fantastic Application Explosion will keep on through these following few of many years. And on the future wave of restoration and enlargement, the progress in new computer software applications could possibly pretty very well hit gentle pace ludicrous pace.