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Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly
The Angle Issue #76: For the two weeks ended April 21, 2020
Angular Ventures
April 21, 2020
Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly
The Angle Issue #76: For the two weeks ended April 21, 2020
So far, well over 100 founders from around the world have participated in the Angular Ventures survey on Coronavirus impact and response. We think it is the most comprehensive survey of its kind - and we look forward to sharing the results soon. It's fully anonymous, quick to complete, and we would love to include your voice and experience.
If you have a few minutes, please click here to complete the survey online. We're collecting responses through Wednesday night, so if you are planning to help us out, please do it soon. Thanks!
As always, 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/Startup Support. Governments across Europe are developing plans to rescue startups hit by pandemic economics. Sifted has been covering this in-depth with a look at what is happening in France and the UK. I, for one, agree with Robin Klein of LocalGlobe who argued convincingly against such initiatives: "A bailout fund risks misdirecting much-needed capital to the wrong part of the economy. It also creates adverse selection in a healthy and growing ecosystem. The 27% of companies that do make it from seed to Series A are probably the least likely to seek government support."
Israel/Online Fraud Detective. BioCatch raised $145M for its technology that tracks user behavior on websites to determine if a customer is real or a fraudster.
Israel/Data Unity. VAST data raised $100M for its technology that consolidates all of a firm’s data into one storage system
UK/Identity. Onfido raised $100 million for its identity verification and passwordless authentication software.
Israel/Cloud Security. Cato Networks raised $77M to help companies security their cloud with a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that connects and secures the entire enterprise – remote users, sites, applications, and clouds with a global cloud service.
Israel/Business Monitoring. Anodot raised $35M for its autonomous business monitoring software in which organizations can monitor business metrics, including revenue and costs, partners, and customer experience.
Israel/Operations Automation. Tonkean raised $24M for its no-code automation platform to automate workflows for operations teams.
Israel/Cybersecurity BAS. SafeBreach raised $19M for its breach-and-attack simulation (BAS) platform to validate security controls, visualize security risk and prioritize remediations.
Israel/Ops Security. BridgeCrew raised $18M for its platform that transfers responsibility to developers to maintain the enterprise’s cloud infrastructure protection.
UK/Open Banking API. Yapily raised $13M for its opening banking API to let enterprises, such as financial service providers and merchants, connect to banks.
France/Productivity Notes. Slite raised $11M for its multiplayer Evernote. It lets you collect and organize documentation, create shared documents and build a company handbook.
Israel/Automated Remote Care Platform. Datos Health raised $7M for its fully automated remote care platform that directly connects patients – from the comfort of their homes – with healthcare providers. Utilizing its robust data engine, Datos increases care teams’ patient management capacity, making it possible to safely monitor, detect, analyze and predict adverse events or other changes in patient conditions. (Disclosure: Datos is an Angular Ventures portfolio company).
UK/Challenger Credit Bureau. CreditKudos raised $6.5M for its opening banking to provide more accurate credit scoring.
Worth reading
Enterprise/Tech News
Growing up fast. The WSJ illustrates how the current generation of tech founders is moving from "move fast and break things" to "cut fast and cut deep." "The belief among startup founders in recent years was “if you throw enough capital at it, you eventually figure it out,” said Ms. McFarland, who is 43. “When you have an overabundance of capital, you don’t have to prioritize as ruthlessly. They have to make really hard decisions right now.”"
Let's Git aggressive. Microsoft, Github's new owner, announcing aggressive new pricing policies in a move aimed squarely at Gitlab. The new pricing provides for "free unlimited private repositories with unlimited collaborators for all, including teams that use the service for commercial projects, as well as up to 2,000 minutes per month of free access to GitHub Actions, the company’s automation and CI/CD platform."
Carta is struggling. Carta, the leading platform for cap table and corporate governance, is raising new capital at a $3B valuation while firing 16% of its staff as its business contracts due to slower activity.
Telemedicine's time as come. We are seeing it in our portfolio (Datos), but the pandemic has dramatically accelerated the adoption of telemedicine solutions. This report from the UK emphasizes just how fast this change is occurring. "“We’re basically witnessing 10 years of change in one week,” said Dr. Sam Wessely, a general practitioner in London. “It used to be that 95 percent of patient contact was face-to-face: You go to see your doctor, as it has been for decades, centuries. But that has changed completely.”"
The Google Chip. Axios reports that Google's new 5nm Whitechapel chip, developed in partnership with Samsung, is nearly ready for the next line of Pixels and Chromebooks.
Vertica is thriving. An interview with Colin Mahony on how the database vendor has grown in popularity under the wing of its new owners, Micro Focus.
Tech that matters vs. tech that doesn't. The NYT on how Coronavirus exposed which tech matters to consumers, and which we can do without.
How to Startup
First, survive. A great twitter thread by David Frankel of Founders Collective on the imperative for survival as the first corporate objective. "Forewarned is forearmed. There are companies that should legitimately be investing in this environment. Others should be cutting deeper than is comfortable. Most founders are somewhere in the middle, but too many aren’t certain."
Beware pandemic VC terms. Amy Lewin of Sifted looks at the increasing use of "investor-friendly terms" by VCs in the current climate. Stride's Fred Destin also provided some advice to founders on navigating these treacherous waters.
Repricing options. A look at how some companies are repricing options and selling secondary in response to the current environment.
The demand/cash matrix. Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint published a cool piece that proposes a 2x2 matrix of customer demand and balance sheet health to determine strategy. Here's one nugget: "Thin balance sheet and ravenous demand (top left). Your customers’ desire outstrips your ability to supply your service. Ideally, the management team should raise more capital to move to the upper right quadrant of the matrix. Venture capital, debt, or negotiating better cash collections (multi-year prepay) are all viable strategies to position the business to press its advantage."
Content marketing in uncertain times. Contently makes the case for this most powerful and efficient form of marketing. The article itself is content marketing. You see what they did there? :)
How to Venture
Time to build. Marc Andreesen argues that its time to build. "I think building is how we reboot the American dream. The things we build in huge quantities, like computers and TVs, drop rapidly in price. The things we don’t, like housing, schools, and hospitals, skyrocket in price...Building isn’t easy, or we’d already be doing all this...If the work you’re doing isn’t either leading to something being built or taking care of people directly, we’ve failed you, and we need to get you into a position, an occupation, a career where you can contribute to building. There are always outstanding people in even the most broken systems — we need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have, and on building the answers to those problems."
Portfolio News
Datos Health raised a $7M Series A round from Crescendo Venture Partners, Industry Ventures, Vertex, and Angular Ventures. Datos provides data handling solutions for patient-generated healthcare data (PGHD), a critical component of telemedicine. Already in production before Coronavirus, the Datos platform has been aggressively deployed in Israel, Italy, and the US in response to the pandemic.
Vault Platform released their latest Vault Magazine issue, which explores the direct and indirect impact of the coronavirus on workplaces and businesses.
Planable launched its latest People of Marketing podcast episode, which covers flexibility, strategies during a crisis, and data in advertising.
Portfolio Jobs
Apply to all Angular Ventures portfolio companies with one short application.
Aquant.io
Datos Health
DUST Identity
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