The Day in SaaS 07.09.21: SPACs Are a Great Deal; LinkedIn Loves the Office; SaaS for Services Businesses is Hot

• Benchmark's Bill Gurley says SPACs are 'remarkably cheap compared to mispriced IPOs'. The valuation you can get in a SPAC is often 2x-3x more than a traditional IPO. Sometimes more. Nextdoor was valued at $4B+, when it could have been half of that in a traditional IPO.

• LinkedIn makes major real-estate moves in the South Bay, signaling a return to the office. The office isn’t dead yet. LinkedIn adds to the list of tech leaders adding dramatically to their office space.

• Data consent and preferences management platform Didomi raises $40M. Niches like preference management become huge … now that SaaS is huge.

• Bathroom Renovation Startup Made Renovation Raises $23 Million In A Series A. SaaS is booming in services businesses. Many have been late to figure out a Cloud strategy. But now is there time.

• Visa’s crypto partnerships grow by 43% in four months. Visa is serious about crypto. That probably means it’s time for all of us to be, too.

• GitHub’s CTO Joins Redpoint As A Partner In The VC Firm’s New $725 Million Growth Fund. Redpoint is one of the quieter big winners in SaaS and Cloud.

• Tiger Global was top dealmaker in a record quarter for venture capital, as investments exceeded $150 billion. Tiger is doing a breathtaking amount of VC SaaS investing, over 1 deal a day. Many for hundreds of millions of dollars.

• Clearco gets the SoftBank stamp of approval in new $215M round. Equity alternatives for startups are getting massive funding. Deep down, the interest rates and costs together often approach 20%. But that’s often still cheaper than equity.

• All-In-One Doc Startup Coda Reaches $1.4 Billion Valuation In $100 Million Raise From A Major Pension Fund. Notion is the rage, but document-focused Coda becomes a Unicorn.