Hot in Enterprise IT/VC - What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #276
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #276Startups like a fine 🍷, the longer arc of success 💪🏼 for some founders
While all of us love to hear about the 🚀 startups who scale from zero to $50M ARR in record time and build in public, the reality is that it is much different for many other founders and investors. I was reminded of that this week when 2 portfolio companies that we funded on day 1 in 2017 finally emerged from stealth. First, Clay officially launched and ended up #1 on Product Hunt this past week. I’m super 🔥 up for co-founders Kareem Amin and Nicolae Rusan and the entire team. Clay helps you find and enrich data from any source with 20+ built-in tools to create living spreadsheets.
Spreadsheets that fill themselves, without code: meow.ph/clay Paul Graham likes to say that product velocity is one of the strongest signs of success and my 1b is hiring velocity is closely correlated because you can’t have 1 without a few more killer engineers. While Clay had all of that out of the gate, what they recognized is the product they were building was much more complex than initially anticipated. In addition with a horizontal product like Clay (feels like an Airtable meet Zapier meets Clearbit) in a rapidly maturing market around low code no code, the team felt it was important to nail some initial use cases to truly differentiate themselves from those around them. While many startups like to build in public, Clay took a different route, building and iterating with a targeted community of users, running a series of tests, before nailing their positioning, “spreadsheets that fill themselves.” Huge congrats as the Clay team has a number of happy paying customers and clearly tapped into a huge market need! Contrary to popular belief, not every co is 📈, some take time to age, like a fine 🍷
Big week @Boldstartvc port cos @clayrunHQ which officially launched w/spreadsheets that fill themselves + @Wallarooai, announced $25M Series A led by @M12vc
both day one investments in 2017! Company #2 is Wallaroo which we also funded at company formation. Wallaroo just announced its $25M Series A led by M12 (Microsoft’s VC arm) and existing investors. While founder Vid Jain saw the future, the markets weren’t exactly ready for him. Wallaroo is the easy button to deploy AI models w/ breakthrough performance, ease + scalability. Here’s more from Venturebeat. And according to Vid in the Wallaroo blog:
Similarly to Clay, Vid had a strong engineering culture and team out of the gate with incredible product velocity. Unlike Clay which is a PLG company, Wallaroo had to brute force its way into a number of Fortune 500 customers, those who had enough models in production and had the scale pain that Vid sought to solve. It reminds me of the old adage that pioneers get arrows in their backs and it’s so hard to create new categories and time early markets. Part of is just surviving and continuing to build and that is what Vid and team did. Just because you don’t find success immediately, it doesn’t mean you won’t build a massive and successful company. While Clay and Wallaroo are still both early in their respective journeys, their quietness and “behind the scenes” approach doesn’t mean they were dead, but intensely focused on finding that right positioning and messaging. Finally, every startup journey is different and there are lots of ways to reach the promised land so founders keep building and iterating and remember sometimes it can take longer than you want. As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues. Scaling Startups
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Older messages
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #275
Saturday, February 5, 2022
☁️ is still on 🔥 + what to look for in journey from OSS project to company
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #274
Saturday, January 29, 2022
25 Years in NYC Enterprise Tech and why I moved to Miami 🌴 - 🔥 up to build 🏗️
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #273
Saturday, January 22, 2022
Talent in a down market 📉
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #272
Saturday, January 15, 2022
Silver lining - enterprise IT spend to continue 📈
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #271
Saturday, January 8, 2022
📉 What a start to 2022 but no time to panic
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