m3ter, a metering and pricing engine for Software-as-a-Service companies, has launched from stealth with the announcement of £13 million in funding.
The investment will support m3ter as it builds on significant early traction to expand into new markets, grow its team, and extend its product.
Kindred Capital, Union Square Ventures and Insight Partners all participated in the round.
m3ter’s early traction corresponds with a rapid increase in the number of SaaS businesses switching to usage-based pricing: charging customers for what they consume allows for easier adoption, costless upsell, better margin control and greater customer satisfaction.
m3ter claims to address common issues with adopting the model. It provides data infrastructure that captures granular usage and cost data at scale, enables complex pricing configuration and calculates bill amounts in near real time.
This feeds systems throughout the tech stack, including the billing and finance system to automate billing operations; SaaS platform to deliver billing dashboards to end customers; and sales CRM and customer success platforms to allow smart, well-informed and timely conversations with customers.
Founders’ exit to AWS
m3ter was co-founded in London by Griffin Parry and John Griffin, repeat entrepreneurs who previously built and sold a back-end-as-a-service business, GameSparks, to AWS.
“Usage-based pricing offers huge rewards for SaaS businesses, but it isn’t easy to implement,” said CEO Parry. “We experienced the pain ourselves when building our previous startup, but we also saw what good tooling can look like at AWS.
“Today, we’re proud to launch m3ter so that all SaaS businesses can intelligently deploy and manage usage-based pricing.”
Chrysanthos Chrysanthou, who led the investment from Kindred Capital, said: “The m3ter co-founders are repeat entrepreneurs with a deep, first-hand understanding of the struggles associated with usage-based pricing.
“With their technical ability and commercial track record, they’re uniquely placed to carve out a position of leadership in a market that’s fast taking shape as SaaS businesses look for a solution to their pricing woes.”