We co-hosted a CIO/CTO dinner in NYC with our friends at FirstMark Capital. The topic was the future of development and data in the enterprise. It was amazing to have such forward thinking IT leaders from some of the top investment banks, insurance, and retail companies in attendance, all actively engaged and sharing what was top of mind. Lots of discussions on APIs, just type in "developer.nameyourfortune500.comā and youāll see, developer productivity, cloud configuration, and still trying to unlock value of all of the data infrastructure investment already made.
Despite the fact that now everyone is an āenterprise investorā I truly believe we have an amazing opportunity still ahead of us as the move to cloud and agile is still in the second inning for many of these firms. Net net, the world has changed and many of the progressive tech leaders at the Fortune 500 are willing to partner with earlier and earlier stage companies, the future is bright for sure, put on your š
Next weekend, Iāll be in SF pre-RSA for a retreat with portfolio company Hypr and several Fortune 500 CISOs to learn more about their pain points and areas of investment for 2020.
As always, please share and retweet.
Scaling Startups
Mike Volpi from Index Ventures nails it on what a board/CEO relationship should be like - find balance to be supportive but also be transparent and candid about state of the company. I remember Jerry Colonna once told me that āboards are never responsible for the success of a company, but certainly have been for the demise.ā For all founders and investors, I encourage you to read this article to learn to find balance in your approach working with the board. There are so many nuances and I find, personally, that Iām only just scratching the surface of how I can be most effective as a board member.
If you donāt get funded right off the bat, remember this:
Great to see the larger tech cos embracing more remote work and the challenges of scaling in San Francisco. We all know Haschicorp and Gitlab are fully or mostly distributed and now Twitterās Jack Dorsey:
The tech talent in the Bay Area is undeniable. But with cloud infrastructure, faster internet speeds in more remote areas and a new generation of communications and collaboration tools, more companies are finding it advantageous to hire elsewhere. Online lenderĀ LendingClubĀ slashed its San Francisco workforce last year andĀ movedĀ jobs to Utah, andĀ Stripe announcedĀ in May that it was hiring over 100 remote engineers in 2019.
One of the unspoken downsides of scaling startups remotely in that the worst of times, i.e., acquihires, etc, many large companies will force remote teams to move to one location. As larger acquirers embrace this remote first movement, this should make it easier for acquihires in the future.
Enterprise Tech
Martin Casado from Andreessen Horowitz lays out what GTM metrics he likes to see at board meetings. I encourage you to click through and read the whole thread.
Lest we forget that every Fortune 500 is a tech company - great read from CNBC on how Goldman Sachs is going head to head with Silicon Valley for top tech talent - already 10,000 developer, yes, 10,000 at Goldman, which makes up 1/4 of their workforce.
More on the above as Hired released itās State of Software Engineers
Demand for frontend and backend engineers grew steadily by 17%, which shows that all companies ā not just Silicon Valley tech giants ā are evolving into being tech companies.
and also why the need for distributed teams as highlighted above
While pay for most Americans has grown between 3 - 3.5%, top engineering roles in San Francisco and New York have seen salaries grow at double that rate: 6% and 7%, respectively.
Twilio board deck from 10 years ago shared by founder/CEO Jeff Lawson!
Markets
another Chetanism
Wow, Shopify
For the fourth quarter, Shopify reported earnings of 43 cents per share, exceeding consensus estimates of 24 cents per share. Revenue jumped 47% year over year to $505.2 million, which was higher than analystsā estimated $482.1 million.
Shopifyās 2020 full-year outlook topped analystsā expectations. For the year, Shopify said it expects revenue to range from $2.13 billion to $2.16 billion, compared with consensus estimates of $2.11 billion.
The company reported higher holiday sales in its results. Shopify said it saw worldwide sales of over $2.9 billion between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, up about 61% from the same period in 2018.
Donāt forget the SMB!