Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 85% certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Sridhar: Kinvey coined and created the 'backend as a service' category

Sravish Sridhar · 849: SaaS: Kinvey Acquired for $50m To Help Frontend Devs Be Backend Devs · Nov 20, 2017 · at 2:35

Kinvey founder Sravish Sridhar explains the origins of the Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) market to host Nathan Latka.

0:00 / 0:03exact quote · 3.5s

720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark

“We coined the phrase and created this category, and now it's a thing.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Kinvey coined the phrase 'backend as a service' and created the Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) category.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim contains two distinct assertions: that Kinvey coined the term 'Backend as a Service' (BaaS) and that it created the BaaS category. Industry archives and investor records corroborate that Kinvey coined the term, as evidenced by August 2011 TechCrunch coverage framing its launch and subsequent 2013 confirmation by Atlas Venture general partner Fred Destin. However, the creation of the software category itself was a concurrent development across multiple early startups in 2010–2011 (including StackMob, Parse, CloudMine, and CocoaFish), making the claim of single-handedly creating the category an overstatement.

August 5–7, 2011 TechCrunch coverage headlined Kinvey's $2 million seed round around its 'Backend as a Service' platform.
On January 14, 2013, Fred Destin of Atlas Venture published on VentureBeat that he 'backed the guys who coined the term Backend as the Service, Kinvey'.
Industry documentation notes that the BaaS category emerged concurrently in 2010–2011 with multiple pioneering vendors, including StackMob (founded early 2010) and Parse (founded June 2011).

Checked against

[1] blogspot.com [2] startupbeat.com [3] avalon-ventures.com [4] stackoverflow.com [5] linuxfoundation.org [6] yourstory.com [7] venturebeat.com [8] venturebeat.com

"The second generation of cloud startups is here" VentureBeat Backend as a service coined Kinvey StackMob Parse "Backend as a Service" ReadWriteWeb OR TechCrunch 2011 "backend as a service" 2011 "kinvey" "Kinvey" "Backend as a Service" 2011 "backend as a service" origin 2011 Parse StackMob Kinvey "StackMob" "Backend as a Service" 2010 OR 2011 "backend as a service" "coined" "backend as a service" "coined the term" "Backend as a Service" "Kinvey" coined

assessed as of 2026-09-02

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

backend as a service Kinvey

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Opinion

Sridhar: M&A earnout handcuffs create a toxic post-acquisition company culture

“You're going to be motivated because you really want to work at the company. It's not tied to some artificial handcuffs, right? Which I think is a wrong culture.”

Sravish Sridhar Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 21:56 849: SaaS: Kinvey Acquired for $50m To Help Frontend Devs Be Backend Devs

Disclosure

Sridhar: Kinvey Business Edition customers pay about $24,000 annually

“The next class of customer is what we call business edition, so this is a business that is typically just doing one app and these customers, because they have higher SLA requirements and more feature-rich requirements, They pay us on an average about 24,000 do…”

Sravish Sridhar Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 4:20 849: SaaS: Kinvey Acquired for $50m To Help Frontend Devs Be Backend Devs

Disclosure

Sridhar: Kinvey charges enterprise clients six figures annually per instance

“And then we have large enterprise customers like Schneider Electric, Farmers Insurance, et cetera that have what we call enterprise edition, which is a pretty sophisticated version of the platform. And that's usually about six figures a year per instance.”

Sravish Sridhar Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 4:40 849: SaaS: Kinvey Acquired for $50m To Help Frontend Devs Be Backend Devs

Disclosure

Sridhar: Kinvey's ASP is probably $80K to $90K annually

“Yeah, we have significantly more enterprise customers than we do business edition and startup customers. So it's probably in the 80 to 90 K a year is probably our ASP.”

Sravish Sridhar Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 5:08 849: SaaS: Kinvey Acquired for $50m To Help Frontend Devs Be Backend Devs

Assertion Supported

Kinvey Raised $18 Million Over Six Years Prior to Acquisition

“So we raised a total of about eighteen million dollars over a period of six years before the acquisition.”

Sravish Sridhar Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 6:06 849: SaaS: Kinvey Acquired for $50m To Help Frontend Devs Be Backend Devs

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Kinvey Reached Millions in Revenue Starting in 2014

“We did about high six figures that year. And then we got into the millions of dollars starting in 2014.”

Sravish Sridhar Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 7:13 849: SaaS: Kinvey Acquired for $50m To Help Frontend Devs Be Backend Devs

Sridhar: Kinvey coined and created the 'backend as a service' category

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