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

Above the 11 a long time that I have been publishing the martech landscape, as it mushroomed from ~150 remedies to ~10,000, I’ve noticed several people react to it as an anomaly. “What is it about internet marketing that spawns so numerous software program apps? Certainly no other job has to deal with such sprawl!”

To which software program critique website G2 responds in this article, “Hold my beer.”

While there are absolutely dynamics specific to advertising and marketing that feed the frenzy of new martech startups, the reality is that martech is basically a element of a a great deal greater program revolution. Marc Andreessen known as it “software feeding on the world.” I call it The Wonderful App Explosion. Program is in all places (and, ever more, anything is program).

But specifically how quite a few commercially packaged program apps are there in The Wonderful App Explosion?

Let us choose online games and consumer-oriented apps off the desk. We know there are tens of millions of these types of apps for cellular gadgets on the Apple App Keep and Google Participate in Retailer. It is fair to say that’s a different kettle of fish than B2B software, these kinds of as martech.

Well, at the very least now. Frankly, client and business enterprise software apps are driven by much of the identical fundamental know-how. And you see growing cross-pollination between those domains. The consumerization of IT remains a large movement underway. I personally see similarities among creators on shopper platforms and “makers” inside companies leveraging no-code tools. And if you believe the buzz of the metaverse — which will a single day rise from the trough of disillusionment — the convergence of small business and client experiences will blur even further.

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

The respond to: at least 103,528.

That is the amount of computer software solutions profiled on G2’s website as of previous week. It is not a theoretical guesstimate. It’s an empirical count — like the martech landscape, but spanning all company program types.

I emphasised the phrase “at least” in entrance of that selection for two factors:

To start with, G2 acknowledges that they haven’t uncovered all of the organization computer software apps out there nevertheless. My effect is that in particular in markets outside the house of North The united states, there is a ton even now to find out. Think of China and Japan, for occasion.

Second, new software package startups keep currently being released. (You may well be mumbling under your breath, “Let’s see what the present-day financial system does to that merry-go-spherical.” Place a pin in that caveat for a moment – I’ll occur again to it.)

In other words, that 103,528 number is a lessen certain of the B2B application item universe. The real amount is surely bigger, and probably significantly larger. 150,000? 200,000? Extra?

G2’s database is definitely even now growing, incorporating on ordinary 945 program items for every month.

What about consolidation, you say? These numbers from G2 are inclusive of the actuality that they’ve dealt with above 760 merger and acquisition conditions considering the fact that January of this 12 months. So, sure, consolidation is occurring. But the paradox of simultaneous consolidation and growth in computer software marketplaces retains accurate. It is not just martech.

Speaking of martech, the individuals at G2 also shared with me the counts of 9,365 martech goods and 1,488 adtech products and solutions in their database. Merged — which is how I have always assumed of them — that is 10,853 madtech applications in complete. More than what Frans and I arrived up with in our 2022 martech landscape launch in May perhaps.

Our plan is to share information involving us and G2 to get a superset of all of them. But it’s wonderful to also have an impartial corroboration that, yes, today’s martech landscape really is on the magnitude of ~10,000 items.

Is 2023 the Yr of the Martech Cataclysm?

But let us get back to that concern about the overall economy I dodged before.

No sugarcoating it. This upcoming calendar year or two is going to exert a ton of force on the present-day martech landscape. Funding will be harder to come by, and at noticeably a lot more modest valuations. Marketing departments are heading to have tighter budgets and grow to be significantly more durable shoppers when it arrives to looking at and negotiating martech buys. This is the very first time in above a 10 years of exponential martech development that the field is facing a genuinely formidable economic environment.

Undoubtedly, this will consequence in several more acquisitions of lesser martech fish by more substantial martech fish, as perfectly as the personal fairness group betting on the other side of this cycle. But more painfully, there will be an escalating quantity of early-phase martech ventures that merely call it quits immediately after failing to either safe their subsequent funding round, locate a inclined acquisitor, or rebalance their operations to profitability.

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

But it’s only the churn rate of present martech suppliers that I have a darkish prediction about. As significantly as collective business income goes, I believe that martech is likely to continue to develop for the foreseeable potential. Possibly not as rapidly as it has been for the up coming pair of many years. But in the massive image, even now fairly speedy. For a person easy rationale: the electronic transformation of promoting is considerably from about, and it remains just one of the greatest levers just about every firm on the world has for winning and retaining clients.

Specially in the demanding situations ahead, wonderful martech will be essential to survival achievement.

Ignore valuations for now, which have been the semi-delusional yardstick of measuring martech ventures these earlier several several years. Income is the floor real truth of sizing an field. And I’m 99.9% particular martech revenue will expand calendar year-around-12 months for the relaxation of this decade.

And to repeat the mantra of this submit: it is not just martech. The total software package market has massive advancement in advance of it. The inspiring chart over from Battery Ventures (with my two annotations in orange) is each an accurate glimpse-again at software program revenue advancement in excess of the earlier 5 a long time, but also a fairly conservative extrapolation of regular compound annual advancement of software program income for the next two many years.

Two points pop out instantly from that chart:

Initial, holy cats, the size of what the computer software industry is likely to develop to by 2050 dwarfs the place we are now. “Software ingesting the world” is software package having in excess of extra and extra of just about every facet of the financial state. Throughout the world GDP in 2020 was ~$85 trillion. By 2050, it is expected to be ~$165 trillion. It’s really not that nuts to believe of program earning up a mere $6 trillion of that, or ~3.6% of whole GDP.

2nd, the Dot-Com Bubble Burst in 2000 and The Good Recession in 2008 scarcely register as small dents in the upward slope of this mountain. That is not to trivialize the challenges so several confronted in all those a long time. But placing those hurdles in perspective of the prolonged match, the all round trajectory of the software package industry hasn’t been derailed by the ups-and-downs of macroeconomic business cycles. I consider that is likely to continue being true for this technology and probably the up coming.

All of which prospects me to conclude that The Terrific App Explosion will keep on as a result of these up coming pair of many years. And on the upcoming wave of restoration and enlargement, the progress in new software applications may well extremely very well hit mild speed ludicrous speed.