What's Hot in Enterprise IT/VC - Issue #131
some deeper strategic reads on enterprise IT markets from Ben Thompson at Stratechery on MSFT, Zoom, Slack and what that means and from Aaron Levie from Box on new era of enterprise IT, great data and overview of enterprise software market from Battery Ventures, solid advice from Daniel Dines at UIPath on culture as critical to scaling and importance of remote engineering teams from Stripe
Scaling Startups
When working with your first few prospects, we @Boldstartvc have always preached “enterprise design partners” vs customers. It’s important to understand “partners” goes both ways, founders need to walk away when partners aren’t behaving well, asking 4 world with limited giveback
8:39 AM - 2 May 2019
Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
huge believer in this - ❤️ 3 of our last 4 investments are default distributed, Halifax, Portland, PEI - what once was seen as never in VC startup land is now seen as competitive advantage, key is building culture, process from day 1, easier when wired in from day 1 vs later - “Stripe has engineering hubs in San Francisco, Seattle, Dublin, and Singapore. We are establishing a fifth hub that is less traditional but no less important: Remote. We are doing this to situate product development closer to our customers, improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs, and further our mission of increasing the GDP of the internet. Stripe will hire over a hundred remote engineers this year. They will be deployed across every major engineering workstream at Stripe. ## O
Bucharest Born Daniel Dines' UiPath Reaches Unicorn Status
Dines cites culture as one of key factors in growth - “I wanted to build a company where people are happy to come to do their best.” He further characterized his culture imperatives as: be humble, be bold, be in balance (you can work 24-hours continuously, but you can also follow it with a day off, for example), be fast. “The fastest company always wins. So, we’ve seen this. And to be fast you have to be able to be humble and fast to really work well together.“
The Chief of Staff role in Silicon Valley
what is a Chief of Staff to CEO, do you need one, should you be one - read on from Chief of Staff to the CEO at Opendoor as we scaled from 200 to 800 employees in a year. Here’s an overview of the role, when and why the role is valuable, and how to make it a success for…
Enterprise Tech
A new era for enterprise IT – Aaron Levie, Box
why we are still in second inning of enterprise IT - “Today’s enterprise software market doesn’t look like the enterprise software of the past. For one, the market is much larger and With a market of that magnitude, enterprise IT no longer can be controlled by just a handful of vendors, as we saw in the 90’s. And what were once solved problems in a prior era of IT are now unsolved relative to rapidly changing user and buyer expectations in the cloud, leaving the door open for new disruptors to emerge and solve this problem better, faster, and with more focused visions.”
Microsoft, Slack, Zoom, and the SaaS Opportunity
must read on evolution of enterprise SaaS, Microsoft adding new products to existing customer base vs. Zoom/Slack with best of breed product and adding new customers - “This is why companies like Zoom and especially Slack are so valuable: they create new customers who are primed for growth; Microsoft, meanwhile, is mostly keeping its existing customers in-house.” MSFT, Slack, Zoom, SaaS Opportunity – @stratechery
IPOs, M&A, and Forces of Growth — Here’s Software 2019
must read from my friends at Battery - Neeraj and Logan on the state of software in 2019 - some great data
Chamath Palihapitiya: I wouldn't put a dollar into enterprise stocks
hmm - I vehemently disagree - Chamath Palihapitiya, early Facebook executive and founder of Social Capital, joins CNBC’s Scott Wapner to discuss investment in the enterprise space, where he sees investment in Slack, Uber and more.
UiPath nabs $568M at a $7B valuation to bring robotic process automation to the front office
interesting messaging here - from back office to front office
Akamai Bets on ‘Zero Trust’ Approach to Security - WSJ
so agree but should not just be for person to app but service to service - Akamai Technologies aims to expand its security business, in part by convincing companies that building walls around information-technology systems will no longer keep hackers, bots and malware out.
Markets
Berkshire Hathaway has been buying shares of Amazon, Warren Buffett says
in search for returns, Warren starts buying Amazon - In 2017, Buffett told CNBC that “stupidity” was to blame for his not seeing Amazon’s potential. “I was impressed by Jeff Bezos early, I never thought he’d pull off what he did, on the scale of what’s happened. It’s changed your behavior, everybody’s behaviors. The remarkable thing is he’s done it in two industries at same time that really don’t have that much connection.” Buffett was referring to Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce and its success in the cloud with Amazon Web Services.
Palantir Has a $20 Billion Valuation and a Bigger Problem: It Keeps Losing Money
The Silicon Valley unicorn, a data-analysis giant that’s inching toward an IPO, has been run like a scrappy startup, including lavish perks. CEO Alex Karp is now under pressure to remake the business, including bringing an end to what’s known inside the company as “Palantir Entitlement Syndrome.”
Older workers helped fuel recent U.S. growth. Can it last?
I always like to understand the macro economic factors in play and this is an awesome one - older workers entering the workforce
boldstart
Microsoft Snyks In New Security For Open Source On Azure Cloud
Congrats @snyksec - example of security not only “shifting left” but as @BluePompitz says “expanding left” - Snyk’s developer-first solution offers integrated vulnerability management and remediation across the Azure Cloud SDLC – all the way from code release to runtime.
We’ve won the Confidential Computing Challenge! – Dropout Labs
Super excited for the team @dropout labs winning Google Cloud + Intel’s Confidential Computing Challenge - UNTIL NOW “machine learning in the cloud has been beyond the reach of industries such as finance, healthcare, and transportation, which hold some of society’s most sensitive data and impactful applications.”
By Ed Sim
Ed Sim's weekly readings and notes on VC, software, and scaling startups - #enterprise #seed #DeveloperFirst #IntelligentAutomation #DataInfra #CloudNative #Cybersecurity
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