My angel investing activity has picked up a bit this year; following my announcement a few weeks ago about investing in Branch, I’m pleased to announce I’ve now also invested in Summit.

Summit is a tool for SaaS businesses to do financial forecasting.

Why did I invest?

• Just like Branch, Summit is in TinySeed’s first cohort, so I have been tracking the progress of the business for some time, watching it slowly mature. But in that regard I was hardly unique: you can learn more about both Summit and Branch and follow their progress on Matt and Peter’s weekly podcast Out of Beta.

• As always when doing early stage investing, the founder / founding-team is a key driver of the decision. Founder Matt Wensing has an impressive background in the forecasting space, having founded, grown, and eventually successfully exited from a forecasting business (Riskpulse).

• The macro trend of SaaS and the move to the cloud, continues to gain momentum. With my business, OpenCage, I fall squarely into the category of potential Summit user / customer, and thus understand the value it creates.

• There is huge potential for a “come for the tool, stay for the value added services” play in this space, as Matt has himself discussed numerous times on his podcast. With online payment tools providing near real time transparency into the health of a SaaS business, Summit is well positioned to become a platform for all sorts of high-value services beyond just forecasting, be that debt financing, advice around fund-raising strategy, etc.

Today Summmit is still in its infancy, but you can already see it has the potential to grow into a key tool for the rapidly-growing SaaS industry. I look forward to watching (hopefully helping) Matt and his team achieve that vision. If you run a SaaS business of any substance (six-figure ARR or more), I recommend you check out Summit.