What's Hot 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC

What's Hot 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC

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What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #241

Remote talent wars ⏩, more 💰, more opportunity, more competition

Ed Sim
Jun 12, 2021
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What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #241
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So what do enterprise startups with 💰💰💰 do? They hire, hire, hire. And what I can tell you is that the war for talent is getting even more intense.

First, let’s talk about finding talent. This is a tweet from earlier this year.

Twitter avatar for @edsim
Ed Sim @edsim
There is so much 💰 flowing in enterprise that talent is the rate limiting factor to scale Great news with world going remote is access to talent is > than ever Bad news is your competition is now global Focus on recruiting, hiring, + retaining best talent must start on day 1
1:13 PM ∙ Jan 8, 2021
71Likes11Retweets

Yes, you can hire from anywhere but so can anyone else. Competition is fierce. Second, when you find the talent you want, closing speed and process matters. Zoom has accelerated everything.

Twitter avatar for @edsim
Ed Sim @edsim
In today’s world, closing speed matters more than ever; for new hires, new investments…Best talent and investments go super fast, no time to dawdle, having a prepared mind and process going into the situation also helps
12:32 PM ∙ Jun 10, 2021
23Likes3Retweets

👇🏼 fore more on this - Time to Offer and Offer to Acceptance rates are two critical measures to understand how good your machine is.

Twitter avatar for @gaganbiyani
Gagan Biyani @gaganbiyani
An extremely smart recruiter told me yesterday that startups time-to-offer should be 3 days. 🤯 That's time from first comms with a candidate to making an offer. What is time-to-offer at your company?
9:35 PM ∙ Jun 11, 2021
717Likes54Retweets

Because of all of this 💰 and need for talent, we will see more and more of 👇🏼 in the coming months.

Twitter avatar for @edsim
Ed Sim @edsim
Its the "haves" + "have nots" in enterprise world - those who are🚀 + raising every 3-6 months + those who can't. Expect tons of private-private M&A - those who can build the right rationale + execute well will 📈 even faster but it can be perilous if not done right
12:46 PM ∙ Jun 11, 2021
27Likes3Retweets

And once you have the talent onboard, the need to retain them is even more needed! Grant Miller from Replicated, a portfolio co, is taking a bold stance with this.

Twitter avatar for @GrantM
Grant Miller @GrantM
Being a remote company shouldn't be a way to offload office expenses onto employees. @replicatedhq we're changing that... today! We're launching monthly recurring reimbursements for home office SPACE (and utilities etc). Find out more:
replicated.comFully Remote: Home Office Should Not Be a Financial Burden on Employees - ReplicatedWe’re excited to announce our new Replicated home office reimbursement program that we’ve recently launched for all employees.
8:13 PM ∙ Jun 10, 2021
66Likes16Retweets

Finally, this is not what you want.

Twitter avatar for @teddiew
Teddie Wardi @teddiew
I assume this isn't what they mean when my portfolio companies say they want to hire "10x engineers"
Twitter avatar for @ctrlshifti
Kat Maddox @ctrlshifti
this is one of the funniest hackernews comments i've ever read https://t.co/J8G3TYz9zK
7:42 PM ∙ Jun 11, 2021
Twitter avatar for @ctrlshifti
Kat Maddox @ctrlshifti
this is one of the funniest hackernews comments i've ever read
HN comment:
I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.
6:31 AM ∙ Jun 10, 2021
18,489Likes1,645Retweets

So my two takeaways are this; build your people engine early from day one, culture, hiring, retention and over time as you scale and do not rule out the right acquisitions for talent, roadmap, acceleration, and more.

As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues.

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Scaling Startups

  1. Great practical advice on how to write great content

    Twitter avatar for @Nicolascole77
    Nicolas Cole @Nicolascole77
    Ghostwriting 101 Over the past 4 years, I have ghostwritten more than 2,000 articles for startup founders, C-level executives, Silicon Valley investors, and more. Want to know a secret? I use the same 5 templates every time. 🧵👇
    12:00 AM ∙ Jun 8, 2021
    5,639Likes947Retweets
  2. 👇🏼 all about the growth mindset - great 🧵

    Twitter avatar for @SahilBloom
    Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom
    Lifelong learning is a competitive advantage. But contrary to what you’ve been told, lifelong learners are built, not born. THREAD: 20 lifelong learning habits you can start developing today.
    1:46 PM ∙ Jun 6, 2021
    10,226Likes2,468Retweets
  3. A good reminder rom @hunterwalk

    Twitter avatar for @hunterwalk
    👨🏻‍💻☕️ @hunterwalk
    Who made this????
    Image
    3:01 PM ∙ Jun 5, 2021
    4,704Likes682Retweets
  4. Mental models for investing…

    Twitter avatar for @sumitgrrg
    Sumit Grrg @sumitgrrg
    Five valuable mental models 1. Gates' Law 2. Parkinson’s Law 3. The Paradox of Choice 4. Hanlon's Razor 5. Leverage On startups, business, finance, investing, career, life and whatnot. Here's a quick guide/refresher:
    12:28 PM ∙ Jun 6, 2021
    10,021Likes2,752Retweets

Enterprise Tech

  1. The genius and execution of Marc Benioff (Fortune)

  2. Amazing lessons learned from Dharmesh as Hubspot celebrates 15 years of Hubspot - must read 🧵, 15 lessons

    Twitter avatar for @dharmesh
    dharmesh @dharmesh
    Woo hoo! HubSpot turned 15 years old today. Happy Birthday, HubSpot! Here's a post with 15 (somewhat) humble lessons learned (and mess-ups made) over those 15 years.
    dharme.shHappy Birthday, HubSpot! 15 Lessons Over 15 YearsHubSpot turned 15 years old today. Here are some lessons learned over those 15 years.
    7:58 PM ∙ Jun 9, 2021
    335Likes30Retweets

    Build a diverse team early.

    Instill a “customer first” mindset and implement mechanisms to foster it.

    Good intent is necessary, but not sufficient. Good execution is what pays the bills.

    Learning culture through osmosis stops working pretty quickly.

    Transparency is scary -- but spectacularly effective

    More companies die of co-founder conflict than any other cause. 

    and many more…

  3. Yes, but always a question of when to charge your first $ and hire your first rep but no doubt to scale, sales is needed

    Twitter avatar for @chsrbrts
    Chase Roberts @chsrbrts
    Think you don't need an enterprise sales team for developer-led growth? Sales headcounts/% of total... Snyk: 141/23% Databricks: 437/20% Twilio: 874/18% Segment: 167/27% AWS: 9,898/12% Stripe: 355/9% A sales team is like sunscreen -- you need it even when you think you don't.🏆
    4:06 PM ∙ Jun 7, 2021
    749Likes93Retweets
  4. Patience required to do open source the right way and build a community and 2 years for many is about right - see my previous post on developer ♥️ and patience

    Twitter avatar for @mitchellh
    Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh
    Everyone thinks that Terraform was an overnight success and that couldn't be farther from the truth. It took almost 2 years to see growth start to tick up. We're gonna be talking a lot of Terraform at HashiConf tomorrow. Join us for the keynote (free!): hashiconf.com/europe/
    Twitter avatar for @HashiCorp
    HashiCorp @HashiCorp
    Downloads of #Terraform were pretty slow early on — so slow that @mitchellh & @armon even considered killing the project. But by 2016 downloads began to increase rapidly, thanks to a growing ecosystem and community. What's next? Join us at #HashiConf https://t.co/B4LQkXl3Bc https://t.co/DXNusjQ7uD
    9:28 PM ∙ Jun 7, 2021
    136Likes23Retweets
  5. Patience also required when creating new categories and privacy tech is here to stay - from Axios and read Future of Privacy Forum report (linked below) for more - also shoutout to BigID one of the market leaders (a portfolio co)

    What's happening: The companies that help other companies process, maintain, and legally maximize use of consumer data are in high demand, and collectively need to mature, according to a Future of Privacy Forum report shared first with Axios. 

    • Some of the largest players — such as BigID and OneTrust — have multi-billion-dollar market caps on their own.

    • Venture capital investment remains high: According to TechCrunch, about 207 privacy startups have together raised more than $3.5 billion in funding. 

    • Private equity firms are buying up smaller niche firms to provide suites of services to compete with the biggest companies.

  6. Just a reminder of importance of cyber security and resiliency engineering as JBS was shut down due to a cyberattack, shutting down a huge portion of beef processing industry and Fastly went down due to a single customer triggering a bug

    Although it seems they weren’t down for long, the impact it would have had will be huge, especially on e-commerce sites,” said Naomi Aharony, the agency’s managing director. “With our research estimating Amazon could have potentially lost $6,803 every second it was down, it’s clear an investigation will want to be made to find out what happened.

  7. I’m not a crypto investor per se, but love developer first infrastructure. So awesome to see @blockdaemon (a portfolio co) raise its $28M Series A led by Greenspring and including Goldman Sachs - heroku for blockchain is real!

    Twitter avatar for @edsim
    Ed Sim @edsim
    Huge congrats @_blockdaemon @konstantin11 - awesome validation to have @GoldmanSachs invest with @GreenspringVC leading the A, heroku for blockchain, nodes as a service + staking - thrilled to continue investing from day one @Boldstartvc
    Twitter avatar for @technology
    Bloomberg Technology @technology
    Blockdaemon, a firm that creates and hosts the computer nodes that make up blockchain networks, raised $28 million from investors including Goldman Sachs https://t.co/SWa1vim9fN
    4:36 PM ∙ Jun 8, 2021
  8. 👇🏼so glad we are all in enterprise tech

    Twitter avatar for @pitdesi
    Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi
    Feels like you could fill an entire season of “Silicon Valley” with stuff just from the Bitcoin Miami conference.
    Image
    7:29 AM ∙ Jun 6, 2021
    1,859Likes230Retweets

Markets

  1. Monday.com IPO this past week opened at $155 and closed at $178.87 with a market cap of $7.5 billion (more on Monday SaaS S-1 breakdown from newsletter a few weeks ago)

  2. UiPath first earnings report, beats expectations but analysts concerned about valuation

    First quarter ARR was $652.6 million up 64%. We delivered record incremental ARR, which grew 55% to $72.1 million. We ended the quarter with more than 8,500 customers with great new logos including a flyboard Global Healthcare Exchange overstock Ralph Lauren, Siemens Mobility and the State of North Carolina.

    Expansion metrics remain best-in-class as existing customers accelerated their adoption of our platform and deployment of our software robots. We now have 1105 customers that account for at least $100,000 in ARR, up sequentially from 1002 including 104 customers at a million dollars plus up sequentially from 89. Notable new logos and customer expansions during the quarter included; first Verizon Communications, which became a customer in July 2019 to support their attended automation needs.

  3. 😲 Atlas hosted db already over 50% of revenue in 5 years!

    Twitter avatar for @Justin_Digs
    Justin Dignelli 👀 @Justin_Digs
    MongoDB Atlas launched ~5 years ago and has gone from $0 to >$400M. For the first time, Atlas now represents >50% of MDB revenue - a major milestone. A true "startup within a startup" success story made possible through an incredible team effort.
    Twitter avatar for @publiccomps
    Public Comps @publiccomps
    MongoDB $MDB Q1FY22: - Total revenue: $181.6M, +39% YoY - Sub revenue: $174.6M, +40% YoY - Atlas revenue +73% (51% of total revenue) - Gross margin: 70% - FCF: $8.4M (4.6% margin) Shares up +4% after hours. Great quarter from $MDB, fundamentals trending in the right direction!
    8:53 PM ∙ Jun 3, 2021
    9Likes2Retweets

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By Ed Sim
Ed Sim's (@boldstartvc) weekly readings and notes on enterprise VC, software, and scaling startups
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What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #241
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What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #437
building the AI Native company - not just product
Mar 15
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What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #406
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What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #416
8 years of What's 🔥 🙏🏼 - more on Palantir's model from services (FDE) to product and now product + some services + why every startup will have to…
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