What's Hot in Enterprise IT/VC - Issue #85
All about devs this week as Microsoft buys Github for $7.5 billion, yes $7.5 billion and Apple kicks off WWDC and debuts Create ML for simple machine learning training; on scaling startups read on about how not to build a startup with Brad Feld on Theranos and Shira Ovide at Bloomberg on Josh James at Domo
Scaling Startups
In The End She Was Vulnerable To Facts - Feld Thoughts
well said by Brad Feld on Theranos and how the best founders can push their aspirations but maintain reality
“The best founders that I’ve worked with combine a mix of their aspirational goals with a real grounding in the current reality of where the business is. They know that their aspirational goals are goals – not current reality. And they know that there isn’t a straight line to the goals. If they use their reality distortion field as a charismatic founder, it’s to motivate their team to build something, not deceive investors or customers into believing it has been built.”
Here’s the Poster Child for Silicon Valley Excess, Bloomberg
author Shira Ovide raises some questions from S1 about the company’s spending and voting structure - Software startup Domo and its founder put indulgence into overdrive.
YC looks to help more of its companies lock down Series A funding – TechCrunch
words of wisdom on seed rounds
AH: Dilution is an important aspect of this. One thing we’re doing is using the Series A program to point all the way back to Demo Day to inform companies on how much they should raise in order to hit milestones that will be relevant to A. It’s not just a YC problem. A lot of founders raise money at seed without thinking about what dilution means. They’ll take money at good terms, but they don’t think about how much money they need. Ideally, you raise the least amount possible to hit your milestones and you don’t over-maximize the price of the seed round; it makes it harder to raise [again later].
Enterprise Tech
Microsoft Buys GitHub for $7.5 Billion, Moving to Grow in Coding’s New Era, The New York Times
so true, that’s why we at @Boldstartvc have been long on #devfirst companies for the last few years - my big concern is the amount of $$$ that will now pour into “anything dev” which won’t end well despite the opportunities ahead - “The acquisition of the software development company is meant to help Microsoft gain ground in the area of so-called cloud computing.”
GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5 Billion Undo Button - Bloomberg
for those who don’t know what a git repository is or truly understand the transformative nature of github, I suggest reading; also a huge turnaround from Ballmer’s stance on open source to Satya’s
Ed Sim on Twitter: "Must read from @paulbiggar on @Microsoft @github… "
Paul Biggar, co-founder CircleCI (no longer there) sums up what Microsoft acquisition of Github signifies
WWDC 2018: Apple debuts Create ML for simple machine learning training | ZDNet
Apple making it simple for training ML models without being an expert - “All built in Swift, Create ML lets you train vision and natural language data "without being a machine learning expert,” Apple says
SAP unveils C/4HANA, aims to revamp CRM, leverage its ERP base | ZDNet
SAP needs to catch up quickly - going after Salesforce now, will need to make more acquisitions to make it happen IMO - SAP outlined the details behind its CRM push, which is aimed squarely at Salesforce and its various clouds.
Introducing Redpoint’s Software Testing Landscape – Memory Leak – Medium
great read from the team at Redpoint on software testing market - “Software testing is a large and growing market. It is experiencing Devopsification including increasing automation, expediting time to value, shifting left and right, testing APIs, and streamlining…”
SAP latest enterprise player to offer cloud blockchain service – TechCrunch
agnostic to which blockchain is key; now we have Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and Amazon in the hosted blockchain space
Markets
Domo IPO | S-1 Breakdown – Alex Clayton – Medium
Alex of Spark Capital breaks down Domo - spending way too much money vs revenue generated; needs IPO for cash before out of money in 9 months - Domo, a provider of a cloud-based business intelligence and real-time data insights solution, filed for a $100M IPO. The company plans to trade under the ticker “DOMO” but did not commit to an…
Zscaler (ZS) stock soars after Q3 earnings
zscaler and security on fire - revenue up 49% year over year for the quarter and 73% increase in bookings - It’s the first earnings report for the company, which went public in March.
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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