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

Around the 11 years that I’ve been publishing the martech landscape, as it mushroomed from ~150 answers to ~10,000, I have witnessed numerous people today respond to it as an anomaly. “What is it about marketing that spawns so numerous software program apps? Undoubtedly no other job has to deal with these types of sprawl!”

To which application evaluation web site G2 responds in this article, “Hold my beer.”

Although there are undoubtedly dynamics distinct to advertising and marketing that feed the frenzy of new martech startups, the truth is that martech is just a portion of a a great deal much larger software package revolution. Marc Andreessen identified as it “software eating the earth.” I phone it The Wonderful Application Explosion. Application is all over the place (and, significantly, every thing is application).

But particularly how lots of commercially packaged program apps are there in The Terrific App Explosion?

Let’s acquire game titles and client-oriented apps off the desk. We know there are thousands and thousands of these apps for cell equipment on the Apple App Store and Google Enjoy Shop. It is fair to say that’s a different kettle of fish than B2B application, these types of as martech.

Very well, at minimum now. Frankly, purchaser and company software applications are powered by much of the very same fundamental technology. And you see growing cross-pollination concerning these domains. The consumerization of IT stays a significant movement underway. I individually see similarities in between creators on client platforms and “makers” within businesses leveraging no-code tools. And if you believe the buzz of the metaverse — which will one particular day rise from the trough of disillusionment — the convergence of company and buyer encounters will blur even additional.

But for now, let’s stick to a slim interpretation of how quite a few company program applications are there in the earth?

The solution: at least 103,528.

That is the variety of software program solutions profiled on G2’s site as of last 7 days. It’s not a theoretical guesstimate. It’s an empirical depend — like the martech landscape, but spanning all organization application categories.

I emphasised the phrase “at least” in front of that amount for two causes:

To start with, G2 acknowledges that they have not uncovered all of the company program applications out there yet. My impact is that specially in marketplaces outside of North The us, there’s a ton nonetheless to uncover. Consider of China and Japan, for occasion.

Second, new computer software startups continue to keep staying introduced. (You could be mumbling underneath your breath, “Let’s see what the present economic system does to that merry-go-round.” Set a pin in that caveat for a moment – I’ll occur back again to it.)

In other words, that 103,528 variety is a decreased certain of the B2B software item universe. The true variety is certainly better, and potentially considerably increased. 150,000? 200,000? A lot more?

G2’s database is surely however developing, adding on common 945 application solutions per thirty day period.

What about consolidation, you say? These figures from G2 are inclusive of the simple fact that they’ve handled more than 760 merger and acquisition scenarios given that January of this calendar year. So, sure, consolidation is happening. But the paradox of simultaneous consolidation and expansion in software markets holds true. It is not just martech.

Speaking of martech, the folks at G2 also shared with me the counts of 9,365 martech products and solutions and 1,488 adtech items in their database. Blended — which is how I’ve constantly thought of them — that’s 10,853 madtech applications in whole. Far more than what Frans and I came up with in our 2022 martech landscape release in May possibly.

Our approach is to share data in between us and G2 to get a superset of all of them. But it is good to also have an unbiased corroboration that, certainly, today’s martech landscape really is on the magnitude of ~10,000 goods.

Is 2023 the Yr of the Martech Cataclysm?

But let us get back again to that concern about the economic climate I dodged before.

No sugarcoating it. This upcoming calendar year or two is likely to exert a ton of pressure on the current martech landscape. Funding will be tougher to occur by, and at noticeably far more modest valuations. Marketing departments are likely to have tighter budgets and come to be considerably tougher clients when it arrives to looking at and negotiating martech buys. This is the 1st time in more than a ten years of exponential martech growth that the industry is facing a truly formidable financial ecosystem.

Unquestionably, this will result in a lot of much more acquisitions of more compact martech fish by more substantial martech fish, as very well as the private equity crowd betting on the other facet of this cycle. But far more painfully, there will be an expanding range of early-stage martech ventures that just call it quits immediately after failing to possibly protected their following funding spherical, find a ready acquisitor, or rebalance their functions to profitability.

My ideal guess? Up to 20% of the latest martech landscape could churn prior to 2024.

But it’s only the churn fee of current martech distributors that I have a dark prediction about. As significantly as collective marketplace earnings goes, I imagine martech is heading to carry on to grow for the foreseeable upcoming. Possibly not as quickly as it has been for the upcoming few of a long time. But in the large picture, nevertheless quite rapidly. For one straightforward purpose: the electronic transformation of advertising and marketing is much from more than, and it stays a single of the biggest levers every enterprise on the planet has for winning and retaining customers.

Specifically in the tough moments ahead, excellent martech will be very important to survival success.

Ignore valuations for now, which have been the semi-delusional yardstick of measuring martech ventures these previous few decades. Revenue is the ground real truth of sizing an field. And I’m 99.9% sure martech earnings will expand year-around-12 months for the relaxation of this 10 years.

And to repeat the mantra of this put up: it is not just martech. The entire software package industry has monumental advancement ahead of it. The inspiring chart previously mentioned from Battery Ventures (with my two annotations in orange) is the two an accurate seem-again at computer software profits progress more than the earlier 5 decades, but also a pretty conservative extrapolation of average compound once-a-year development of computer software profits for the next two decades.

Two items pop out instantly from that chart:

To start with, holy cats, the sizing of what the software package industry is possible to expand to by 2050 dwarfs exactly where we are currently. “Software eating the world” is computer software taking more than much more and extra of every single aspect of the economic system. Around the globe GDP in 2020 was ~$85 trillion. By 2050, it is predicted to be ~$165 trillion. It is in fact not that ridiculous to feel of computer software making up a mere $6 trillion of that, or ~3.6% of complete GDP.

Next, the Dot-Com Bubble Burst in 2000 and The Terrific Economic downturn in 2008 scarcely sign up as small dents in the upward slope of this mountain. That is not to trivialize the troubles so numerous confronted in individuals a long time. But putting all those hurdles in point of view of the long activity, the overall trajectory of the program sector hasn’t been derailed by the ups-and-downs of macroeconomic business enterprise cycles. I think that is heading to keep on being accurate for this technology and in all probability the next.

All of which potential customers me to conclude that The Excellent App Explosion will go on by these subsequent few of many years. And on the subsequent wave of recovery and expansion, the progress in new software apps could possibly extremely perfectly strike light speed ludicrous velocity.