Suger: Powering the Future of B2B Software Sales
By Lisa Xu and Katie Evans, Threshold Ventures
We are excited to announce that Threshold Ventures led the $15 million Series A funding round for Suger, a company defining how B2B software companies list, transact, and co-sell on cloud marketplaces. Suger is at the forefront of this emerging and rapidly growing channel, automating and simplifying a once-complex process for its customers so they can scale revenue faster and with greater efficiency.
The Rise of Cloud Marketplaces
Cloud marketplaces are online marketplaces where organizations can purchase software and services that integrate with their cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure). Sales from cloud marketplaces have surged in recent years from $4 billion in 2021 to $15 billion in 2023 and are projected to reach $85 billion by 2028, according to Canalysis. This makes cloud marketplaces one of the fastest-growing channels for B2B software sales, and major platforms like CrowdStrike, Snowflake, Palo Alto Systems, and Splunk have generated over $1 billion in revenue through AWS Marketplace alone. Meanwhile, emerging B2B marketplaces on platforms like Snowflake and Databricks are gaining traction, further expanding the sales opportunity for B2B software.
The explosive growth of this channel has been driven by strong value propositions to both buyers and sellers, including faster sales cycles, more streamlined implementation, and larger deal sizes, as well as reputational and product credibility benefits. Cloud marketplaces also enable buyers to purchase software using pre-committed cloud spend. The industry is seeing rapid adoption given these advantages, and software companies that fail to establish a marketplace presence risk falling behind.
The Suger Solution
Despite their clear advantages, listing a product on a marketplace can take months of engineering work, and the complexity only grows as companies adopt multiple-marketplace strategies. Maintaining integrations, tracking co-selling opportunities, and ensuring compliance requires ongoing investment in both engineering and sales ops.
For companies with usage-based pricing and PLG models, these challenges are an even bigger headache. Engineering teams are tasked not only with building the initial marketplace integration but also with handling usage metering and billing across all cloud marketplaces. In addition, keeping up with frequent integration and compliance changes makes selling on cloud marketplaces an expensive and resource-intensive effort.
Suger is solving these challenges with an API-first platform that automates and streamlines the entire cloud marketplace sales lifecycle. Suger’s platform enables B2B software companies to unlock new revenue streams faster while freeing up engineering and sales teams to focus on growth. Suger’s integrations with customers’ CRMs help sales accelerate co-selling, automate workflows, and gain real-time visibility into deal progress. The platform also simplifies upsell, renewal, and contract management for sales and finance teams, providing customers a single pane of glass across multiple marketplaces.
Suger’s product has been in the market for about two years, but its impact is already evident: Suger has enabled customers to 3x their marketplace volumes and increase average contract values by over 140%. Given the company’s innovative, AI-powered approach, it’s no surprise that Suger has become the partner of choice for many of the world’s leading software companies, including Snowflake, Intel, Fivetran, dbt Labs, Notion, and Contentsquare.
Right Team, Right Time
We have been incredibly impressed with the vision that CEO Jon Yoo and CTO Chengjun Yuan share for the future of cloud marketplaces and believe they are the right duo to tackle this problem space, which they understand deeply. Jon saw these inefficiencies firsthand at Salesforce, while Chengjun developed internal marketplace integrations at Confluent. Jon and Chengjun embody the tenacity, product obsession, and vision that we look for in Threshold founders. Under their leadership, the company has undergone rapid momentum since launching in early 2023, with an impressive roster of scaling enterprise logos.
At Threshold, we seek to invest in companies that define new categories and create lasting value. We see a massive, industry-wide shift to cloud marketplaces in the enterprise, and Suger is poised to lead the long-term transformation. We are thrilled to partner with Jon, Chengjun, and the entire Suger team as they shape the future of this industry.
