What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #275

☁️ is still on 🔥 + what to look for in journey from OSS project to company

The ☁️ continues to be on 🔥. Eric Savitz from Barron’s summed it up best this week:

You can’t overstate the importance of cloud computing: One of the most important themes from the last two weeks is that the cloud businesses at Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet just continue to get better. All three turned in better-than-expected results. Microsoft reported 46% growth for its Azure business in the December quarter—and projected even faster growth in the March quarter. Google Cloud revenue grew 45% for the second straight quarter. And AWS helped offset softness in Amazon’s core e-commerce business, with revenue growth improving to 40% from 39%, accelerating for the fourth-straight quarter. The cloud arms of these three giants are the best enterprise computing businesses in the market.

It’s not just last quarter but also contract backlog that signals continued strength for the ☁️.

Urs Hölzle @uhoelzle

My favorite quote from the earnings call transcript: "Alphabet's backlog increased more than 70% to $51 billion, most of which is attributed to Google Cloud."

For many years, infrastructure investing was such a backwater, unsexy area to invest and now we have tweets like below going viral.

Tara @TaraViswanathan

To all early stage founders, let me save you two years of flailing. Whatever idea you have, just pivot to building infrastructure for that idea instead. 😆

Founders, ignore the markets as great companies will continue to get funded at premium valuations as the flight to quality is on. Keep your heads down, focus on your users, and keep building. And also talk to 🐅 as it just raised $11B for its new fund.

Speaking of users, I was recently on the Console.dev podcast talking about day one of an open source project and the need for founders to start with an atomic unit of one user, how to make that one user’s life infinitely better with their product, before expanding to 10 and then 100 and 1000 (clip below). Too often founders rush to amp their numbers up and ignore the quality, the understanding of who is using their project and why.

consoledotdev @consoledotdev

EP5 of the Console DevTools podcast is here. 🚧 Find out how to develop a side project into an investible business. Listen to @edsim, founder of @Boldstartvc discuss how to scale a devtools start up. Listen now: podcast.console.dev/episodes/s02e0…

Your next investors should also appreciate and understand the patience needed and the focus on user stories versus the overall number of users if they are going to be your right next partner.

Finally, for those founders who are sitting on a huge balance sheet of cash after having raised a preemptive round of funding, remember this:

Ed Sim @edsim

Reminder for founders...don't lose your hacker mentality no matter how much 💰 you raise or how big you get

Ed Sim @edsim

Founders, no matter how much 💰 you raise, remember to not lose your scrappiness - speed is one of your advantages and I've seen some founders opt for too much process too early, need to layer on appropriately as you scale

As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues. Let’s go ☁️!

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Scaling Startups

1. On my reading list and I encourage you to put on yours as well - order here and if interested in a longer history of VC, then read VC: An American History

   Paul Graham @paulg

   If you want to understand how venture capital works and the effect it has had on the US economy, this is the book to read. Lots of people talk about VC. Few of them understand it. But Mallaby does.

   

   amazon.comThe Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future: Mallaby, Sebastian: 9780525559993: Amazon.com: BooksThe Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future [Mallaby, Sebastian] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

2. Totally agree on this…

   Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom

   Big decisions are better made fast than slow. We are told to methodically consider the pros and cons of every big decision in our lives—but for most this leads to decision paralysis. You're actually better off making them fast—gut and instincts are powerful guides.

3. Always remember this - build product for users first but they aren’t necessarily the buyers

   April Dunford @aprildunford

   Understanding customer pain is not the same thing as understanding how a buyer makes a purchase decision.

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Enterprise Tech

1. 🎙️ 🙏🏼 Interested in day one at developer first cos like @snyksec @AtomicJarInc @SlimDevOps?

   🎧Listen here on the console.dev podcast: Devtools investing, with Ed Sim (Boldstart) - S02E05

   Ed Sim @edsim

   🎙️Interested in day one at developer first cos like @snyksec @AtomicJarInc @SlimDevOps? 🎧 @consoledotdev: we discuss obsession on individual users + experience, getting it right with 1 user first b4 scaling, + not to kill golden goose w/ revenue too early podcast.console.dev/episodes/s02e0…

2. Docker is back…but big question is can it continue to grow from this $50M ARR base as much of its revenue is likely from backlog from not charging users to begin with

   Justin Cormack @justincormack

   Building a sustainable @Docker

   

   techcrunch.comDocker makes comeback with over $50M in ARR two years into restructuring – TechCrunchIt’s surely been a turbulent couple of years for Docker, the open source containerization company that launched in 2013, but it seems to have found its financial footing again. Today, it announced that over the last fiscal year, annual recurring revenue (ARR) has jumped 4x to over $50 million…

3. Yes, you can accelerate growth even when over $200M ARR

   Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣2️⃣ @jasonlk

   So Asana is the latest SaaS leader to grow even >faster< as it scales At $400m+ ARR, it's growing a stunning 70% And that's up from 55% at $200m+ in ARR 5 Interesting Learnings: 🔽🔽🔽🔽🔽

4. Why this crypto winter is different than before…CNBC

   Blockdaemon 😈 @BlockdaemonHQ

   “If we are entering ‘crypto winter,’ it’s unlike the bear markets we’ve seen before. The crypto market today has institutional adoption. They see the promise crypto holds. Many institutions are long-term bullish on the tech.” -@konstantin11

   

   cnbc.comCrypto start-ups are still raising serious cash despite a slump in pricesCryptocurrency start-ups are having a solid start to the year, bagging hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh cash.

5. CB Insights State of Blockchain Report

6. The 20 Coolest Cloud Monitoring And Management Companies Of The 2022 Cloud 100 (CRN) -

   Congrats to Spectro Cloud (a port co)

   “Spectro Cloud launched version two of its enterprise Kubernetes management platform. The update came with enhanced cost visibility, insight into cluster health, improved role-based access control and other features. The company also unveiled new support for public cloud clusters.”

7. NFTs aren’t just jpegs…great 🧵

   cantino.eth @chriscantino

   1/ The future of NFTs. 🧵

8. 🧵 on Helium, a decentralized wireless infrastructure, which is experiencing tremendous growth - infra can be owned by the people with incentives that make sense

   Alana Levin @AlanaDLevin

   A thread on Helium: data, comparisons, and things I find interesting 🎈

9. Google cloud going after crypto infra companies with new dedicated digital assets team

10. So true…

    François Chollet @fchollet

    Software is this weird space where you can spend basically nothing and create a billion dollars of value, or spend a billion dollars and create basically no value.

11. Scary and fascinating read on “What Happens When Russian Hackers Come for the Electrical Grid” (Bloomberg)

    “Rogers told lawmakers that hackers had been breaking into U.S. power utilities to probe for weaknesses and that Russia had been caught planting malware in the same kind of industrial computers used by power utilities. “All of that leads me to believe it is only a matter of when, not if, we are going to see something dramatic,” he said.”

12. Sorry…had to share more Miami 🌴

    Financial Times @FinancialTimes

    Hello, New York. While you were sleeping, this was our most read story:

    

    on.ft.comSubscribe to read | Financial TimesNews, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

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Markets

1. 📈

   Morgan Housel @morganhousel

   All past declines look like an opportunity, all future declines look like a risk. 🤷