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Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly
The Angle Issue #75: For the week ended April 7, 2020
Angular Ventures
April 06, 2020
Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly
The Angle Issue #75: For the week ended April 7, 2020
We hope that you, your families, and your teams are safe, healthy, and in good spirits during these challenging and strange times. For those of you celebrating Passover or Easter this week - happy holidays! We hope we will all be able to celebrate these events with family and friends in person next year.
Coronavirus is impacting everyone — and Angular Ventures is working to understand and quantify the impact on the enterprise tech community in Europe and Israel.
Over the past few weeks, we have spoken with all of the CEOs and founders of our portfolio companies from across Europe, Israel, and beyond. We’ve listened to how they are thinking about the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on their business and worked with them to think about their response in terms of runway extension, expense management, and product roadmaps.
We are now extending that work to the broader community of enterprise/deep tech founders across Europe and Israel: We are conducting a short anonymous survey on the impact of and response to Coronavirus, and we’d love your insights based on your experience running a startup in these unprecedented times. Please, click here to complete the survey. The resulting research will be shared with all survey respondents. All data will be anonymized and shared only in aggregate. The more data we have, the more valuable it will be for founders when thinking about the critical decisions they need to make over the next few weeks.
Thanks in advance for your participation. We really appreciate it, and we look forward to sharing the results with you soon.
If you are building an enterprise or deep tech startup in Europe or Israel,
please let me know... Now let's get to the news.
From the blog
Surviving Coronavirus. A guide for founders and some resources on remote work. Also, some straight talk on VC fundraising in 2020.
Defining Enterprise/Deep Tech. What do we actually mean by the phrase "enterprise or deep tech?"
Introducing the Angular Ventures Team. Getting to know Anne and Andrew.
Launching Angular Ventures I. What we do, why we exist, and how we got here.
US incorporation? Just do it. Why nearly all enterprise tech companies should incorporate in Delaware.
Technology for Trust. Why we invested in Vault Platform
A Security Layer for the Physical World: Why we invested in DUST Identity
A System of Intelligence for Field Service: Why we invested in Aquant.io
Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech
Europe/Tech Layoffs. The Information looks at how one company - Israeli-founded TripActions - is implementing layoffs across its global offices and how Europe-based worked have largely been spared due to government policies. "In countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, governments have responded to the economic damage from coronavirus with policies aimed at preserving jobs. Relatively few startups have let workers go. That stands in stark contrast to the U.S., where the federal government has focused on plans to give financial assistance to laid-off workers. Hundreds of Silicon Valley startups have laid off thousands of employees to keep from hemorrhaging cash."
Europe+Israel/Tech Support. How European governments are racing to save startups. The Israeli government is also working up a plan.
Belgium/Data Governance. Collibra raised another $112.5 million for its software that helps provide tooling for enterprises to manage, warehouse, store and analyze their data troves. More from Silicon Angle: "New York-based Collibra makes software products that help large organizations manage their data. The startup’s tools provide the ability to track just about every detail about a given record from who owns it to when it was created and what edits have been made since. Collibra also enables administrators to create file access rules based on these details to make sure records aren’t being misused. The startup’s technology lends itself to a number of common enterprise use cases. One is analytics, since the ability to view the origins of a file and other background details makes it easier to verify the accuracy of the information being processed. Another use case Collibra targets is regulatory compliance: the startup last year launched Collibra Privacy & Risk, a tool that makes it easier for enterprises to comply with privacy laws such as the European Union’s GDPR regulation."
Switzerland/AI-powered Asset Protection. Screening Eagle raised $59M for its cloud-based platform, connecting sensors, software and data, that can inspect vital social infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and buildings.
Israel/Cybersecurity Asset Management. Axonius raised $59M helps secure and manage connected devices in use by businesses.
UK/Banking. Yapily raises $13M for an open banking platform.
Israel/Personal Customer Experience. Anagog raised $10M to continue to innovate its real-world personalization, which enable mobile phones to understand users’ real-world behaviours (micro-segments) and real-time context (micro-moments) without disclosing the user’s personal data.
UK/Infrastructure. Ably raised $7M for real-time messaging infrastructure for edge computing.
Worth reading
Enterprise/Tech News
Strange notion. Notion raised $50M at a $2B valuation. We pay for it at Angular. I'm still not sure why, but it does seem to make people happy.
Not ready for its close up? Zoom runs into criticism for poor encryption and the CEO responds with a heartfelt blog post that is either a great example of leadership or not, depending on who you ask.
Copy that. Xerox ended its hostile takeover bid for HP. "The move ends Xerox’s four-month odyssey to buy HP, which was pitched by Xerox management as a better way for the two companies to survive a declining printing market. HP repeatedly rebuffed Xerox’s advances and in early March said that the copy machine company’s $34 billion offer “meaningfully undervalues HP and disproportionately benefits Xerox shareholders.”"
How to Startup
Staying mentally healthy. Brad Feld highlights the mental health risks we are all facing in this time of crisis. "I’ve been through many of my own mental health struggles and learned many things about how to manage my own issues, as well as being sensitive, empathetic, and understanding of others. That said, we are in a moment when all three are colliding against a backdrop of fear, uncertainty, and isolation. Historical rules about things are being thrown away daily as we all try to adapt and adjust to an extremely fast-moving disease that is impacting every nook and cranny of our lives. If your level of disorientation and anxiety feels extreme relative to what you’ve experienced, understand that we are – collectively as a society – trying to deal with three crises at the same time."
Selling in a pandemic. WorkBench put out a guide to enterprise sales in the time of Coronavirus. The piece is useful and consists of key points and links of other great sources on the topic. It's a must-read.
Has the balance of power shifted towards VCs? The Information reports on valuation haircuts, collapsing deals, and other signs that the VCs of the valley are both slowing down and flexing their muscles. "Some well-known VCs have begun talking about the current moment as something like an integrity test for startup investors and a reckoning for the dilettante investors that veterans of Sand Hill Road—the Silicon Valley street that is home to many VC firms—often grumble about." The piece also covers some VCs arguing that "fast money" should not be trusts in tough times. "Among the investors that can’t be trusted in a bear market are corporate investors, private equity firms and hedge funds—nontraditional VC investors that have become increasingly active in private tech investing, wrote the investors at Tribe, which has stakes in equity management tool Carta and email service Front. Tribe included GV, Tencent Holdings, Salesforce Ventures, Deerfield, Tiger Global, IDG Capital and Silver Lake among the investors that companies couldn’t rely on in rough times. “Fast money can come in quickly, sometimes opportunistically or for transactional reasons, and also trade out quickly,” they wrote. “These ‘fast’ money firms are not in the business of venture capital. They aren’t interested in helping with company building in the long run. They are what is commonly referred to as ‘fair-weather friends.’”
How to Venture
Slowing down. A reminder from the incomparable Fred Wilson of the positives of slowing down. "One of the silver linings to this awful pandemic is that things have slowed down a lot. Not just work. Everything really."
Perfect storm. Connie Loizos argues that the current environment is a perfect storm for first-time managers. "[Eva Ho of Fika Ventures] also says that as someone who’d worked at Google and helped found the location data company Factual, she underestimated the work involved in running a small fund. “I thought, ‘Well, I’ve started these companies and run these big teams. How different could it be?” But “learning the motions and learning what it’s really like to run the funds and to administer a fund and all responsibilities and liabilities that come with it . . . it made me really stop and think, ‘Do I want to do this for 20 to 30 years, and if so, what’s the team I want to do it with?'”
Portfolio News
Datos Health was deployed by Rochester Regional Health to more efficiently and safely monitor their patients and healthcare workers exposed to, or suffering from, the coronavirus.
Aquant launched Ignite, a free self-service diagnostic tool, to help reduce field service teams in-person visits during COVID-19.
Planable has made their starter plan free for non-profits working on COVID-19 relief efforts.
Crux OCM’s CEO, Vicki Knott, talked about business continuity for control room operations and how the current pandemic may change the way we view the term.
Portfolio Jobs
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Aquant.io
Candu
Datos Health
DUST Identity
Valohai
Vault Platform
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