Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly

The Angle Issue #38: September 24, 2018

Welcome to Issue #38 - and happy Sukkot to my friends in Israel. 
 * * *
Congratulations to my friends at SiSense on their $80M round led by Insight. It's a privilege to be a very small part of that story - and we are thrilled that Eldad Farkash, founding CTO of SiSense, is now a Venture Partner at Angular. 

Congrats to both SiSense and JFrog on making the Forbes Cloud 100 list. They represent 2 of the 4 Israeli companies on that list. 

I'm off Heathrow in a bit, so we'll get straight to the news. but first, here's this week's must-read piece: The Metamorphosis of Silicon Valley C.E.O.s: From Big to Boring. "When it comes to tech C.E.O.s, boring is the new black. Under the glare of global scrutiny, the daring, win-at-all-costs ethos that defined so much of the tech industry in the last couple of decades has been undergoing a thorough metamorphosis."
If you are building a startup in Europe or Israel (or know of one that is going to change the world) - and especially if it's more "boring" than "big" - please let me know... 

From the blog

1Q18 & 2Q18 EU+IL VC Data.
$12.7B of VC investment summarized in 70 slides. 

Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech

• Romania/RPA Rocketship. UiPath raised $225M from CapitalG, Sequoia, and Accel at a $3B valuation - solidifying its place as one of the fastest growing software stories of all time. 

• Netherlands/IoT. Insurance giant Munich Re acquired IoT software house Relayr for $300M as it moves to expand into new, more software-driven, business lines. 

• Czech/Twilio. Twilio acquired Prague's Ytica for an undisclosed amount. Ytica provides a way to measure the performance of customer service staff, allowing management to monitor and intervene and coach when necessary.

• Netherlands/Devops. Gitlab raised $100M at a $1B+ valuation. In the process of building an enterprise-oriented competitor to Github, the company is also taking the remote working model to new heights.

• Israel/Guidance. Walkme raised $40M for its on-screen software guidance solutions. Led by Insight, the round was valued at over $1B. 

• Israel/Analytics. SiSense raised $80M for its enterprise BI SaaS. The round was led by Insight.

• UK/Voice. Vonage acquired NewVoiceMedia, a UK-based cloud contact center provider, for $350M. According to Techcrunch, "Vonage says the price represents 3.8 times NewVoiceMedia’s projected 2019 revenue. But it isn’t a stellar exit for the startup, which has been around since 1998 and was last valued at upwards of $311 million, according to Pitchbook data. That was over two years ago, and we’d heard the valuation was actually closer to $500 million at the time."

• UK/Fraud Detection. Ravelin raised GBP 8M. 

• Spain/Release management. Copado raised EUR 7.5M in an investment that appears deeply strategic to Salesforce. 

• Israel/Semiconductors. Adam Fisher, one of the single best VCs in the history of Israeli venture - on why he is still prepared to make bets on silicon. 

• Europe/AI. The Economist asks if "Europe can support AI without wasting money or lapsing into protectionism?" "America and China both represent flawed models of data collection and governance. China sees AI as a powerful tool to monitor, manage and control its citizens. America’s tech titans scoop up users’ data with insufficient regard for their privacy. The GDPR is just the start. Robust standards are needed to ensure that AI services are transparent and fair and that they do not discriminate against particular groups. Europe has a chance to shape the development of AI so that this vital technology takes more goals into account than simply maximising advertising income and minimising dissent."

• Europe/Copyright law. The EU Parliament takes further steps to outlaw the internet. 

• France/Smartphone ban. France has banned smartphones in school. 

• Israel/Hadoop killer. Yaron Haviv, CEO of Iguazio, on how cloud native is going to kill Hadoop. 

Worth reading

Enterprise/Tech News

• The cloud 100. My friend Amit Karp at Bessemer analyzes the Forbes Cloud 100.  "2018 indicated a shift in the Israeli SaaS ecosystem, with Israeli-based marketing analytics company Datorama getting acquired by Salesforce for over $800 million in cash. This is also reflected in the Cloud 100 list which includes several Israeli companies: SiSense (#41), WalkMe (#48), JFrog (#74), Cloudinary (#95). In addition, Israel-based Gong was recognized as a rising star. I believe this is only the beginning of a new trend and we will so more Israeli companies on the 2019 list."

• Farfetched. My friend Ezra Galston tears apart Farfetch's numbers. His verdict: "going to take a lot to become profitable. But not impossible."

• Digital twins taking off. The WSJ on the "digital twin" concept of software models for industrial equipment is set to explode. "Digital twins are software models of sensor-enabled physical assets and designed to monitor performance and help reduce costly unplanned equipment outages. The convergence of advanced technologies such as sensors, cloud services, big data and machine learning has brought this idea to fruition.By 2020, at least half of manufacturers with annual revenues in excess of $5 billion will have at least one digital twin initiative launched for either products or assets, according to Gartner Inc."

• Adobe + Marketo. The creative software giant Adobe bought Marketo for $4.75B. 

• RPA pricing. Hat tip to Ed Sim for this link to an analysis of RPA pricing - and why pricing is still a barrier to adoption here. 

• The mega fork. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts the internet will split into two versions: one China-led, and one US-led.

• Do you know where your healthcare data is? Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the leading cancer centers in the world, is in hot water over its close ties with a startup - ties that involved sharing data in potentially unauthorized ways. 

• The hype-cycle, demystified. Michael Mullany of Icon Ventures provides 8 Lessons From 16 Years of the Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant. "The MQ is important because everyone believes it's important. But does the MQ actually work? That is, can we look just at the MQ itself over time and see if it provides a reasonable basis for Enterprises to choose a product? Do Leaders tend to stay Leaders? Do Leaders show staying power? Are Leaders less likely to fall off the MQ or get acquired? And what about the other quadrants? What do they look like?"

• British Airways hack. Thank you British Airways for forcing me to get a new credit card. Here's the story of their disastrous data breach. 

How to Startup

• The Metamorphosis of Silicon Valley C.E.O.s: From Big to Boring. This is a must-read piece from the NY Times. "When it comes to tech C.E.O.s, boring is the new black. Under the glare of global scrutiny, the daring, win-at-all-costs ethos that defined so much of the tech industry in the last couple of decades has been undergoing a thorough metamorphosis." 

• SaaS expansion benchmarks. Openview provides a very useful survey on key benchmarks.

• Sounding the death knell. Jason Lemkin on when to tell employees the company is going under. 

• Make it habit-forming. Nir Eyal on why Slack is so successful: "Slack’s ability to quickly form a habit could be the key to the company’s tremendous customer loyalty and high engagement. Slack leads users repeatedly through a cycle called a “hook.” The four steps of the hook include a trigger, action, reward, and investment, and through successive passes through these hooks, the new habit is formed."

• How to email early-stage investors. Micheal Seibel offers some tips - suggesting a three-sentence framework for maximum effect.

• Hardware is hard. Airware shuts down after raising $118M. 

How to Venture

• Moonshots. Lux's Josh Wolfe on investing in a science fiction future.

• Market size fallacy. Rob Go on why sometimes market size is the wrong question.

• Apologies. In these first few months of Angular, I've been completely swamped with admin, deal flow, and new investments. As a result, I owe a lot of people an apology. Christian Jantzen, founder of Futuristic, a new seed VC firm in the Nordics, wrote an extraordinary blog post apologizing to founders for his sins from his first year of investing. I love this guy. 

Portfolio News & Jobs

SiSense raised $80M for its enterprise BI SaaS. The round was led by Insight.

Cloud66 announced several new capabilities in its container deployment pipeline.

A chat with Mathilde Collin, the CEO of Front.

- - - Portfolio Jobs - - -

Vault is hiring developers for front end and back end. Location flexible.

Cloud66 is hiring software engineers in London.

Datos is hiring a BD lead in the US.

Moltin is hiring for multiple roles in the US and UK.

Resin is hiring globally.