2016 March SaaSness: Final Four Preview

Meet the companies competing in the Final Four of March SaaSness 2016.

On March 16th, we kicked off the 2nd annual March SaaSness Tournament. 64 SaaS companies entered our NCAA Tournament style bracket, where winners are decided by popular vote.

Only 4 companies have survived and advanced to Round 5. Let's break down the matchups and see who has a shot at entering Tuesday's Championship Matchup.

March SaaSness 2016: Final Four Preview

Here's a look at the updated 2016 Tournament Bracket heading into Round 5.

Click image to enlarge.

Styles make fights, and we're about to bring you a brief introduction and breakdown of each competing company and how they stack up in their Final Four matchups.

Before we dive in, we also want to note that this year's March SaaSness winner will receive a Blueboard experiential reward to deliver to their tournament MVP.

Final Four Matchups

7) InsideSales.com vs 12) Influitive

InsideSales.com: One word: powerhouse. InsideSales is quickly becoming a monolith in the sales acceleration space, dipping its toes into phone systems (PowerDialer), predictive analytics, CRM automation, and even a sparse gamification feature. Routed in the 1st Round of last year's tourney, ISDC enters the Final Four of the 2016 tournament looking like a completely different competitor. A Round 1 win over Segment set the stage for a stunning upset over Slack in Round 2, followed by an epic, come-from-behind Sweet 16 victory over last year's runner-up, DocuSign. ISDC continued its captivating run by besting Twilio in the Elite Eight. Their Friday matchup vs Influitive is set to be a barnburner.

Founded: 2004. HQ: Provo, UT. Conference: Sales Acceleration.

Influitive: Another new entrant to this year's tournament, Influitive also doubles as the sole representative from America's neighbor to the north. Moreover, they bring an exceptionally unique platform to the table that allows companies to activate their customers and transform them into referrals, warm leads and word-of-mouth inbounds. And as any SaaS marketing director will tell you, 1,000 blog posts will never equal the value you can get from 100 actively evangelical customer advocates. To their credit, Influitive has used March SaaSness to put on an impressive advocacy showcase, riding their supporters to three epic upsets in this year's tournament - consecutive come-from-behind victories against Atlassian and Box and a TKO of Evernote. Even daunting Elite 8 Salesforce was no match for Influitive's legions of advocates. They face another streaking March SaaSness competitor, InsideSales.com, on Friday.

Founded: 2010. HQ: Toronto. Conference: Marketing Automation.

5) Zoom vs. 5) Stripe

Zoom: A last-minute addition to this year's field, Zoom campaigned its way in and got the Selection Committee to take notice of a very exciting resume. At the forefront of video conferencing, Zoom seems poised to blaze a new trail in how companies communicate while making the world an even smaller place to do business (good news for companies like Ambition). Lots of sizzle, lots of preliminary hype -- we wondered if Zoom could back up the hype. A series of staggering blowouts has given us our answer, as Zoom ran through Algolia, Zendesk and Lever in Rounds 1-3 like a wheat thresher through a farmer's field. Their Elite Eight massacre of Basecamp set the new standard for tourney dominance. Can Stripe slow them down in the Final Four? We'll find out Friday.

Founded: 2011. HQ: San Jose. Conference: Communications.

Stripe: Another household name in SaaS, you might remember Stripe as the SaaS company that earned a $3.5 billion valuation 4 years after it was founded. No small feat, unless you compare it to the company's most recent valuation in August 2016, which totaled a cool $5 billion dollars. Unfortunately for Stripe, though, all those big numbers mattered little to upset-minded Front in Round 2 of last year's tourney. Stripe's 2nd Round exit fell way short of projections. We were cautiously optimistic that 2016 would be a better showing for the payment juggernaut. Stripe has validated us so far, with a stellar Round 1 win over Gusto, a gutsy Round 2 victory over Domo and a narrow Sweet 16 upset over HubSpot. A wire-to-wire Elite Eight victory over Mailchimp put Stripe in the Final Four. Tourney bully Zoom awaits on Friday.

Founded: 2010. HQ: San Francisco. Conference: Payments.

What’s Next?

The 2016 March SaaSness Tournament Final Four Round kicks off on Thursday at 12am EST. Follow Qualtrics and Ambition on Twitter for live score updates, analysis and final results for each matchup.

For more information, visit Tourney Central at ambition.com/saasness/.

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