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).

The grounded examples come from Nina Achadjian of Index Ventures, a recurring deal-sourcing contact focused on vertical SaaS, who walked Kyle through concrete deals: Arrow XYZ (“vertical SaaS for car dealerships,” ~40% of dealerships already running something, the product as a Trojan horse that “can sit on top of the CRM”), Monograph (architecture-firm practice management), and Openspace.ai (construction-site capture). She also authored the Seso Series A brief — vertical software for agricultural workforce management starting with H-2A migrant-worker onboarding. The throughline across these is the practical question Kyle keeps probing: switching costs, why a buyer adopts a second CRM, and defensibility in crowded verticals.

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.

Where this appears

• Arrow XYZ — “vertical SaaS for car dealerships”; the canonical example Kyle annotated.
• Monograph — architecture-firm practice-management software.
• Nina Achadjian — Index Ventures partner focused on vertical SaaS; sourced the Arrow XYZ / Monograph / Seso deals.
• 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.