Hot in Enterprise IT/VC - What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #413
What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #413Seeing, catching and riding big waves 🌊 - signs of early success + framework for building in net new markets vs. existingFor the past month, and this week in particular, I feel like there was a major unlock in the venture world. I’m just seeing incredible momentum across the board from enterprise investors looking to aggressively deploy capital into next rounds, Series As, Bs, and Cs. This is not just for what you call AI-only companies but for more categories like Independent Developer Platforms (see Cortex last round) and other more traditional and less sexy areas of enterprise where AI is not the lead but just part of the delivering of value. I can feel it and see it - the dam is starting to break open, and all of those dollars on the sidelines are starting to get deployed. Sure, it’s tough for cos growing 20% YoY as the value is more closer to a Smartsheets at 8x trailing on $1B revenue than an OpenAI, but hey, one can dream a bit as we’re seeing upticks and uprounds happening. That is, if you survive long enough to get to the next round. This chart from Peter Walker, Carta from this past week spells out the time to next round over the last 6 years. It has lengthened by about 6 months for most startups. This data can be interpreted in so many ways since rounds got much larger, startups cut burn, but however you look at it, founders on average should make their cash last at least 2+ years and work backwards from those milestones. It also helps if your startup revenue curve looks like this - data from Stripe as reported by the FT. To be clear, this is time from turning on billing on Stripe so some companies may have been building for months and others for years.
Founders don’t worry - it’s not how long it takes to get to $1m but how fast you get from $1 to $5M and beyond. That search for Product Market Fit can take a while and you are ready to scale when customers love ❤️ your product so much that you can’t pry it out of their cold dead hands, and you can’t handle all of the inbound leads coming in. Tying this all back together to Inception Investing and how to go big and be one of the success stories above, there are two kinds of founders we meet. Those who want to create a new category in a new emerging market and those who are going after incumbents, reinventing and reimagining the future. I’d say about 3/4 of the founders we back are more on the new category/market side than the existing market side but I suspect that will change over time as each new sector gets more crowded. Each type of market that a founder goes after has its own nuances on product and timing and you can read more about my framework herein What’s 🔥 #277: It’s always super fun to see a new wave 🌊, catch it and ride it, but the only issue is that you never know when it’s coming. I like to say that many of these startups we back at Inception are un-Gartnered and un-market mapped meaning its fricking early! This past week let me show you two signs of how you know the market is moving in your direction. First, here’s Gartner releasing a comprehensive framework on what AI Security is and should look like (more below). We started collaborating with the founders of Protect AI in October 2021 and closed the initial round in Jan 2022 well before ChatGPT released. It’s taken 2.5 years but here we are - a Gartner market! It’s still early but super exciting to see the wave 🌊 come earlier than even we expected - sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you run out of money and die. Second, here’s an example from CrewAI, another boldstart portfolio co, from this past week. This is how you start a movement - make your product ubiquitous and so loved to the point that having expertise for said system is part of the job description - I have seen this many times and the correlation to success down the line is 🔥 As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues. Scaling Startups#Reminder, your first 5-10 hires set the culture for the company for years to come and each individual matters… #Patrick Collison on leadership and founder mode (I hate that term)
#how networks start - the early days of LinkedIn, fun walk down memory lane kickstarted by Auren Hoffman - some real OGs back in May 2003 #💯 - however your team operates, just be intentional Enterprise Tech#if VCs write about agents, well then there’s a market or at least lots of funding for your startup 💰 🤣! First, Menlo Ventures market map on agents - “Beyond Bots: How AI Agents Are Driving the Next Wave of Enterprise Automation” and this from a16z this week - “Every White-Collar Role Will Have An AI Copilot. Then An AI Agent” and even YC pushing vertical SaaS - please no - read 🧵 for lively debate Wrote about this a year ago - every SaaS investor going vertical for data moats on AI #13 companies from YC Demo Day 1 that are worth paying attention to (TechCrunch) #this AI thing might be big 👀 (Akhil Paul LI post)
#i just love it when new markets emerge out of nowhere - here’s the updated Gartner view of what AI security means - there is no market map yet but expect that in another 12 months or so - Avivah Litan - Gartner
#now that’s an Inception round 👀 - “Cider Security founder nets $28M in Seed funding for stealth cyber startup” - successful 2nd/3rd time founders are not raising $2M pre-seed rounds or not even $3-4M rounds - they are raising $10M+
#Meta Orion glasses - the future is here and will make AR seamless, physical world with holograms overlaid on it and no wires all powered by a wrist-based neural interface - yes, one day, there will be enterprise applications - must watch 🍿 🧵 and watch this to understand all the tech that went into this - what are you all thinking now? #data matters when it comes to AI - congrats to long time friend Jason Droege who just joined Scale AI as Chief Strategy Officer as it crosses the $1B ARR mark with even more impressive 4X YoY growth 👀 #🤔 #wow, that was fast - it’s working at least for customer support and code - lots more opportunity ahead to unlock value in the enterprise with more bespoke data - this where the fun is #Palantir laying out reason why Ontology matters for AI/LLMs - part of their secret sauce…from 2022
#crypto infrastructure needed as Blackrock looks at future…interview summary from Bankless with Robbie Mitchnick, Head of Digital Assets at Blackrock 🧵
Markets#What does Smartsheet acquisition by PE at 8x trailing ($1B revenue) mean for the other collaboration players? Must read - if you ain’t growing >25-30% then your multiples get crushed fast 🧵 and comments lively 👇🏼 #Zoom cutting back on stock-based compensation joining Salesforce, Workday and others - all about dilution of earnings…
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What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #412
Saturday, September 21, 2024
The impact of raising Jumbo Inception rounds, where the value accrues + >40% of all 🦄 in last 2 years are AI-related cos... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #411
Saturday, September 14, 2024
The future of AI as spoken by the OGs of Tech - Dell, Ellison, Huang, Benioff - keep 🏗️ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #410
Saturday, September 7, 2024
Speed mode + also, is the great unbundling of SaaS powered by agentic workflows? ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #409
Saturday, August 31, 2024
Building a customer-obsessed culture from Inception - lessons from Clay and others... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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