Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly

Issue #76: For the week ended April 28, 2020

The tweet below captures a bit of the current zeitgeist in enterprise land. A handful of companies that are perceived to be pillars of the "new stack" of tooling are charging ahead: raising large rounds at healthy valuations under competitive conditions. Coronavirus is accelerating trends towards tools that help employees work efficiently in a distributed way (Airtable, Figma, Notion) and/or help companies build infrastructure that operates in a robust distributed way (Confluent). As Terrence writes below, these are "anti-fragile." 

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

• Israel/Networking. Nvida completed the acquisition of Mellanox for $7B. "At signing, in March last year, the deal, estimated at the time at $6.9 billion, was the second-largest tech deal in Israel and the third-largest acquisition of an Israeli firm"

• Norway/Identity Management. ForgeRock raised $93.5M for its identity management tools for the enterprise.

• Austria/Marketing Data. Adverity raised $30M for its platform to collect, prep, and analyze marketing data.

• Denmark/Templates. Templafy raised $25M for its software that enables enterprises to more easily make templates out of standard documents.

• UK/Full Stack ML. Peak raised $12M for its full-stack enterprise AI System that combines the required infrastructure, data processing, AI workflow and applications in a single SaaS product.

• Israel/Infrastructure Performance. Granulate raised $12M for its cloud performance optimization software that can save clients time and money by analyzing and adjusting their infrastructure.

• Israel/Autocomplete Code. Codota raised $12M for its AI platform that auto-completes developers’ code,  intended both to speed up their work (it claims to “boost productivity by 25%”) and to make sure that it’s using the right syntax and ‘spelled’ correctly.

• Portugal/Remote Employment. Remote raised $11M for its platform designed to help companies hire and onboard remote employees anywhere, handling global payroll, taxes, compliance, and employee benefits.

• Israel/Coronavirus. Israel is fast-tracking government funds to keep startups afloat.

Worth reading

Enterprise/Tech News

• When Tailwinds vanish. This week's must-read post is from John Luttig at Founders Fund, who wrote a brilliant analysis of where Silicon Valley is today compared to previous decades. "Like any mature industry, Silicon Valley must battle to maintain growth in the face of immense economic gravity. For the first time in Internet history, startup growth will require a push from the company and not a pull from the market. Unlike the organic pull that drove many of the dotcom-era successes, today’s Internet startups need to fight for growth by investing more heavily into sales, marketing, and operations...Relative to the R&D-driven growth of early Internet companies, SG&A will become the primary growth vector in the 2020s." 

• Layoffs in RPA. Automation Anywhere, the Softbank-backed RPA giant, announced layoffs.

How to Startup

• Operating a SaaS company in the time of Coronavirus. Cassie Young, Operating Partner at Primary Ventures, put out a great post on how to think about running a SaaS business in the time of Coronavirus. It's jam-packed with awesomeness. "It is imperative to appeal to customers’ challenges, particularly if they operate in an industry hard-hit by COVID." "Companies need to provide thought leadership and resources to existing customers mirroring how they would engage new prospects. CSMs need to be more proactive than ever before with recommendations and value-added suggestions aimed at boosting customer ROI."

• Baking time. Ed Sim of Boldstart urges patience and alignment with investors as key success drivers for early-stage IT infrastructure companies.

• Big-ticket enterprise sales. Jessica Lin of Workbench on how to hunt technical elephants. "It’s best to include a product person in the sales process after the early stages of the sales process (likely right after you finish a PoC or PoV, “proof of value” as they call it at Datadog) as this is likely the time you’ll receive customer feedback and need to make product improvements. Your product team will be able to understand this feedback more deeply and best negotiate the deep engineering and technical product aspects."

• Gross margins. Fred Wilson of Union Square reminds us that not all gross margins are created equal. "The trick, I think, is to wrap your head around the cost of revenue or cost of goods sold line item in the income statement and think about what is going on there. If it is very little to no effort, and largely just an accounting entry, then you may have a “low margin business” that is actually a high margin business."

• The vultures are circling. Companies in trouble attract journalists, and sometimes what they find is not pretty. The startup undertakers are coming as well.

How to Venture

• Reflections on an imperfect exit. My former colleague and friend, Eden Shochat of Aleph, wrote one of the best pieces I've read by a VC on an investment in a long time. He recounts Houseparty's long journey to an exit. "As an ex-entrepreneur, I can’t help but think that unlike VCs, as a founder, you have a portfolio of one. It’s your only child. It took me years before I could wholeheartedly admit that Shells, my first company, was a failure."

• The slow-motion plane crash of VC. In an interview with the Information, Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Ventures, says VCs should prepare for a very difficult fundraising environment through 2021 at least. "I think [in] 2021, we will see more of an impact on fundraising, whether it’s because LPs have to make decisions about their stronger performers versus those who aren’t at the top of the pile. Those are the decisions you have to make with limited dollars...Our next fund cycle may not be till 2022, so there’s a while before you have to make a decision. It’s more of a slow-motion plane crash.."

• Bill Gurley. One of the most inspiring VCs is moving on from venture. The accolades are well deserved. "Mr. Gurley, who joined Benchmark more than two decades ago, is most famous for his early investment in Uber. Benchmark initially invested about $10 million in the ride-hailing company in 2011, a stake that skyrocketed to over $8 billion in later years. That investment is one of the most lucrative in the history of venture capital, even after the decline in Uber’s share price following its initial public offering. Mr. Gurley also invested early in online clothing retailer Stitch Fix Inc., restaurant reservation software company OpenTable, food delivery company Grubhub Inc. and online real-estate company Zillow Group Inc., among others....Mr. Gurley’s outspoken views, combined with his investing track record, made him a leading voice in Silicon Valley starting in 2014 when he warned that startups were “taking on an excessive amount of risk,” most notably by burning through cash at a rate not seen since the dot.com era. In later years he lamented how startups were staying private longer, avoiding the spotlight—and the operational discipline—that comes from being a publicly traded company."

Portfolio News

Crux OCM’s CEO, Vicki Knott, shares what makes oil and gas mines like Amazon and why, during historical negative oil prices, oil and gas companies are not cutting their autonomous programs. [Video]

Aquant is hosting a webinar on April 28 on adapting service innovation strategies for the new normal. Register here to virtually attend.

Planable was recently featured as one of the top tools for managing and growing a strong remote marketing team.

Datos Health is at the core of Sheba Hospital’s COVID-19 remote care system for keeping a personal touch with home hospitalized patients and allowing them to have virtual visits with their doctors. [Video]

Vault Platform is hosting a webinar on May 6 on how to handle discrimination and harassment in the workplace during the pandemic. Register here to virtually attend.
 
DUST Identity is getting creative while WFH to maintain company culture remotely. 
 

Portfolio Jobs

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

Aquant.io

• Full Stack Developer (Tel Aviv)

• Machine Learning Team Leader (Tel Aviv)

• Technical Support Engineer (Tel Aviv)

• Experienced Python Developer (Tel Aviv)

• Pre-Sales Engineer (New York)

• Data Quality Specialist (New York)

• Enterprise Account Executive (New York)

Datos Health

• Data Scientist (Tel Aviv)

• R&D Lead (Tel Aviv)

DUST Identity

• Full Stack Engineer (Boston)

• DevOps Engineer (Boston)

• Principal Software Engineer (Boston)

• Machine Vision Engineer (Princeton)