What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #453
To FDE (full deploy engineers) or not, that is the question + some thoughts on the Grammarly acquisition of Superhuman + what to do when are you in the 2-3x growth zone but not AI level 📈
Happy 4th of July 🎆 to all! As a reminder, America was also a startup in 1776. Bold founding doc. Unclear roadmap. Lots of pivots. And it’s still iterating. But wow we’ve created some amazing AI!
So top of mind this week were thoughts on enterprise GTM and the Palantir model along with what happens to lots of SaaS cos who are growing 2-3x but not nowhere near AI growth. Let’s dive in.
To FDE or Not
I’ve written a ton about Palantir’s GTM and most recent BLG (Bootcamp led growth model) , and many smart founders have realized that the last mile in the enterprise can be the longest when it comes to AI.
But one must be careful as it comes down to nuances on whether one can be successful or not. Here’s one founder saying it just didn’t work…and also an article from The Information where OpenAI says while it will provide FDEs to customers, the minimum starting point is $10 Million. Lots of interesting takes on this post but IMO there is gold in them hills if one can do this right and choose where to deploy these FDEs carefully - 👇🏻 click for the commentary
And this comment really resonates.
Solid 2-3x SaaS Performer but not a 🚀 - what to do?
I’ve had so many of these conversations the past month 👇🏻.
The question is what does one do when in this situation? IMO, here are some thoughts:
However, there is a window of time for every startup. You need to read the market, where is it going, how fast is it moving, and can you maintain your technical edge and keep innovating on product. If not, if you feel erosion fast, or competition rapidly intensifying, then you should think long and hard about proactively exiting while you are peaking or close to peaking versus waiting until the very end. By being honest with yourself, your business, product, and roadmap, you can make some tough decisions which may ultimately pay off in a bigger way.
That is exactly what Rahul Vohra from Superhuman just did by selling to Grammarly. Listen in on his thoughts on why sell when the company was doubling growth YoY and was growing at its fastest pace in awhile.
I know a number of folks were surprised by the news of Grammarly acquiring Superhuman, but having been there since the very beginning with Rahul Vohra, Conrad Irwin, and Vivek Sodera and team, let me share some thoughts.
First, here’s Rahul’s announcement:
Here’s Chris Farmer from SignalFire’s comment, a large investor in Grammarly.
Finally, read this Inc article on how Superhuman sold to Grammarly - the best companies are bought, not sold…
IMO, this is going to be a powerhouse combination with Grammarly, Coda, and Superhuman going after the next-gen AI powered productivity suite. There’s a massive installed base, incredible product synergies, and an opportunity to bring agentic workflows from calendar to docs with email agents just getting work done. Chris shared publicly that Grammarly is over $700M in revenue, Superhuman shared it was doubling YoY and at $36M revenue, and now imagine reselling these products into respective user bases. OK, I’m pretty excited about this, and yes we are all rolling our stock into the combined entity. Let’s see if Grammarly +++ can outimagine, outbuild, and outrun the old school players. The valuation was quite attractive to get this done, and the opportunity to build even more value based on the installed base and roadmap is 🔥.
🙏🏼 Rahul and team for letting us (boldstart ventures) join you on your journey as your first investor and looking forward to what’s next!
I suspect we will see many more private-to-private mergers and acqusitions sooner rather than later as many standalone highly valued startups realize how fast AI is eroding their core tech.
As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues!
Scaling Startups
#agree or disagree? we’ve funded lots of both but once you get older you have to show you can still run through walls on a mission especially as there are more demands on your time…
#well said by the President of Coinbase - missionaries versus mercenaries but how does that translate to real world? This kind of agency and culture is what’s needed in a world where the top 1% of talent get paid significant amounts elsewhere
#be careful of your remote workers - Soham Parekh was the talk of the week - Suhail from Playground.ai broke the news and X blew up…
#💯 can also be applied to startups - because shit will change a lot especially from Inception!
#must listen podcast - if you’ve ever had Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, Tic Tacs, then listen to the innovation in action…sounds Steve Jobs-esque?
#another long one but this is so good from Clay co-founder Varun on culture, remember this is our portfolio co which did zero ARR for 6 years before exploding in growth…and now creating a new category called GTM Engineering and worth a reported $3.1B
#resilience 💪🏻
Enterprise Tech
#this is the dream that every founder is chasing…now raising at $2B valuation (FT)
#is MCP really the future or will there be a better way - comments are great - discuss speed, cost, security…
#and you wonder why Microsoft just laid off 9,000 more employees…
#the newly formed Meta AI Dream Team
#and the cost of AI talent continues to 📈
#Gartner forecasts - on one hand over 40% of Agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027 but on the other hand…
#and agents and “digital workers” already being deployed in banks but still thinking about auth! (WSJ)
#also from Gartner - incredible growth - from 14% penetration to 90% in 4 years, never seen an adoption curve like this in the enterprise and 💯 agree role of sorware eng starts to become more management of agents…
#and agentic technology like the new one released from Cursor this past week allows you to spin multiple agents from your mobile phone and have them work in the background…
#is the world of VC-subsidized tokens coming to an end as there has been a massive backlash against Cursor’s new pricing model? Simon, has the most balanced take on it.
#all about the data - the next big data unlock, Youtube?
#❤️ this - last player in cloud goes all in on AI and still an also ran but you’re never done until you’re done!
#who owns your data - the customer or the application provider? Corporate data wars heating up as companies like Salesforce, Notion, and Atlassian block competitor products (The Information)
#so much fun to create videos with Google Flow and Veo - here’s an insane one from Liquid Death
Markets
#Figma filed for its IPO and the numbers are astounding but…some controversy on how it calculates Net Dollar Retention…click through for more 👇🏻
#interesting chart from Guggenheim Securities - only 2 companies or 1% of software cos poised to grow >30% NTM versus 11% back at height of ZIRP. Also look at those NDR numbers for 75th % with 126% in 2021 and now at 114% and steadily dropping
#what’s happening in world of venture capital?
