Hot in Enterprise IT/VC - What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #315
If you’re still not sure what the power of interest rates are on valuations, take a look at these charts as nothing changed other than inflation numbers which were lower this month versus last, indicating that the Fed interest rate increases may be working. IMO, it’s still too early to tell. Gitlab was up over 30% for the week, Hashicorp 23.6%, and Cloudflare over 37%. There is hope 🙏🏼! Now on to the sad news. What happened with FTX is absolutely terrible for the customers, employees, investors, and industry. What happened to FTX was an epic moment not unlike what happened to Long Term Capital Management which overlevered itself and almost brought down the financial markets ( i highly recommend reading When Genius Failed) or the dot.com bust. Every era of excess needs an epic moment like this to truly recalibrate our thinking. While many in the industry are in shock and awe at the scale of this meltdown, many also feel somewhat relieved. Why? During the latest bull market run, the power was in the hands of founders. There was and still is too much 💰, FOMO, and round after round being done before previous money was even touched. The folks who benefitted the most IMO were the best fundraisers, the ones who could dazzle with stories and big visions and yes even visions as big as buying bananas with crypto. Investors desperate to get into the next big thing moved faster, spent less time with founders, and accelerated diligence. Founders also dictated super voting shares, no board of directors, and more. It’s all great when the stock market only goes 📈. A huge part of this is structural as there is too much money overall especially at later stages and speed wins which means mistakes will be made. This is also not new as it happened back in the dot.com days that I lived through and will happen again in the future. That’s the nature of world changing technology and the pursuit of the next big thing. So why the relief? It’s because value is accruing back to founders with substance, the founders who are more steak 🥩 than sizzle 🥓, the founders who are not using superlatives to change the world but are just building kick ass products and executing. Investors have more time to do proper due diligence, get to know the founders and founders now have time to choose their investors as well. I’m watching it across the portfolio, and it’s so refreshing for me to hear regularly from founders that they are TRULY optimizing for the best partner besides price. In other words if an investor offered the highest price but would not be the best partner for various reason and another offered a price less but still relatively close, many founders now will opt for the longer term partnership - the investors who are more 🥩 than sizzle 🥓 as well. Please read my post from July about moving back to a world of relationship and transactions and why that is good for all of us. This also remains true and only even more important now after events of the past week. Anyway, this sucks but I am looking forward to continuing to partner with highly technical founders at company formation, those who are more 🥩 than sizzle 🥓 as your time is now! For me, this is the most rewarding part of doing what we do, partnering with underdogs creating new categories and not knowing if it will work but enjoying the ride. These founders will never be the in-demand founders that everyone wants to fund. In fact, these are the founders that will likely get several dozen NOs, NOs because the market doesn’t exist or TAM is not big enough or maybe because folks believe they can’t build it. But IMO this is where the most alpha comes from. Of course, one day you hope that these NOs eventually becomes multiple YESes as the product is built, market evolves, and value is proven. The end result from this mess will be that better, more efficient businesses will be built with less handwavy 👋🏼bullshit being thrown at us from all directions. As always. 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues. Scaling Startups
Enterprise Tech
Markets🤔 |
Key phrases
Older messages
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #314
Saturday, November 5, 2022
Themes from VC Annual Meetings
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #313
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Stormy 🌧️ ahead but keep the faith - the halo effect from public cloud spend is real
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #312
Saturday, October 22, 2022
🙏🏼 celebrating 6 years of What's 🔥...Customers don't buy TAM, they buy products which they can't live without - how Data🐶 intense focus on 1 product in early days led to $1.6B revenue run
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #311
Saturday, October 15, 2022
The importance of staying lean and mean in the early days
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #310
Saturday, October 8, 2022
Getting from seed to Series A - why chasing $1M ARR could be your white 🐳
You Might Also Like
BSSA #96 - The impact of "Built For Shopify"... 🤫
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
April 23, 2024 | Read Online fb tw in email Heeey! What's up? Before starting this email, a quick reminder: On May 27, we're hosting The Wide Event, from 6:00 pm to 11:30 pm, in Paris, at “Le
this is next week
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
a live deep dive into the state of digital health Hi there, Thought you might like this. On Tuesday, April 30th, our healthcare analysts – Alex Lennox-Miller and Anjalika Komatireddy – are giving their
[CEI] Chrome Extension Ideas #138
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
ideas for Twitter, Websites, YouTube, and Spam ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Should you quit your job to launch your ecomm store?
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Our take (+ other burning questions) , It's been incredible having hundreds of you joining us in foundr+. I'm so excited to connect with you in the community! (If you haven't been able to
🗞 What's New: Generate organic traffic with custom GPTs
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Also: Sharpening your mind!
How to make an impact in your first 90 days
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
25 tactics from top leaders at Ramp, Canva, Wiz, HubSpot, Google, Dropbox, and more ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
The Growth Newsletter #173
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Frameworks to decide how to move the needle: From RICE to DRICE Demand Curve Read on demandcurve.com The Growth Newsletter #173 Frameworks to decide how to move the needle: From RICE to DRICE
6 apps and 5K customers
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Plus, give me a lifestyle business any day
Inside Ireland's tech scene
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
How Irish startups can tempt talent from Big Tech, Brite Payments' origins and our investor relationships survey. View in browser Mindset Consulting flagship logo Good morning there, Ireland is
Inside Ireland's tech scene
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
How Irish startups can tempt talent from Big Tech, Brite Payments' origins and our investor relationships survey. View in browser Mindset Consulting flagship logo Good morning there, Ireland is