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Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly

The Angle Issue #72: For the two weeks ended March 17, 2020

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Angular Ventures
March 16, 2020

Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly

The Angle Issue #72: For the two weeks ended March 17, 2020 v

My favorite way to open this newsletter is to happily announce my presence in one of the many places Angular Ventures is lucky to operate: London, Tel Aviv, New York, Berlin, San Francisco, Paris, and elsewhere. Today, and for the foreseeable future, I'll be writing this letter from my apartment in London where - like everyone reading this - my family and I are praying this passes quickly and with as little damage as possible. The pain humanity has already endured from this virus is already unbearable - and will, no doubt, get worse before it gets better. Today, one of my calls with a founder was canceled. His roommate had apparently contracted Covid, and he was busy dealing with that situation. My thoughts go out to him and to everyone who is impacted by this. Stay strong.

Last week, we published publically a letter to our portfolio on how to survive Coronavirus as an enterprise tech startup. We also put out a set of resources on remote working, put together by Anne Blum, our Head of Platform, who is hunkered down in New York. 

Angular Ventures and most of our portfolio companies already had a strong culture of remote work - and we are all doing our best to adjust to this new reality. We remain very much open for business (five startup calls today alone), but it will take some time for all of us to adjust to this new reality. We'll do our best to keep these newsletters coming.

A bright spot. In the midst of this crisis, we're encouraged to note that (our portfolio company) Datos Health’s remote monitoring tools are being used by Sheba Medical Center, enabling the hospital to remotely monitor coronavirus patients. Here's a video of Datos CEO Uri Bettesh explaining how the platform can be used in the care of Covid patients. And here is a post and photo of an exhausted Datos team after deploying the solution rapidly at Sheba.

Online demo days and startup events. Andrew Poesaste, my colleague in London, is compiling a list of events that - like YC and EF - have gone virtual. Please ping him if you are aware of any such events. We'll be sharing this list if it gets long enough to be interesting.

We wish you and your families all safety, comfort, and peace. And may we all meet for handshakes and hugs sooner than we currently expect. 

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.

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

  • Israel/Security. Hellman & Friedman, the PE firm, bought Checkmarx for $1.15B from Insight. 

  • UK/No Code Insurance. INSTANDA raised $19.5 million for its no-code insurance customer and policy management platform. 

  • UK/SEO Platform. DeepCrawl raised $19M for its web crawler that empowers marketers with actionable data-based insights to diagnose and fix technical issues, increase website visibility, and ultimately win more organic traffic.

  • Portugal/Tech enabled physical therapy. Sword Health raised $8M to expand its platform. They work with insurers, health systems and self-insured employers to provide tech-enabled physical therapy to its members.

  • Finland/Transfer Pricing. Aibidia raised $4.6M to help companies digitalize international tax.

  • Israel/AI Lifecycle. Superwise AI raised $4.5M for its AI lifecycle management platform that allows businesses and operational teams to take ownership of the health of AI models, giving them the ability to better trust the operation of their AI-driven processes.

  • UK/AI content moderation. Unitary raised $1.6M  to continue developing its AI to automate content moderation for “harmful content” so that humans don’t have.

  • Israel/Health. How Israel is using tech to contain Coronavirus.

  • Israel/Tech. One-third of Israeli tech firms are planning layoffs in response to Coronavirus.

Worth reading

Enterprise/Tech News

  • Hashicorp. The cloud infrastructure management software provider raised $175M at a valuation of $5.1B.

  • How Coronavirus might impact IT spending. The WSJ on what this might mean for IT budgets. "Companies are expected to pull back on information-technology spending amid growing uncertainties over the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global markets. The anticipated declines will likely outweigh any short-term gains from a spending spree as businesses bulk up on software, mobile devices and other tools to deal with a sharp rise in remote work, industry analysts say. “Any upticks will be offset by the negative impact overall when this shakes out,” said Stephen Minton, vice president of customer insights and analysis at technology research firm International Data Corp., citing disruptions to supply chains, trade and business planning as a result of the outbreak."

How to Startup

How to Venture

  • Reserves management. Semil Shah covers the critical topic of reserves management in a time of crisis. "VCs who are in lead positions will have to begin to make tough decisions about where exactly to allocate the reserves they’ve been setting aside. Say a company isn’t performing and/or doesn’t have a strong relationship with their lead — hard to see how reserves get deployed here. On the other hand, say a company is lean, low burn, and showing a path to sustenance over the next 12 months — their investors may lean in to bridge the company and get rewarded with more ownership in a rough economy."

  • The VC market. Ed Sim on the what Coronavirus might mean for VC fundraising.

  • The view from LP land. Samir Kaji at First Republic shares the LP perspective on the Coronavirus. "Fundraising time lines are expected to protract greatly for emerging funds, with many funds taking longer to reach targets (Fund I/II offerings may stretch from 17.6 months to 18–24 months) and with # of closes going from an average of 2, to 3–4."

Portfolio News

Datos Health’s remote monitoring tools are being used by Sheba Medical Center, enabling the hospital to remotely monitor coronavirus patients.
 
Valohai shares their learnings and tips for effectively working remote on machine learning projects.
 
Aquant’s predictive analytics is being used by field service organizations to enable proactive service and more efficient dispatch.
 
Planable was featured as the best tool for social media collaboration and approvals for remote marketing teams.

Portfolio Jobs

Apply to all Angular Ventures portfolio companies with one short application.

Aquant.io

DUST Identity

Planable

Valohai

Vault Platform

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