Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly

The Angle Issue #34: August 7, 2018

It's super hot across Europe...so this week we're jumping straight to the news.
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Please feel free to email me with comments (or startups) and if you like this - please forward to friends. Thanks!

From the blog

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

Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech

• Netherlands/Development. Siemens acquired Netherlands-born and Boston-based Mendix for $700M. Founded in 2005 and backed by only $38M in venture money, Mendix developed a "low-code" software development environment that makes it easy for companies to build industrial software applications with minimal coding. 

• UK/M&A. The UK government is exploring limiting the ability of foreign firms to acquire British businesses, including startups.

• Israel/Munchies. Dutch firm Takeaway.com acquired Israel's 10Bis for $158M, reportedly to help it penetrate the B2B side of food delivery.

• Israel/Security. London's Mimecast acquired Solebit for $88M, in what looks like a large acquihire to establish an Israeli R&D center.

• Belgium/Project Management. Teamleader raised $22M for its CRM, project management, and invoicing SaaS platform.

• UK/fraud detection. Quantexa raised $20M to fight financial crime.

• Israel/3D Printing. Formlabs raised $15M at a $1B valuation. 

• Israel/GPUs. Nividia is approaching the Israeli market more as a place to win customers than to acquire talent.

• Israel/Automotive. An overview of Israel's burgeoning autotech sector.

• Israel/Sugar. Israel’s DouxMatok, a startup that developed a patented sugar reduction solution, announced that it was partnering with German company Südzucker, the largest sugar producer in Europe, to set up “production, joint marketing and sales of DouxMatok sugar” to Europeans by next year.

Worth reading

• Cisco buys Duo Security. Cisco acquired Duo Security for $2.35B, including its 700 employees and 12,000 customers: "For Cisco, the deal is probably more about Duo's customers and growth trajectory rather than its core functionality, said Merritt Maxim, principal analyst at Forrester, in an interview with CIO Dive."

• Enterprise branding. Ed Shelley on the B2B branding revolution. "It’s never been easier to build a SaaS business. A wealth of building blocks exist — tools, infrastructure, APIs to code against — making the cost of entry lower than ever. But all of this brings increased competition. With so many similar solutions on the market, it’s difficult to differentiate your product on features alone. So how else can companies differentiate themselves? Price — yes, but that’s a race to the bottom. Brand differentiation is the answer. A well-designed and established brand is a defensible form of differentiation that can carry a strong influence over users."

• Emergence's investment criteria. Joe Floyd of Emergence outlines the venture firms "Five Ms" in How Emergence Evaluates Series A Pitches. 

• Rethinking freemium. Matt Tharp of Blissfully suggests it's time to rethink freemium as a business model - and that it may be relevant even for large enterprise customers. 

• Top Three Infrastructure Trends. According to Vipin Chamakkala of WorkBench, these are (1) Distributed Security & Identity, (2) Observability, Reliability, & Resiliency for Microservices, and (3) Infrastructure for scaling AI. 

• Big VC round boom. There were 55 VC rounds of $100M or more in July 2018 alone, more than ever before. Crunchbase has an analysis of why this is happening.

• It's Masayoshi's world, we just live in it. If you thought a $100M VC round was big, read this detailed look by CNBC at how Masayoshi Son's Vision Fund operates. "Every founder interviewed for this story said the most unique characteristic of Son's personality was his long-term vision. He tells founders he has no interest in exiting his position in their companies and has a decades-long time horizon. This may not be surprising for someone who is famous for his 300-year plan."

• GE & the Enterprise. What GE's ongoing troubles mean for enterprise buyers: "There are two likely paths for how a sale would play out — sell in pieces or sell as a block — and who likely buyers will be. For customers and technology leaders using GE Digital products, the news underscores the importance of having a multivendor architecture and the growing tide of digitization."

• Book knowledge vs. Real-world knowledge. Morgan Housel of Collaborative Fund wrote a thought-provoking piece on this: "Book knowledge without real-world knowledge is dangerous because it’s blind to the context of people’s lives. Real-world knowledge without book knowledge is dangerous because it’s blind to the counterintuitive drivers of the world."

• The daughter behind the man behind the machine. "Steve Jobs and Chrisann Brennan were 23 when their daughter was born. Lisa Brennan-Jobs remembers the pride and pain of a childhood spent navigating the vastness between her struggling single mom and Apple’s mercurial founder."

• Kara vs. Zuck. Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher wrote a devasting piece in the New York Times on where Zuckerberg has led facebook: "Simply put, the inventors became overwhelmed by their own creations, which led to what I can only describe as a casual negligence, which led to where we are now."

• Boston is back. Wicked. 

Portfolio News & Jobs

Chorus was named to the JMP Hot 100 List.

Cloud66 founder Khash Sajadi interviewed by Ben Kepes on Google, containers, and Kubernetes.

Styla announced a partnership with e-Spirit.

Datos is hiring a BD lead in the US.

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

Resin is hiring globally.