Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech Weekly

The Angle Issue #52: For the two weeks ended April 1, 2019

The best thing I read this week is this incredibly thoughtful and deep piece on Amazon by Zack Kanter called "What is Amazon?" Get yourself a cup of coffee and read it. 

If you are building an enterprise tech startup in Europe or Israel,
please let me know...  Now let's get to the news.

From the blog

Stop counting unicorns. How fund economics are inflating the private tech market and wrecking companies.

2015-2018 Europe & Israel Venture Data: $25.1B of 2018 VC investment summarized in 83 slides.

A Security Layer for the Physical World: Why we invested in DUST Identity
Angular's first investment: Why we invested in Aquant.io

Europe/Israel Enterprise/Tech

• EU/Regulation and Copyrights. The Economist covers Europe's efforts to reign in big tech. "If you want to understand where the world’s most powerful industry is heading, look not to Washington and California, but to Brussels and Berlin. In an inversion of the rule of thumb, while America dithers the European Union is acting." One case in point is a very controversial new directive on online copyright protection was approved by the EU Parliament. "Advocates of the directive say it will balance the playing field between American tech giants and European content creators, giving copyright holders power over how internet platforms distribute their content. But critics say the law is vague and poorly thought-out, and will end up restricting how content is shared online, stifling innovation and free speech."

• Israel/Semiconductors. Nvida is buying Mellanox (Nasdaq: MLNX) for $6.9B. More here from Globes: "The deal is the second largest ever in the Israeli high-tech industry, after the acquisition of Mobileye by Intel for $15.3 billion, and ahead of the acquisition of NDS by Cisco for $5 billion. Mellanox develops and sells high-speed communications equipment using InfiniBand and Ethernet technologies."

• France/Fintech. Blackrock acquired eFront for $1.3B. "At present, BlackRock’s best-known tech offering is a suite of tools that financial institutions use to measure risk called Aladdin. The firm is hoping that clients can use eFront’s tools alongside Aladdin to have a more robust set of options to assess their portfolios, a person familiar with the matter said."

• UK/AI. A close look at Deepmind, Google's UK-based AI moonshot. "For Hassabis, the acquisition by Google was just another step in his pursuit of AGI. He had spent much of 2013 negotiating the terms of the deal. DeepMind would operate as a separate entity from its new parent. It would gain the benefits of being owned by Google, such as access to cash flow and computing power, without losing control."

• Israel/Marketing. McDonald's bought Israeli marketing personalization company Dynamic Yield for $300M. "Founded in 2011 by Israeli-born entrepreneurs Liad Agmon and Omri Mendellevich, Dynamic Yield’s service uses machine learning algorithms to help businesses tailor their website to individual consumers according to behavioral patterns. Dynamic Yield previously raised $83 million from investors including Naver Corporation and Bessemer Venture Partners."

• Italy/Infrastructure. Apple bought Stamplay, an API-based development platform. 

• Israel/LIDAR. Innoviz raised $132M from a set of Chinese corporate investors. "Founded in 2016, Innoviz develops and markets low-cost, small-size LiDAR systems designed to enable the mass commercialization of autonomous vehicles. The company has several partnerships with automakers for its systems, including with BMW for its autonomous vehicles and with Samsung’s connected car and audio technology subsidiary Harman International Industries Inc."

• Israel/AR. Alibaba bought Israeli AR tech company InfintyAR in what is believed to have been a firesale.

• Israel/Backup. Zerto is considering an IPO in the $500M-$600M range.

• Spain/Fintech. Pagantis raised $73M for an e-commerce financing platform.

• Israel/Infrastructure. Lightbits emerged from stealth with $50M to accelerate data centers.

• Denmark/HR. Peakon raised $35M for employee retention SaaS.

• Netherlands/Portugal/Design. Sketch raised $20M from Benchmark for design tools.

• Israel/HR. Hibob raised $20M for HR SaaS.

• Germany/Automation. Automation Hero raised $14.5M for "intelligent process automation."

• Israel/Tech IPOs. Approximately 40 Israeli tech companies are considered ready for IPO. 

Worth reading

Enterprise/Tech News

• Enterprise tech S-1s. Redpoint's Tomasz Tunguz tears down the S-1s from recent IPO filing at both Zoom and PagerDuty. 

• Robots rebooted. The New York Times goes inside Google's robotics program. "Google’s new lab is indicative of a broader effort to bring so-called machine learning to robotics."

• A cap table unicorn. Carta raised a growth round from Andreesen Horowitz at a $1.8B valuation. 

• Adobe vs. Salesforce. Bloomberg breaks down the emerging battle between these two giants. "Adobe Inc. is broadening its strategy to win more corporate customers, taking inspiration from one of its chief rivals: Salesforce.com Inc. The software maker, best-known for Photoshop and Acrobat, has been adding to its suite of marketing, analytics and e-commerce tools over the past decade, competing with Salesforce, SAP SE and Oracle Corp. Now, Adobe is developing a software system called Experience Platform, which will unify business applications it added in different acquisitions, and connect them with new apps from third-party developers and customers’ other programs."

• The Dawn of the Deep Tech Ecosystem. BCG argues that deep tech is increasingly accessible to traditional enterprises.

How to Startup

• Paying the hired guns. Emergence Capital on how to compensate a VP of Sales. The post covers all the basics: payment allocation, variable targets, thresholds, accelerators. Definitely worth a read if any of these terms are new to you. 

• Beyond the "founder show." David Beisel of NextView Ventures writes about how founders evolve as they grow into product-market fit. "For me, there is a mental yardstick once a startup reaches Product-Market Fit: the team goal then becomes to hire & promote for the future, not just for today. And in conjunction with that shift, there becomes a need for the projection of the company to go beyond the Founder Show. This necessary change matters in two ways...."

• Moving up-market. Emergence Capital on how SaaS companies should think about moving up-market.

• Lessons from YC. NextView's Rob Go reflects on lessons inspired by YC: "It pays to be direct and clear about your expectations. I find that YC founders are exceptionally well trained to be very clear about what they are raising, how much, and what their expectations are for timing and pricing. I think they generally get very good coaching about what numbers to put forward, even if it makes investors a bit uncomfortable. Generally, I find that the valuations are usually 1.25–1.5X higher than I’m comfortable with and the time frames are 25% shorter than I’m comfortable with. That puts the heat on the investor but in a way that isn’t too off-putting, IMHO. The best investors will come up with their own POV, and either live with those terms and timeline, or work towards their own goals to see if the founders will bend to their preferences."

• Time for a CFO? Fred Wilson on how young startups should think about the finance function: "I would rather see a small company outsource the accounting work and staff for the planning/modeling work. Accounting is a bit of a commodity, many people can do it well. Seeing the future from around the corner is most definitely not commodity and if you have someone who can do that well, hold on to them, pay them well, and make sure they are happy and rewarded in the job."

• Falling apart at 50 employees. Why startups fall apart at 50 employees and what to do about it.

• Founder health. Hampus Jakobsson makes the case that "startups, stress, and depression don’t have to be joined by the hip."

• Detoxed boards. Mark Suster argues that effective board meetings should be free of electronic distractions.

How to Venture

• Hey, Look at Me! I’m a Venture Capitalist! The NYT on how VCs are increasingly scrambling to brand themselves.

• You need a system. USV's Nick Grossman on his personal productivity system.

• The China Whisperer. Why A16Z's latest partner broke the mold: ""We were determined to be the best place for technical founders to learn how to be CEO," said Ben Horowitz, one of the firm's co-founders. "We did not promote general partners from within." But all that changed with Connie Chan. Chan had joined the firm in 2011 as an analyst. She quickly built a reputation for spotting trends in consumer tech and sourcing mega deals with startups like Pinterest and Lime. She also proved herself vital to the firm as head of its Asia network. Known in some circles as Silicon Valley's "China whisperer," she has helped businesses thrive in the world's second-biggest economy."

• VC starter kit. If you haven't already seen this - here it is. 

Portfolio News & Jobs

Chorus.ai CEO Roy Raanani will be speaking at Sales 3.0

Snyk documents that the top ten docker images contain over 8,000 vulnerable paths.

Crate is at Hannover Messe.

Balena upgrades diagnostics for IoT fleets.

- - - Portfolio Jobs - - -

Aquant is hiring. R&D in Israel and Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success in NY.