What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #290

Story of survival + success from the Dotcom crash - how Greenplum sold to EMC + eventually IPOed as Pivotal

Looking at my Twitter feeds and texts this week, and VC after VC has offered their version of gloom and doom advice. So rather than rehash the basics which amounts to make cash runway last to infinity, let me share a story of resiliency, a pivot, and a success story from the Dotcom crash and some lessons learned. Here’s the 🧵 and hope this gives founders an opportunity to see that good things can happen if you survive through the worst of times.

Ed Sim @edsim

So many tweets about why it's a great time to start a co + it is, but let me share 1 of survival + success from the dot-com crash - how @Greenplum pivoted, sold to EMC + IPOed as Pivotal Hope is founders will come out more resilient, investors more patient + ecosystem healthier

Ed Sim @edsim

They had a few large paying customers but the market crashed + for an infra startup, the world stopped. The company skinnied down to a core team of engineers + bought time It was rough, brutal, but the founders survived by doing consulting work for data analytics projects

Read the 🧵 for the rest!

And just finished reading Amp it Up by Frank Slootman and it’s super short and full of so much advice. If you finish my thread above, you’ll see one of the biggest reasons companies run out of cash is premature scaling before PMF. This is a good sign you have PMF 👇🏼

Reminder to be honest about when to scale your sales - when folks are pulling back could be a good time to get market share but also could be deadly

In other news, join Shai Goldman from Brex and I to discuss the State of the Markets next Tuesday at 12pm ET - it will be a Q&A so come with questions and register here.

Also, my firm, boldstart ventures will be hosting Kelsey Hightower, developer advocate guru for a Q&A on June 2 at 12PM ET. Register here

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

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Scaling Startups

1. Yes, there are lots of dollars floating around that is unfunded but folks don’t realize most of that is spent or reserved and this is something to pay attention to a couple quarters out

   Amish Jani @amishjani

   While public market changes are impacting private markets, the bigger change will come from the rotation and disappearance of LP dollars over the next few quarters. Survival makes parting with any dollars especially costly and is the ultimate catalyst for behavior change.

2. keep building - more and more large cos will be slowing down and focusing on only what can deliver near term results

   Ed Sim @edsim

   Nothing like a market downturn to force prioritization ⁦@coinbase⁩ Which means many adjacent mkts that large cos thought about entering gets thrown out 🪟 Great time for founders to be heads down building 🏗 what’s next as most large cos cut back product w/LT payback

   

3. Cohosted a dinner at Permissionless crypto conference with Blockdaemon & Sapphire Ventures - mood was more sombre than FTX but folks still investing, still building and not deterred

   Eliot Durbin @etdurbin

   In the midst of crazy markets and macro turmoil… all I can say is the builders, keep on building! 🙏 to everyone that joined us for dinner at #Permissionless + huge thanks to our awesome cohosts ❤️@BlockdaemonHQ @SapphireVC

   

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Enterprise Tech

1. State of Crypto from a16z - must read REPORT

   

2. Where are we in terms of multiples, market - great read from Meritech Capital

   Alex Clayton @afc

   Some cool charts from @MeritechCapital on the recent SaaS pullback, case studies from the Great Recession, and a framework for the future. Thanks Anthony DeCamillo and Dan Knight.

   

   meritechcapital.comMeritech Capital / 2022 SaaS Crash

   One of most telling charts - Snowflake NTM multiple went from 92.9X to 25.2X which is still super healthy

   

3. 🧵 on AirBnB evolving architecture…

   Bilgin Ibryam @bibryam

   Airbnb’s Journey To Post-Microservices (HINT: microservies didn't solve all the problems) medium.com/qe-unit/airbnb…

   

4. 👇🏼 pretty awesome attach rates

   Shomik Ghosh 🇺🇦 @shomikghosh21

   So yes stocks are down but can we all talk about how freakin crazy the execution of $DDOG has been!! When people talk about expanding TAM and using a core product as a wedge into a core workflow, Datadog is the case study to bring up 🤯 👀 customers w/ 4+ products section

   

5. More web2 coming for crypto infra…

   Cloudflare @Cloudflare

   Today, we are excited to announce the start of our experiments for the next generation of web3 networks that are embracing Proof of Stake; beginning with Ethereum. cfl.re/3LiRiHJ #PlatformWeek

   We are going to support the development and deployment of Ethereum by running Proof of Stake validator nodes on our network. For the Ethereum ecosystem, running validator nodes on our network allows us to offer even more geographic decentralization in places like EMEA, LATAM, and APJC while also adding infrastructure decentralization to the network.

6. On e-commerce spend, huge COVID spike but growth leveling off - what does that mean for infra cos selling into these markets?

   Jared Sleeper @JaredSleeper

   E-commerce in the US is in crisis: penetration peaked in Q2 2020 and has been stagnant since at ~16% of retail spend. Where will it go from here? In this thread, I’ll break down the bull/bear arguments, discuss a potential POV and share a link to the model used to derive it 🧵:

7. Great comments on developer experience and what it means along with folks chiming in on what a great one is

   Kelsey Hightower @kelseyhightower

   Those that build software for a living, what are your thoughts on developer experience? Bonus points if you can provide one real-world example of a great developer experience and how you leverage it in your development loop.

8. CNBC Disruptor 50 List - Flexport #1 followed by Brex and Blockchain.com appears at #7

9. 🤣

   Alexis Gay @yayalexisgay

   when you're really excited about web3

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Markets

1. Year 2000 or different?

   Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker

   1) This is nothing like 2000. Valuations for tech peaked in 2020. At the 2020 peak on a cap weighted basis, the 10 largest tech companies in the Nasdaq traded at a 44% discount to the largest tech companies at the 2000 peak using NTM EPS and 58% discount using LTM EPS.