What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #248

Creating new infrastructure categories takes time, the compounding value of community - Replicated 4 years from Series A to B, 9 mos to Series C

Jul 31

While we live in a world of instant gratification and perceived overnight success, a couple threads from this past week reminded me that the best things take time to build and creating a new movement or category does not happen overnight.

First off is Replicated (a portfolio co) which announced its $50M Series C round led by Owl Rock and including existing investors boldstart, Amplify Partners, Two Sigma Ventures and others.

Here’s the deck from Business Insider that they used to raise the C along with a few screen shots. Take a look at last slide which has the power of the community engine for referrals and leads.

I remember many years ago when Replicated launched EnterpriseReady.io and the ultimate SaaS Features guide to help cloud companies go on-premise. Here’s version 1.0 from November 23, 2016 and the initial messaging. The 🔑 is that this was not about Replicated but a movement for everyone to join…which many did.

And here’s the latest site - not much has changed but remember this was from 5 years ago - consistency of messaging and effort. New categories, especially in infrastructure, take time.

While it seems like Replicated just raised a Series B last year which was announced just 8 months ago, notice how long it took to from Series A to B - 4 years!

Founders, stay the course because the best things come to those who wait and the power of the community takes a long time to build, but once it does, it compounds quickly.

One last point from this week is that is also takes time to build a venture firm. Read the 🧵 here - we were down on our luck just 3 years ago trying to get institutional investors to pay attention to us! That’s after having started boldstart in 2010 with a vision to be the best day one partner for technical enterprise founders.

Ed Sim @edsim

3 years ago this week - @etdurbin + I on an air taxi, squeezing in a LP meeting in NYC and then Boston to try to get our first close of Fund IV done, $40M out of $75M. This was only way we could squeeze 2 meetings in 1 day We failed - marked low point @Boldstartvc

It’s nice to remind ourselves of how not long ago where we were and to know that if you truly believe in what you are doing and work your tail off, good things can happen!

🙏🏼 as always for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues.

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