Issue #133: For the week ended March 1, 2022

David Peterson

This week, it’s hard to think about anything other than Russia’s unprovoked and brutal assault on the free, democratic and independent Ukraine. Our hearts go out to the people of the Ukraine, many of whom are colleagues in the European tech ecosystem, and we hope for a swift ending to this war. What’s happening was perhaps predictable, but absolutely shocking all the same. I can’t help but shake the feeling that we’re witnessing the end of an era and the beginning of something unknown. Uncertainty reigns.

Separately, I did want to share some thoughts on this piece from Ravi Gupta about the danger posed by too much “process” at startups. It’s well worth a read if you haven’t come across it yet. Ravi is now a partner at Sequoia, but previously he was the COO of Instacart as they scaled from a money-losing, negative unit economics business to the behemoth they are today. And, as he tells the story, it wasn’t “process” that planted the seeds of that turnaround. It was desperation.

Too much process for an early stage startup is a dangerous thing. I distinctly recall moments during my time at Airtable, CompStak and even my own bootstrapped startup, when we let “process design” get in the way of productivity. We’d be sitting in the big conference room aligning on our company-wide planning process, slowly reviewing an increasingly unwieldy, and infuriatingly specific, list of objectives and key results…when probably what we should have done was just agreed on the one metric that mattered, given one person ultimate accountability to move that metric, and gotten back to work.

Process for the sake of process, especially at an early stage startup when every moment matters, is like procrastinating by cleaning. It feels productive. But it’s really just a distraction.

Actually, on second thought, it’s worse than that. It’s like tidying your room when the house is on fire. Keeping your room clean is important, but that’s not what matters right now!

There’s something magical, if not a bit painful, about a team that is united in desperation. And startups are nothing if not desperate. Time is running out. Money is dwindling. The house is on fire. Those constraints not only cause desperation, they also enable creativity and extreme, undivided focus. That is a startup’s superpower. So do whatever you can to hold on to it. Because, well, desperation is good, actually!

Until next week!

David

EVENTS

Mar 23 / The Importance of Culture and Values As You Scale a Business
Oren Kaniel, Co-Founder & CEO, AppsFlyer

Apr 11 / How to Employ Category Design as a VC
David Peterson, Partner at Angular & Al Ramadan, CEO of PlayBigger

FROM THE BLOG

Enterprise & Deep Tech VC in Europe & Israel 2021
A data-driven look at a record-setting year.

Shifting Left, Shifting Right
Are we on the cusp of a new era of empowered non-engineers?

The Problem with Engineering-led Growth for Early Stage Startups
What kind of growth team you need to hire depends on the stage of your company.

What Childhood Can Teach Us About Entrepreneurship
Childhood as a solution to the early stage entrepreneurship explore–exploit dilemma.

EUROPE & ISRAEL FUNDING NEWS

Israel/Adtech Security. CHEQ raised $150M for its cybersecurity solutions to CMOs and Marketing teams, protecting their customer acquisition efforts from bots, fake users and other forms of invalid traffic.
Israel/Finance SaaS. Pontera (previously FeeX) closed $80M for its financial advisor platform allowing them to securely manage their clients’ retirement accounts.
UK/Security. Red Sift raised $54M for its suite of cybersecurity products that block outbound phishing attacks, ensure the security of inbound communications, and fight against domain spoofing.
Netherlands/Security. Cybersprint has been acquired for $53M by Darktrace for its attack surface platform that provides continuous, real-time insights from an outside-in perspective to eliminate blind spots and detect risks.
UK/Lab Automation. Automata closed $50M for its lab automation robots.
UK/Financial BaaS. Weavr raised $40M for its plug-and-play finance solutions enabling any business to integrate any financial service anywhere their customers need it.
Israel/ML Tooling. Aporia raised $25M for its ML observability platform for monitoring machine learning models.
Israel/Legal. Anecdote raised $25M for its compliance operating system platform to provide customized compliance services for businesses.
Luxembourg/Environmental Materials. LEKO Labs raised $20M for its sustainably-sourced wood-based materials to replace up to 75% of concrete and steel used in a single building, dramatically reducing carbon footprint during construction.
Israel/IT Infrastructure. Zero Networks raised $20M for its network access and enforcement engine.
Sweden/E-commerce. Depict.ai raised $17M for its AI-based product recommendation platform for e-commerce businesses.
Netherlands/Data Tooling. SeMI Technologies raised $16M for its open-source Weaviate vector-search database.
Israel/Security. Astrix Security raised $15M for its cybersecurity platform that provides access management for third-party app integrations.

WORTH READING

ENTERPRISE/TECH NEWS

2022 breakthrough technologies. The MIT Technology Review has posted its annual list of 10 breakthrough technologies for 2022, including everything from the end of passwords to carbon removal factories.

Russia/Ukraine war’s supply chain effects. Ryan Peterson, Flexport’s founder and CEO, has an informative thread on the implications the conflict could have on the already fragile world supply chain. “We are hearing that in addition to the world’s only An-225, several An-124s were also destroyed in the conflict already. As of 2019 there were 26 An-124s in service worldwide, and they are pretty much the only air freight option for objects too big for 747s.”

Brain-machine interface new form factor. In a breakthrough, Scientists at Linköping University in Norrköping, Sweden have “developed the first organic electrochemical neurons based on printed organic electrochemical transistors. In a dramatic demonstration, they showed they could interconnect the artificial neurons with biological cells of the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) and trigger the plant’s chomping action with an electrical impulse. Remarkable if you are a neuroscientist, a botanist, or a robotics engineer — terrifying if you are a fly.”

HOW TO STARTUP

Anatomy of a PM job description. Ellen Chisa, founder in residence at Boldstart, shared a great post on what does (and doesn’t) belong in a PM job description requirement list. “By writing a highly specific job description that tells the PM what to expect in your company vs. what it’s like to be a PM, the right candidates are more likely to identify with it and apply.”

Go-to-Market in Web3. A16z’s Maggie Hsu wrote a terrific post on the new GTM mindsets, tactics, metrics for Web3 organizations. “In web2, the primary GTM stakeholder is the customer, typically acquired via sales and marketing efforts. In web3, an organization’s GTM stakeholders include not just their customers/users, but also their developers, investors, and partners. Many web3 companies therefore find community roles to be more critical than sales and marketing roles.

HOW TO VENTURE

VC fund deployment acceleration. Elizabeth Clarkson, investor at Sapphire VC, shared a great thread with real data on the deployment pace of VCs. “2021 hit a new high. We saw an average of 32% of capital called in a fund’s first full calendar year. Assuming a fund reserves 50% for follow-on capital, this implied an initial investment period well below two years. That’s new.”

PORTFOLIO NEWS

CruxOCM’s Head of People, Joanna Woo, spoke to Built In about how career pathing and development can help with employee turnover. “The top priority of any people leader should be the development of their team. In order to build a high performing team, high levels of trust, psychological safety, and open communication are required and one of the best ways to foster all three is to be invested in the career development of your employees.”