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

More than the 11 a long time that I have been publishing the martech landscape, as it mushroomed from ~150 methods to ~10,000, I have noticed a lot of people respond to it as an anomaly. “What is it about internet marketing that spawns so many software package apps? Surely no other profession has to offer with these types of sprawl!”

To which software package critique site G2 responds in this posting, “Hold my beer.”

Whilst there are certainly dynamics precise to marketing that feed the frenzy of new martech startups, the truth is that martech is merely a part of a significantly greater software package revolution. Marc Andreessen identified as it “software ingesting the earth.” I call it The Fantastic Application Explosion. Application is almost everywhere (and, more and more, anything is software program).

But exactly how numerous commercially packaged software applications are there in The Great App Explosion?

Let’s choose game titles and buyer-oriented apps off the desk. We know there are millions of this sort of applications for cellular equipment on the Apple App Shop and Google Participate in Store. It’s truthful to say which is a unique kettle of fish than B2B software program, these types of as martech.

Effectively, at the very least currently. Frankly, consumer and small business application applications are run by substantially of the exact same underlying technological know-how. And you see rising cross-pollination between individuals domains. The consumerization of IT stays a major movement underway. I personally see similarities concerning creators on consumer platforms and “makers” inside of businesses leveraging no-code instruments. And if you consider the buzz of the metaverse — which will 1 working day increase from the trough of disillusionment — the convergence of business and customer encounters will blur even further more.

But for now, let’s stick to a slender interpretation of how many company program apps are there in the entire world?

The respond to: at least 103,528.

That is the variety of application products and solutions profiled on G2’s website as of past week. It is not a theoretical guesstimate. It’s an empirical count — like the martech landscape, but spanning all organization software package categories.

I emphasized the phrase “at least” in entrance of that selection for two motives:

Initial, G2 acknowledges that they have not uncovered all of the business enterprise program apps out there but. My impact is that especially in marketplaces outdoors of North America, there’s a ton nonetheless to find out. Feel of China and Japan, for instance.

Second, new application startups keep remaining introduced. (You might be mumbling below your breath, “Let’s see what the recent overall economy does to that merry-go-spherical.” Set a pin in that caveat for a minute – I’ll occur back again to it.)

In other phrases, that 103,528 range is a lessen certain of the B2B application solution universe. The actual selection is definitely higher, and perhaps a lot larger. 150,000? 200,000? A lot more?

G2’s database is certainly even now developing, including on average 945 software package products and solutions per month.

What about consolidation, you say? These figures from G2 are inclusive of the truth that they’ve handled above 760 merger and acquisition instances due to the fact January of this calendar year. So, certainly, consolidation is taking place. But the paradox of simultaneous consolidation and enlargement in application marketplaces holds real. It is not just martech.

Speaking of martech, the individuals at G2 also shared with me the counts of 9,365 martech solutions and 1,488 adtech solutions in their databases. Mixed — which is how I have often believed of them — which is 10,853 madtech applications in whole. Additional than what Frans and I came up with in our 2022 martech landscape release in May possibly.

Our strategy is to share facts involving us and G2 to get a superset of all of them. But it is great to also have an unbiased corroboration that, yes, today’s martech landscape genuinely is on the magnitude of ~10,000 products.

Is 2023 the Calendar year of the Martech Cataclysm?

But let’s get back again to that question about the financial state I dodged earlier.

No sugarcoating it. This up coming year or two is going to exert a ton of stress on the recent martech landscape. Funding will be more difficult to come by, and at noticeably additional modest valuations. Internet marketing departments are going to have tighter budgets and turn into significantly tougher prospects when it will come to contemplating and negotiating martech buys. This is the initially time in more than a ten years of exponential martech progress that the market is struggling with a truly formidable economic atmosphere.

Definitely, this will outcome in a lot of extra acquisitions of smaller martech fish by larger martech fish, as perfectly as the private fairness crowd betting on the other side of this cycle. But more painfully, there will be an escalating amount of early-stage martech ventures that only phone it quits just after failing to possibly secure their up coming funding spherical, obtain a ready acquisitor, or rebalance their functions to profitability.

My ideal guess? Up to 20% of the existing martech landscape could churn in advance of 2024.

But it’s only the churn amount of present martech sellers that I have a dim prediction about. As much as collective sector income goes, I believe that martech is going to go on to mature for the foreseeable upcoming. Maybe not as quick as it has been for the future few of many years. But in the big photograph, even now really speedy. For 1 straightforward cause: the electronic transformation of advertising and marketing is significantly from over, and it continues to be one particular of the biggest levers every single firm on the world has for profitable and retaining consumers.

Specially in the demanding instances ahead, excellent martech will be crucial to survival achievements.

Fail to remember valuations for now, which have been the semi-delusional yardstick of measuring martech ventures these previous handful of several years. Earnings is the ground real truth of sizing an field. And I’m 99.9% sure martech income will expand yr-about-year for the relaxation of this ten years.

And to repeat the mantra of this article: it’s not just martech. The full application business has great expansion ahead of it. The inspiring chart above from Battery Ventures (with my two annotations in orange) is both an exact seem-back again at software package profits development more than the earlier five a long time, but also a reasonably conservative extrapolation of normal compound annual progress of software package revenue for the up coming two many years.

Two things pop out straight away from that chart:

To start with, holy cats, the size of what the software package business is very likely to develop to by 2050 dwarfs where by we are these days. “Software consuming the world” is application having more than extra and a lot more of each side of the economy. Around the globe GDP in 2020 was ~$85 trillion. By 2050, it’s expected to be ~$165 trillion. It is in fact not that crazy to assume of program building up a mere $6 trillion of that, or ~3.6% of whole GDP.

Second, the Dot-Com Bubble Burst in 2000 and The Wonderful Economic downturn in 2008 barely sign-up as little dents in the upward slope of this mountain. That is not to trivialize the complications so many confronted in those several years. But putting those people hurdles in perspective of the lengthy video game, the over-all trajectory of the software market has not been derailed by the ups-and-downs of macroeconomic company cycles. I feel that is likely to remain real for this era and possibly the next.

All of which qualified prospects me to conclude that The Fantastic Application Explosion will continue on as a result of these next couple of several years. And on the following wave of restoration and growth, the progress in new software program applications could possibly incredibly properly strike light-weight pace ludicrous velocity.