Is Gartner worth the time and money for startups?

You may be contacted by them and they'll explain their different offerings. The "cool vendor" listing is free if they think you're a "cool vendor". You'll have a call with their analysts who'll ask you all kinds of questions.

They have resources on their website that will help you prepare these calls and reduce the time it takes you to make the most out of the calls.

Tip: you may want to name your product/company with a letter that gets on top when listed alphabetically, as their vendor list is sorted alphabetically.

You may also look up Forrester and see if it's worth it to you.

I've found that Capterra and Getapp are useful platforms to create a profile and advertise on.

I don't think having a profile alone is enough given the amount of competition (you'll be buried in results), but acquiring reviews and paying for ads have worked for my SaaS.

It's a bit expensive but the audience is generally pretty qualified: I'd recommend giving it a shot, you can try to advertise for a month and see how it works out for you!

They are extremely expensive for PPC. But if you don't play that game with them, the reviews etc are worthless because it won't get much views. We use them for our business and even though we have decent number of reviews with a 4.9 rating in our B2B category, we get pushed to page 2 or later if we stop paying. That's the game.

What exactly are you trying to buy from them?

Gartner is targeting enterprises and setting trends, worth if your target would be to offer services aligned on their market expectations