Vertical SaaS

Industry-specific software — SaaS built for one vertical rather than sold horizontally across all of them — is a category Kyle tracks closely on the investing side, with Bessemer Venture Partners as the canonical framework source. Two BVP pieces sit in Kyle’s reading queue as the playbook: Brian Feinstein’s 2017 Vertical Software— A Founder’s Guide to Success (market selection, winner-take-most dynamics, the economics of industry-specific SaaS) and Christine Deakers’s 2022 update Ten Lessons from a Decade of Vertical Software Investing (choosing markets wisely, enduring growth, building industry-defining companies).

Context: Vertical SaaS targets a single industry (e.g., dental, construction, restaurants) versus horizontal SaaS (CRM, email) that serves all industries. The thesis is that deep domain fit, embedded workflows, and add-on fintech/payments can produce durable, winner-take-most companies despite smaller TAMs — popularized by firms like Bessemer and exemplified by Toast, Procore, and Veeva.

Saved LinkedIn posts

• David Haber on LinkedIn (Aug 18, 2025): vertical software used to be started by domain experts who added technical capacity later; AI-native startups invert that, led by technical founders who hire for context early. “AI delivers differentiation. Context drives defensibility.” (Read 2026-10-03 in Kyle’s LinkedIn session.)

Where this appears

• Ten Lessons from a Decade of Vertical Software Investing — Christine Deakers’s 2022 BVP playbook.
• Vertical Software— A Founder’s Guide to Success — Brian Feinstein’s 2017 BVP framework.