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Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly

The Angle Issue #69: For the two weeks ended January 28, 2020

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Angular Ventures
January 27, 2020

Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly

The Angle Issue #69: For the two weeks ended January 28, 2020

Good morning from London where the sun is shining, the air is brisk, and 2020 is off to an absolutely flying start!

Kick-off! While this first "weekly" newsletter of 2020 is off to a bit of a slow start, January is shaping up to be banner month for Angular Ventures. Our team from London and NY convened in Paris, Munich, and Berlin in the second week of January where we met over 30 startups, hosted 12 of our favorite VCs and angels across two dinners, and co-hosted events with our friends at The Family in Paris and Point Nine Ventures in Berlin. While that was going on, we managed to process two new investments and three follow-ons in our growing portfolio. 

Our portfolio company Aquant's new video ad campaign is pretty entertaining, especially if you are into field service. :) 

All grown up. The past few weeks also saw announcements from three of my portfolio companies. SiSense and Snyk achieved $1B+ valuations and Front raised a very impressive and unique round led by a group of very prominent angels, bringing them very close to the $1B mark as well. Front's unique round composition added to speculation that the "friends and family" round is dying - or at lease receding. Check out this tweetstorm and video by Brianne Kimmel for more on that.

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

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/Marketing. Appsflyer raised $210M for ad attribution and much much more. "“Attribution is becoming the core of the marketing tech stack, and AppsFlyer has established itself as a leader in this fast-growing category,” [Alex] Crisses [of General Atlantic] said. “AppsFlyer’s commitment to being independent, unbiased, and representing the marketer’s interests has garnered the trust of many of the world’s leading brands, and we see significant potential to capture additional opportunity in the market.”"

  • Israel/DevSecOps. Snyk announced a $150M round. Here's a detailed view from founder Guy Podjarny on why what the company does is so important. "Dev-first security means the majority of security work is done by developers. This should include the vast majority of security design, security testing, security backlogs and of course remediation, to name a few. Application development teams need to be self-sufficient and able to own these responsibilities, and be trusted by the organization – and the security team – to do so. With such ownership in place, developers can secure their applications as they build it and at their pace."

  • Israel/AI. ServiceNow purchased Loom Systems for $70-80M. "Founded in 2015, Loom develops an AI-based log analysis platform designed to predict and prevent IT issues in businesses undergoing a digital transformation or cloud migration."

  • UK/Electric Vehicles. Arrival raised a large corporate venture round from Hyundai and Kia who have put in $111.5 million.

  • UK/Open banking platform. Tink raised $100 million for its API that lets you connect to over 2500 European banks and institutions.

  • Israel/Onboarding. Walkme raised $90M for its digital adoption platform.

  • UK/Remittance rail. Currencycloud raised $80M for API-first money transfer infrastructure.

  • UK/Accounting Software. Receipt Bank raised $73 million to automate the data input needed to power the work of accountants and bookkeepers

  • France/Employee Communication Platform. LumApps raised $70 million for its cloud-based social intranet for the enterprise

  • Germany/HR Tech. Personio has raised $67 million for its HR operating system

  • Germany/Supplier Discover. Scoutbee raised $60 million to expedite supplier discovery with AI

  • France/Email. Front raised $59M in a very unique round. "The most interesting part about this funding is that it is led by a group of individual investors, as opposed to a traditional venture fund, which is an uncommon feat for a round of this size. They’re some of the biggest leaders in technology: Atlassian co-CEO and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes; Atlassian President Jay Simons; Okta executive vice chairman, COO and co-founder Frederic Kerrest; Qualtrics co-founder and CEO Ryan Smith and Qualtrics co-founder and CTO Jared Smith; and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan." Techcrunch has more.

  • Israel/Data Compliance. BigID quickly raised another $50 million to expand its personal data protection & privacy platform

  • France/Marketing Automation. Partnerize has raised $50 million to help enterprises automate the formation and growth of partnerships (from affiliates to influencers and strategic brand partners)

  • Sweden/Marketing Data. Funnel has raised $47 million for its marketing data aggregation and analysis platform

  • Czech/Product team. Productboard which aims to be a system of record for product development has raised $41 million from Sequoia and Bessemer  

  • Israel/Voice transcription. Verbit has raised $31 million voice transcription platform

  • Israel/Application intelligence. Iguazio raised $24M for "a “serverless” data platform-as-a-service product that creates real-time intelligence for applications located at the network edge as well as on public clouds and in on-premises data centers."

  • France/Community Management. Hivebrite raised $20M for a community management and engagement platform.

  • France/NLP. Hugging Face raised $15 million to build the definitive natural language processing library, lead by US deep tech investor Lux Capital

  • Israel/Security. Intezer raised $15M to detect malware on the cloud.

  • Israel/Location analytics. Placer.ai raised $12M for location analytics.

  • France/Networking. Containous raised $10M for a cloud-native networking framework.

  • UK/Logistics automation. Shipamax raised $7M following a pivot into RPA-style automation.

  • UK/Contract Automation. Juro has raised $5.35 million from Union Square Ventures for its machine learning tech to help businesses speed up the authoring and management of sales contracts.

  • Israel/Security. Vicarious raised $5M for eliminating vulnerabilities in code.

  • UK/Banking APIs. Teller raised $4M to take on Plaid. "“PSD2 was also a factor in our decision to withdraw from the U.K. Primarily because it made practically every use-case of banking APIs a regulated activity, meaning that it’s no longer possible to quickly build and test a product without first spending thousands of pounds and 3-6 months getting FCA approval. When we checked at the end of 2018, less than 100 entities had been granted approval. We can not build the business we want with a total addressable market of 100 customers.”"

Worth reading

Enterprise/Tech News

  • Open-source Semiconductors? Bloomberg reports on a new trend. "After revolutionizing software, the open-source movement is threatening to do the same to the chip industry. Big technology companies have begun dabbling with RISC-V, which replaces proprietary know-how in a key part of the chip design process with a free standard that anyone can use. While it’s early days, this could create a new crop of processors that compete with Intel Corp. products and whittle away at the licensing business of Arm Holdings Plc."

  • AI Regulation. The EU considers aggressive new rules on AI. "The EU’s executive arm is set to propose the new rules apply to “high-risk sectors,” such as healthcare and transport, and suggest the bloc updates safety and liability laws, according to a draft of a so-called “white paper” on artificial intelligence obtained by Bloomberg."

  • An AI winter. The BBC wonders if we are entering a period of reduced expectations from AI. 

How to Startup

  • Updates are fundamental. Founders: if you read one thing this week, make it this piece on how and why to do investor updates, by Daniel Gross (YC).

  • The value of sales ops. Openview on how a single "sales ops" professional can be transformative to an early-stage startup. "Done right, sales operations is the backbone of the go-to-market team. The mission of the sales ops team—whether it’s one person or a couple dozen—is to increase sales productivity and success in a sustainable and scalable way. This is accomplished by eliminating points of friction in the sales process so salespeople can focus on the activities that move a customer forward in the buyer journey." 

  • State of the VC market, for founders. Elizabeth Yin of Hustlefund put up a great tweetstorm that summarized the bifurcation of the VC market right now. For some founders, raising has never been easier. For others, a lot less so. She argues that a new focus on profitability coupled with VCs going crazy for certain types of SaaS businesses has made things harder for everyone else - but that the long-term benefits of the hustle (no pun intended) might outweigh the costs. 

How to Venture

  • Changing VC norms. Semil Shah on changing norms in VC land over the past decade. At Angular, we agree with a lot of what he's saying - specifically the increasingly global nature of the tech opportunity, the fact that platform services are essential (all you, Anne!), and the fact that tech is flooding into every facet of the economy. 

  • What is a management rights letter and why do VCs (sometimes) need it? Fred Wilson explains.

Portfolio News

  • Vault Platform, Candu, and DUST Identity’s CEOs shared the 2020 resolutions they’re setting for their companies.

  • Datos Health’s Founder met with Pennsylvania’s Governor during his tour of Sheba’s ARC Innovation Center in Israel.

  • DUST Identity’s nanodiamonds technology is being used by art collectors to authenticate artworks.

  • Vault Platform was selected as one of the six most effective tools for reporting harassment in the workplace.

  • Aquant’s participation in Silvertech was featured in Forbes.

  • Planable was featured as one of the seven best social media tools for agencies.

  • Crux OCM was mentioned in BOE Report’s latest article on technological innovation in the petroleum industry.

Portfolio Jobs

Aquant.io

Crux OCM

DUST Identity

Planable

Valohai

Vault Platform

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