Year: 2021

Things have been looking up for Belfast since the end of the Troubles. The city has undergone infrastructure improvements over the past two decades, tourism has boomed thanks to attractions such as the shipyard where the RMS Titanic was built and Game of Thrones shooting locations, and employment has risen steadily in the city since 2016, according to Northen Ireland’s Department for the Economy. The city also has the famed Queen’s University and low living costs to count in its favor, and gentrification is starting to take place, which shows things are looking up for Northern Ireland’s capital.

And as far as the local startup scene goes, the U.K.’s Tech Nation found in 2018 that about 26% of Belfast’s workforce was employed in tech, and it is among cities in the country with the highest growth potential for 2021.

With that in mind, we reached out to founders, investors and executives in the city to get an inside look at the state of the current tech startup ecosystem. According to the survey, the city is strong in sectors such as fintech, agritech, hospitality tech, emerging tech, cybersecurity, SaaS and medtech. Ignite NI emerged as an important native incubator and accelerator.

Interesting startups that our respondents mentioned include: CropSafe, SideQuest, Aflo, Material Evolution, Cloudsmith, LegitFit, Continually, Gratsi, 54 North Design, Animal Manager, Kairos Sports Tech, Budibase, Incisiv, Automated Intelligence, loyalBe, Konvi, Lane 44, Teamfeepay.com, Axial3D, Neurovalens, Payhere, and Civic Dollars.

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The tech investment scene was characterized as being strong in software and life sciences, but sometimes too conservative or risk-averse. However, this seems to be changing for the better, and foreign direct investment (FDI) is an important growth factor for the ecosystem.

Although there remains uncertainty around how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland, one executive said, “If we play our cards right, we can capitalize on it. Being positioned both in the EU and U.K. markets gives us advantages that we would be foolish to waste.”

One of the founders foresees more private capital flowing into Belfast as global investors realize that “the combination of great local universities and very strong FDI has attracted some brilliant engineers.” The low cost of living is also encouraging for talent to stay put in the city, which makes for a tech scene that’s poised to take off, this founder added.

Here’s who we spoke to:

• Cormac Quinn, founder & CEO, loyalBe
• Susan Kelly, CEO, Respiratory Analytics
• Ryan Crown, co-founder, Hill Street Hatch
• Fearghal Campbell, founder, Pitchbooking
• Jack Spargo, co-founder & CEO, Gratsi
• Brendan Digney, founder, Machine Eye Technology
• Toyah Warnock, co-founder, Lane 44
• Alan Carson, CEO, Cloudsmith

Cormac Quinn, founder & CEO, loyalBe

Which sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What does it lack?
We’re strong in cybersecurity and (to an arguably lesser extent) fintech. I’m excited by the droves of new startups being created here in all sorts of sectors — traditionally, Belfast hasn’t had a lot of tech startups, but I can see that changing right before my eyes, which is very exciting. I always anticipated having to leave Belfast for the U.S. to be able to start a tech company, but I’m glad this is no longer a requirement or even the standard any more.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
There are a few that stand out: Cloudsmith (devtools), LegitFit (scheduling), Continually (chatbots/marketing), and Automated Intelligence (data management). This is certainly not an exhaustive list of interesting startups, just a few that come to mind.

What are the tech investors like in Belfast? What’s their focus?
Investors here can be somewhat conservative and slightly traditional. If you’re raising investment north of £1 million, you would likely need to look outside the jurisdiction. There also just isn’t enough private capital at the moment, which is a shame, as Belfast has some fantastic talent combined with a very low cost of living, which means investor money tends to go further (no crazy rents, reasonable salaries, etc.). It feels we’re at the beginning of a cycle in Belfast, however — I expect to see many more local exits over the coming years, which will likely lead to new private capital inflows.

With the shift to remote working, do you think people will stay in Belfast? Will they move out? Will others move in?
I understand the city was growing pre-pandemic, and I believe this trend will continue once life returns to a semi-normal state. For a long time, Belfast was a city people didn’t want to live in due to historical issues, but that has been slowly changing. New developments are popping up all over the city, from student accommodation to hotels and nice apartments. 15-20 years ago, Belfast had hardly any of this.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g. Investors, founders, lawyers, designers)?
Chris McClelland, MD of Ignite NI: He’s a mentor on the city’s top accelerator program. Co-founded BrewBot.
Ian Browne, COO of Ignite NI: Entrepreneur and another mentor to startups in the city.
Mark Dowds: Venture partner at Anthemis, co-founder at Ormeau Baths (in my opinion it’s the city’s best co-working space).

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
We’re in uncertain times due to Brexit, but I think if we play our cards right, we can capitalize on it. Being positioned both in the EU and U.K. markets gives us advantages that we would be foolish to waste. I do think we will see more private capital flowing into Belfast as global investors realize that the combination of great local universities and very strong FDI has attracted some brilliant engineers. Combine that with the fact that cost of living remains quite low, which means their capital can go much further (rather than going to landlords) and you have a tech scene that’s poised for take-off.

Can you recommend any companies that should appear in our global Startup Battlefield competition?
Cloudsmith.

Susan Kelly, CEO, Respiratory Analytics

Which sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What does it lack?
Cybersecurity, fintech, digital — strong medtech — needs building. Great incubator and accelerator in Ignite, but needs expansion to the Northwest where deprivation and poor infrastructure need to be addressed. Public funding supports are good, but too fragmented and hard to access.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
CropSafe, SideQuest, Aflo (my startup!), Material Evolution.

What are the tech investors like in Belfast? What’s their focus?
Too conservative, “stale, pale, male”, and risk-averse. But changing for the better, slowly. Legal’s far too costly. Needs to shift to a more U.S. type model. Too few women on the scene. Focus on software, which is great, but too risk-averse in hardware. Needs more experienced angel investors. Halo Business Angel Network feels staid.

With the shift to remote working, do you think people will stay in Belfast? Will they move out? Will others move in?
Huge shift back to Belfast and Northern Ireland in general as a result of COVID.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g. Investors, founders, lawyers, designers)?
Ignite NI is driving the startup scene via Propel (Pre-Accelerator) and the Accelerator — doing an amazing job. Clarendon, Techstart, various angels, and Catalyst. Big Motive is a key design engine.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
With more support from Invest NI, the whole of Northern Ireland can be an innovation hub linked to Ireland via the startup ecosystem.

Can you recommend any companies that should appear in our global Startup Battlefield competition?
CropSafe.

Ryan Crown, co-founder, Hill Street Hatch

Which sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What does it lack?
We’re strong in the tech industry. We’re excited by changing how we launch hospitality ventures. Belfast is weak in investment and investors.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Payhere, Civic Dollars, and Konvi.

What are the tech investors like in Belfast? What’s their focus?
We’re lacking proper investors in Northern Ireland.

With the shift to remote working, do you think people will stay in Belfast? Will they move out? Will others move in?
The cost of living and quality of life is fantastic in Northern Ireland/Belfast. COVID-19 will see a huge influx of people moving from expensive cities such as London, Manchester, or Dublin and relocating to Belfast.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g. Investors, founders, lawyers, designers)?
Chris McClelland.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
Booming.

Fearghal Campbell, founder, Pitchbooking

Which sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What does it lack?
Cybersecurity, SaaS, sportstech. Most excited by a range of early-stage tech companies — [there has been] an explosion in pre-seed and seed level companies over the past two to three years. Weaker at scaling up; relative lack of indigenous scale-up companies. Large number of foreign direct investment from U.S.-based companies into the city.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
In the sportstech sector, teamfeepay.com are growing fast. loyalBe are a seed-stage fintech company with big plans for reinventing retail loyalty programs that we always keep an eye on. Later-stage companies like medtech mainstays Axial3D and Neurovalens are doing great things too!

What are the tech investors like in Belfast? What’s their focus?
We have a mix of angel and institutional investors in Belfast. Hard to say a specific focus on a particular industry, but there are a couple of sectors that are strong in the city given the focus of the local universities. Medtech and cybersecurity both feature heavily in the startup scene.

With the shift to remote working, do you think people will stay in Belfast? Will they move out? Will others move in?
Belfast benefits from a relatively low cost of living in relation to the rest of the U.K., meaning that we are seeing an increase in startups moving here from other major cities. The support for early-stage startups has also contributed to this influx. As a city, we are well set up for moving to a hybrid way of working. You can traverse across the center of the city in 15 mins on foot, which means popping into a city center office isn’t a big undertaking.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g. Investors, founders, lawyers, designers)?
Invest NI – Government support agency.
Ignite NI – Seed-stage accelerator program.
UlsterBank Accelerator – Early-stage accelerator program.
Aurient Investments – Angel investment group with a diverse investment portfolio.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I believe we will see the strongest seed-stage companies from 2017-2020 becoming established companies within our tech scene to match the influx of FDI companies from further afield.

Jack Spargo, co-founder & CEO, Gratsi

Which sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What does it lack?
Strong in: Fintech, agritech, hospitality tech, and emerging tech.
Most excited by: support (financial, mentoring, etc.) is available and the cost to build and grow is low.
Weakest in: geographical barriers to rest of UK and EU.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
loyalBe, Konvi, and Lane 44.

What are the tech investors like in Belfast? What’s their focus?
Great — good support and intros facilitated by accelerators such as Ignite NI, Catalyst, Techstart, Ormeau Baths, etc.

With the shift to remote working, do you think people will stay in Belfast? Will they move out? Will others move in?
More likely to move in: low cost of living and well set up for being remote already.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g. Investors, founders, lawyers, designers)?
Chris McClelland and Ian Browne of Ignite NI; Mark Dowds of anthemis, and Cormac Quinn of loyalBe.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
Stronger: a tech hub for the UK and the EU.

Brendan Digney, founder, Machine Eye Technology

Which sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What does it lack?
Agritech and Constuction tech are industries with huge potential, particularly in Ireland and Northern Ireland, where there are traditional strengths and the opportunity to influence based upon use of AI and data.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Kairos Sports Tech, Budibase, Incisiv, and Automated Intelligence.

What are the tech investors like in Belfast? What’s their focus?
There are a number of VCs/funds that are generally linked to each other and Invest NI. INI is a big support and funder. Catalyst are a not-for-profit support who are possibly the most valuable in the whole system. Investment focus is generally around software and life sciences, although other funds are around. Strong focus on foreign and inward businesses.

With the shift to remote working, do you think people will stay in Belfast? Will they move out? Will others move in?
[People will] move out to rural areas within an hour’s drive of the city.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g. Investors, founders, lawyers, designers)?
Catalyst, Ormeau Baths, and Raise Ventures.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
Significant growth in the scene, with an expansion into more later-stage businesses.

Toyah Warnock, co-founder, Lane 44

Which sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What does it lack?
Belfast is a growing hub of fantastic businesses and funding opportunities.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Gratsi, 54 North Design, and Animal Manager.

What are the tech investors like in Belfast? What’s their focus?
SaaS.

With the shift to remote working, do you think people will stay in Belfast? Will they move out? Will others move in?
Belfast is inexpensive to live in. Many people will be moving in.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g. Investors, founders, lawyers, designers)?
Ormeau Baths.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
It will grow rapidly. Belfast is going through a period of gentrification.

Can you recommend any companies that should appear in our global Startup Battlefield competition?
Lane 44, Animal Manager, and Gratsi.

Alan Carson, CEO, Cloudsmith

Which sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What does it lack?
Strong in security, fintech, and medtech. Excited about devtools.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Cloudsmith and Axial3D.

What are the tech investors like in Belfast? What’s their focus?
Small investor scene, but with an ambitious founder scene. Medtech and security are popular.

With the shift to remote working, do you think people will stay in Belfast? Will they move out? Will others move in?
No idea. Probably a bit of both.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g. Investors, founders, lawyers, designers)?
Techstart Ventures, Ignite NI, Catalyst, Clarendon Co-Fund, Denis Murphy, Colm McGoldrick, and Alastair Bell.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
Bigger and better than ever.

Can you recommend any companies that should appear in our global Startup Battlefield competition?
VideoFirst.

Bobby Goodlatte has only been an investor for about a decade, but he appears to have already made tens of millions of dollars, contrary to the expectations of some traditional VCs who have privately, and publicly, griped that too many novice investors have flooded into the industry.

“I remember a very prominent investor saying at the time, ‘All these new angel investors, they’re all going to lose all their money; they’re fools for doing this,” recalls Goodlatte, who was recruited out of college to become a product designer at Facebook and left four years later, when the company went public. “I’m glad that I didn’t get shaken off of it.”

As it happens, Goodlatte’s second check — from his own pocket — went to Coinbase. It was an auspicious start for Goodlatte, who more recently formed his first institutional fund, Form Capital, with entrepreneur Josh Williams, an outfit that offers up to 40 hours of design help, with logos or packaging or whatever else a team might need, with each check that it writes.

We talked with Goodlatte this week about the venture firm and its $12 million debut fund, which is largely funded by Goodlatte (it also counts the fund of funds Cendana Capital as a limited partner). He shared why he thinks the biggest returns in the coming years will flow to very small funds that feature a big financial commitment from the general partners.  He also shared why three months ago he moved to Miami, where he believes a “movement” is afoot. Excerpts from that chat follow, edited lightly for length and clarity.

TC: You were an early designer on Facebook’s user growth team, working with Chamath Palihapitiya, among others. It’s interesting that you stayed for just four years, leaving in 2012 when the company went public. 

BG: I had given some thought to staying longer, and obviously many of my friends are still there and have risen the ranks and done extremely well. I was just very eager to get started as an investor . . . and at the time, Facebook was saying, ‘Well, you can’t stay here and do angel investing.’ Little did I know that some people skirted the rules a bit and ended up angel investing [without leaving]. But I was very excited to dig in and quite glad that I got started when I did [because] my second-ever angel investment was in Coinbase and had I stayed longer, maybe I would have missed that one.

TC: You’ve mentioned in the past that you’d been a Bitcoin nerd and followed some of the discussion threads that others might have missed. What sparked that early interest?

BG: There’s that famous William Gibson quote: “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” I think about that in quite literal terms in the sense that there are sort of pockets of the future, these bubble hiding all around. In 2012, think the Bitcoin subreddit was this bubble where, within it, people were talking very excitedly about Bitcoin and if you weren’t in it, you would kind of scratch your head about it.  . . . I felt a similar feeling about Facebook back in the day. I was a college student when Facebook launched, and everyone who was in college at the time was kind of privy to this future that was quite obvious amongst college students. But if you weren’t in college, people would kind of scratch their heads and say, ‘I don’t really understand what’s going on.’

TC: Can you comment on your return from Coinbase? You were an investor in the A, C and E rounds. Is there anything you can say about the cash on cash return?

BG: A lot of this is fairly public knowledge at this point, but the Series A cost basis was 20 cents, so folks can kind of do math based on that.

I think so much of startup investing is [that] you can kind of have a prepared mind about things, but there’s also an element of luck about it. I don’t think I had complete foresight when I made the investment that Coinbase was going to be an $80 billion-plus company. I thought it was going to be successful. But it has clearly eclipsed even my greatest expectations, and I feel very lucky and fortunate to have to realized that.

TC: There are various on-ramps to VC these days, including AngelList syndicates and rolling funds. Did you ever take advantage of these or did you keep writing checks from your own pocket before founding Form Capital?

BG: I don’t know if I should should be embarrassed to say this or not, but when I first got my start as an angel, I got advice from financial advisors and who said, ‘When it comes to angel investing, only invest a tiny percentage of your of your overall net worth into this.’ And to be honest, I maybe foolishly ignored that advice. Obviously, it has netted out in the long term, [but] it was large risk I took. I did 40 deals out of my own pocket. I was sort of getting closer to the end of running out of tape.

[At that point] I wound up investing through a small scout like fund for a few deals and hit some hit some incredible deals through that [and] I was able to play around, investing at a larger check size. It also helped me sort of step-stone up to doing [Form Capital].  But yeah, I  kind of ignored a lot of the advice and put a lot of my own personal net worth into into seed-stage investing and thankfully, it all worked out. Otherwise, I could have been in trouble. I think the advice is well-considered.

TC: How might you advise someone just spinning out of, say, Coinbase and thinking about jumping into angel investing? Go it alone? Use one of these other products?

BG: I think it depends on their risk profile and their own appetite and whether they truly enjoy this type of work, because it can become a lot of work. If you want to develop a real portfolio, you have to take a lot of meetings, you have to make yourself available and put yourself out there in a way that I think a lot of folks who wind up getting a very meaningful personal exit may not want.  For those folks who are trying to break into venture who haven’t had this sort of exit, I say go for it. I say welcome. Let’s go invest together. Honestly, there’s a lot of space for small check investors. I think the folks writing small collaborative checks have an incredible opportunity to post some insane multiples.

TC: You stress collaboration. Are people more or less collaborative when you started in 2012? Seed-size checks are getting bigger, which suggests things have grown more competitive.

BG: There was a period where it was extremely competitive, and for some folks who are deploying out of a certain fund size, it might feel extremely competitive right now To me, it feels at its most collaborative, including because I am personally an LP in a number of tiny funds [headed by] tremendously talented managers who are just getting their start . . .

I do think there are a number of funds that raised more than they should have; I think there’s a danger zone somewhere around $80 million where you’re forced to be a lead investor and you can’t be a collaborative investor and so it becomes this slug-it-out, duke-it-out [situation] with other other funds as to who’s going to be the lead writer on a given deal . . .

If you’re aiming to write a large check, let’s say $1.5 million, and the founder comes back to you and says, ‘We can’t do that, but we can give you a $150,000 allocation,’ that’s just absolutely fatal to somebody trying to deploy a very large seed fund, versus if my target check size is something like $250,000. If I get squeezed down to $150,000, I can actually make that work economically within the fund math.

TC: So you’ll write a check as small as $150,000. What’s the upper boundary, and how much ownership are you targeting when you fund a startup?

BG: It’s upwards of $500,000, give or take, and our target is 3%. But, again, part of the joy of being a small fund manager is more flexibility in terms of of constructing a portfolio. In the cases where we may get squeezed down a little bit, or we want to invest at a slightly higher valuation than is typical, we can paint outside the lines a tiny bit more.

TC: Meaning bigger checks? Do you typically raise special purpose vehicles, or SPVS, in order to take a bigger bite of certain companies?

BG: One pattern for that was my personal investment in Coinbase. By being close to the company, by helping on a few very minor things over the years in terms of design, in terms of making connections to design firms and helping recruit some designers, they gave me follow-on allocations. And then in the Series E, I was able to raise an SPV into the deal based on the idea of building a deep relationship with the company.

That’s essentially the model going forward. We may or may not continue to pursue SPVs. We may pick a different vehicle in the future for how to deploy that follow-on capital. But the idea is: wedge in early with a small check, put a lot of skin in the game on that check [with a bigger general partner commitment in the fund than is typical], and build a relationship and try to be disproportionately helpful relative to our check size.

TC: You tweeted that for that SPV,  you pitched 50 different parties, and only three said yes.

I invested a total of 3 times into Coinbase, including an SPV I raised into the last round.

I pitched the SPV to almost 50 different parties. Only three said yes.

Tempted to email the Fortune article to the other 47

— Bobby Goodlatte (@rsg) December 17, 2020

BG: Yeah, it was amazing in late 2018 how in the dumps the crypto market was, and people thought that the overall stock market was going to be heading that way, so this was a very, very difficult SPV to raise. I wasn’t the only person who had one, and so there was some amount of market competition. Then just the nature of SPVs is such that you get your allocation, and bang goes the starting gun, and you need to very quickly talk to a lot of people.

[Still] it is remarkable how quickly the perception of that company has changed over just two short years, give or take. I give a lot of credit to the investors who backed us on that SPV because they they took the risk with us. I’ve had a number of people [since] say, ‘Oh, you should have called me, I would have invested.’ And maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t have.

TC: You talked at the outset about communities and bubbles and I can’t help but wonder if you think you are hearing about more interesting deals, having moved recently to Miami three months ago, than you would in the Bay Area. 

BG: It does really feel like that’s the case, and I started seeing this maybe in late November, and then very quickly said, ‘Okay, why not? This feels fun, this feels exciting.’ And I’m glad I made the jump, because while I love San Francisco — I think San Francisco is a tremendous place [that] will always be one of the great tech epicenters of the world  — I think a lot of folks moved here because they were looking to change things up. And the energy that comes from that, where everyone’s trying to make this work, is really quite exciting.

A lot of people said, ‘Oh, you’re going to miss out on things by moving to Miami, you’re going to take a step back in your career.’ And really, it’s been the opposite of that. It’s been a total accelerant of my career and investing.

We’re an interesting fit for Miami because Miami is known as being a design capital, and we’re a really design-driven fund, and there’s a lot of parallels there. [But I also realized that] I can be one of many thousands of new funds based in the Bay Area, or I can be one of a tiny handful based here in Miami and get all these tailwinds and have the mayor hype us up, and that sounds like a good deal to me.

Pictured above, left to right: Goodlatte with Coinbase cofounder Fred Ehrsam, who more recently cofounded the cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm.

Click Studios, the Australian software house that develops the enterprise password manager Passwordstate, has warned customers to reset passwords across their organizations after a cyberattack on the password manager.

An email sent by Click Studios to customers said the company had confirmed that attackers had “compromised” the password manager’s software update feature in order to steal customer passwords.

The email, posted on Twitter by Polish news site Niebezpiecznik early on Friday, said the malicious update exposed Passwordstate customers over a 28-hour window between April 20-22. Once installed, the malicious update contacts the attacker’s servers to retrieve malware designed to steal and send the password manager’s contents back to the attackers. The email also told customers to “commence resetting all passwords contained within Passwordstate.”

Click Studios did not say how the attackers compromised the password manager’s update feature, but emailed customers with a security fix.

The company also said the attacker’s servers were taken down on April 22. But Passwordstate users could still be at risk if the attacker’s are able to get their infrastructure online again.

Enterprise password managers let employees at companies share passwords and other sensitive secrets across their organization, such as network devices — including firewalls and VPNs, shared email accounts, internal databases, and social media accounts. Click Studios claims Passwordstate is used by “more than 29,000 customers,” including in the Fortune 500, government, banking, defense and aerospace, and most major industries.

Although affected customers were notified this morning, news of the breach only became widely known several hours later after Danish cybersecurity firm CSIS Group published a blog post with details of the attack.

Click Studios chief executive Mark Sanford did not respond to a request for comment outside Australian business hours.

Read more:

• President Trump’s Twitter accessed by security expert who guessed password ‘maga2020!’
• Spotify resets passwords after a security bug exposed users’ private account information
• Ubiquiti says customer data may have been accessed in data breach
• Long read: How Have I Been Pwned became the keeper of the internet’s biggest data breaches
• Amazon’s Ring Neighbors app exposed users’ precise locations and home addresses

We get up close with a robotic Groot, SpaceX has a successful astronaut launch and cryptocurrency prices tumble. This is your Daily Crunch for April 23, 2021.

The big story: Meet Disney Imagineering’s new robot

Disney Imagineering’s Project Kiwi represents a real robotics milestone — a free-walking robot that seems to fully capture the personality of the original character. In this case, the original is Groot, the beloved tree character from “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

I’m not just saying that based on the demo video, either. Matthew Panzarino has seen Project Kiwi in person and reports:

The pint-sized character has accurately rendered textures on its face, hands and feet. It’s dressed in a distressed red flight suit that you may remember from the films. And its eyes are expressive as it looks at me and waves. This is the moment, the one that Disney Imagineers and park goers alike have been waiting decades to realize.

Startups, funding and venture capital

SpaceX successfully launches astronauts with a re-used Dragon spacecraft for the first time — This was SpaceX’s second official astronaut delivery mission for NASA.

Hyundai invests in teleoperations startup Ottopia as part of $9M round — Ottopia’s first product is a universal teleoperation platform that allows a human operator to monitor and control any type of vehicle from thousands of miles away.

Introvoke raises $2.7M to power online events that can be embedded anywhere — While there’s been plenty of attention and money lavished on virtual event platforms over the past year, Introvoke co-founder and CEO Oana Manolache predicted that we’re only at the beginning of a “third wave of digital transformation.”

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

2021 should be a banner year for biotech startups that make smart choices early — Be wise when managing legal risk and choosing investors.

After going public, once-hot startups are riding a valuation roller coaster — A short meditation on value.

Should you give an anchor investor a stake in your fund’s management company? — A GP stake investor brings significant advantages and disadvantages.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Crypto market takes a dive with Bitcoin leading the way — Cryptocurrency prices continued to tumble today, with Bitcoin leading the charge.

India restricts American Express from adding new customers for violating data storage rules — In a statement, the Reserve Bank of India said existing customers of either of the two card companies (American Express and Diners Club) will not be impacted by the new order, which goes into effect May 1.

Just one week left to save $100 on TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising — Get ready to join your community of early-inning startup founders for a two-day bootcamp July 8-9.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Earlier this year we reported on how Snap had acquired Berlin-based Fit Analytics, an AI-based fitting technology startup, as part of a wider push into e-commerce services, specifically to gain technology that can help prospective online shoppers get a better sense of how a particular item or size would fit them. A 10-Q filing from Snap today has now put a price tag on that deal.

Snap paid a total of $124.4 million, covering technology, IP, customer relationships and payouts to the team. The filing also noted that Snap spent a total of $204.5 million on acquisitions in 2020, but did not break them out.

The news comes ahead of Snap — whose flagship app Snapchat now has 280 million daily active users — preparing for its Snap Partner Conference in May. Sources say the company plans to announce, among other news, deeper commerce features for Snapchat — specifically tools to make it easier for Snapchat users to interact with and buy items that appear in the app, either in ads or more organically in content shared by other users.

While the exact details of those commerce tools, and the timing of when they might come online, are not yet known, Snap has hardly kept its interest in commerce a secret.

Snap has been hiring for roles to support its commerce efforts. Currently it’s advertising for a variety of engineering, marketing and product roles in commerce, to, in the words of one of the listings, for a Product Manager, “develop and launch shopping experiences and services that make shopping fun for Snapchatters and drive results for brands.” The listings also include a role specifically to work on Snapchat-based e-commerce efforts for direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses.

And it has been making other recent acquisitions in addition to Fit Analytics that also line up with that.

They have included Screenshop, an app that describes itself as “the first AI-back style lens,” which can identify shoppable items in photos and then build a custom catalog of similar products that you can buy (akin to “shop the look” features that you will have come across in fashion media). And it’s also acquired Ariel AI, which has built technology to quickly render people in 3D, technology that can be used in a diverse set of applications, from games to virtual try-ons of clothing, makeup or accessories.

Snap confirmed the Ariel acquisition to CNBC in January. And while Screenshop deal was first reported earlier this month by The Information, Snap has declined to comment on it, although we have found people who worked at the startup now working at Snap.

Both acquisitions closed in 2020, according to reports, meaning that they came out of that year’s $204.5 million acquisition run. (Snap also noted a smaller acquisition, for $7.6 million, in the most recent quarter, but it did not disclose any further details.)

Even before all this, Snap had been making smaller efforts and tests in commerce going back years, although none of them have tipped into mainstream efforts.

Among them, in 2018 it launched a Snap Store — but that so far has not progressed beyond selling merchandise based on Bitmoji characters. And work on a Gucci shoe campaign last year, where Snapchat users could try shoes on in AR and then buy them, was seen by some as its big step into commerce — “we’ve moved from pure entertainment and expanded the use-case. And so with brands, it’s a really exciting time, especially in fashion and beauty. The Snapchat camera is connecting brands to their audiences in new ways,” a Snapchat AR executive said at the time — but that also didn’t develop into much beyond a one-off effort.

But with the pandemic leading to a surge of shopping online, and technology continuing to improve, the iron may finally be hot here.

As we said around the Fit Analytics acquisition, the idea of diversifying Snapchat’s revenue streams by building in more commerce experiences makes a lot of sense.

It gives the company another revenue stream at a time when Apple is introducing changes that might well affect how advertising can run and be monetized in the future. (The company most recently posted average revenues per user of $2.74, a figure Wall Street will be hoping will grow, not shrink.) It also plays into the demographics that Snapchat targets, where younger consumers are using social media apps to discover, share and shop for goods.

And specifically in the case of fashion, building experiences to shop for items on Snapchat leans into the augmented reality, image-altering, hyper-visual technology that has become a well-known and much-used hallmark of Snapchat and its owner, self-titled “camera company” Snap.

Honda’s new goal is to achieve 100% EV sales in North America by 2040 as part of its broader target of being carbon neutral by 2050. CEO Toshihiro Mibe announced planned shift away from internal combustion engines at a news conference on Friday, his first since taking over executive leadership of the company in early April.

This is the latest in a stream of pledges from legacy car manufacturers to introduce high percentages of zero-emissions vehicles into their fleets and achieve carbon neutrality. General Motors plans to eliminate gas and diesel light-duty cars and SUVs by 2035 and be carbon neutral by 2040, and Mazda, Mitsubishi and Nissan have all said they plan to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Honda’s goals are also in alignment with Japan’s electrification strategy, which aims for a 46% cut in emissions by 2030.

Honda will start on this road immediately, expecting EVs to account for 40% of sales by 2030, and 80% by 2035 in all major markets. By the second half of 2020, Japan’s second-largest automaker will launch a series of new electric models in North America based on the company’s in-house e:Architecture platform.

Honda, and its subsidiary Acura, will also introduce two large-sized EV models using GM’s Ultium batteries by 2024. The company will further its collaboration with GM by using fuel cell technology for a range of vehicles and applications, like commercial trucks and power sources.

Honda’s new goal is to achieve 100% EV sales in North America by 2040 as part of its broader target of being carbon neutral by 2050. CEO Toshihiro Mibe announced planned shift away from internal combustion engines at a news conference on Friday, his first since taking over executive leadership of the company in early April.

This is the latest in a stream of pledges from legacy car manufacturers to introduce high percentages of zero-emissions vehicles into their fleets and achieve carbon neutrality. General Motors plans to eliminate gas and diesel light-duty cars and SUVs by 2035 and be carbon neutral by 2040, and Mazda, Mitsubishi and Nissan have all said they plan to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Honda’s goals are also in alignment with Japan’s electrification strategy, which aims for a 46% cut in emissions by 2030.

Honda will start on this road immediately, expecting EVs to account for 40% of sales by 2030, and 80% by 2035 in all major markets. By the second half of 2020, Japan’s second-largest automaker will launch a series of new electric models in North America based on the company’s in-house e:Architecture platform.

Honda, and its subsidiary Acura, will also introduce two large-sized EV models using GM’s Ultium batteries by 2024. The company will further its collaboration with GM by using fuel cell technology for a range of vehicles and applications, like commercial trucks and power sources.

This past year has brought many new developments to a historically traditional process: taking a company public. Many of the standard levers in an initial public offering (IPO) are being redefined as we write.

The emergence of direct listings is just one example. Even in more traditional IPOs, we have seen unique lock-up provisions, different auction approaches, virtual and rapid roadshows become the norm, and company-centric approaches to investor allocations.

But clearly the most disruptive trend of the past 12 months has been the predominance of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company, commonly known as SPAC. A SPAC is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an IPO for the purpose of acquiring an existing, private company.

Also known as “blank check companies,” these entities typically have 24 months to find a company to buy or merge with.

That process essentially makes the acquired company a publicly traded one. SPACs can, and generally do, raise additional capital in the form of a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) in order to reaffirm the SPAC valuation and raise additional capital with the identified target company.

SPACs have been around for decades, but they took the 2020 IPO market by storm. For some context: 2020 had more than 248 SPACs — more than the sum of the SPACs in the previous decade. And while SPACs and the general sentiment around them continue to evolve, 2021 started off strong with 298 newly formed blank-check companies to date that have raised a collective $95 billion (vs. $83 billion in 2020). It’s worth noting that there has since been some slow down in new SPAC formation and an uptick in regulatory caution. We expect such shifts to continue in these early days.

For a SPAC, finding a company to merge with in 24 months might sound like a good amount of time, but in reality, the diligence and SEC process can easily consume six months or more. So identifying the target company relatively quickly becomes critical. As a result of this new trend, many private companies are being approached and courted by a number of newly formed SPACs.

Image Credits: Madrona Venture Capital

At Madrona, we invest in companies early in their journey (often Day One), and walk with them through the years of opportunities, challenges and financing goals. As such, for many of our companies, the conversation around raising capital via a SPAC transaction has come up, and more than once.

How to evaluate the pros and cons of SPACs relative to other financing options can be convoluted and confusing, to say the least.

Are you ready to be a public company?

The fundamental thing to remember about the SPAC process is that the result is a publicly traded company open to the regulatory environment of the SEC and the scrutiny of public shareholders.

Hawke Ventures, the investment arm of marketing consultancy Hawke Media, is announcing that it has closed its first $5.6 million venture fund.

Managing Partner Drew Leahy acknowledged that the firm’s focus on marketing technology isn’t exactly in high demand among other VCs right now.

“People are running away from martech […] but that’s our circle of confidence,” Leahy told me. “If you look at the biggest companies in the world, even Walmart now, they are all martech companies at the end of the day.”

While some might quibble with that description, it’s hard to deny the central role that marketing and advertising play for the internet’s biggest platforms. As for how that translates to Hawke’s strategy, Leahy said the firm is writing checks of between $100,000 and $250,000, with the possibility of follow-on investments.

Leahy, who was previously co-founder and CMO at SnapSuits.com, said that the fund has its roots in the strategic angel investing that he was doing for Hawke Media, ultimately working with the company’s CEO Erik Huberman and COO Tony Delmercado to raise a fund to make bigger bets.

He added that beyond writing checks, the firm can offer access to a network of 51 limited partners who invested in the fund. Those LPs include Deathwish Coffee founder Michael Brown, MVMT Watches founder Jack Kassan, former VaynerMedia executive Jeff Nicholson, husband-and-wife Holly (an actress and actress) and Rodney Pete (a former NFL player), Jill Zarin of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” Video Genome Product founder Xavier Kochhar and MarketShare founder Jon Vein.

And while most firms would say that they’re trying to fund the next Facebook or Google, Leahy said he has a slightly different focus: “We’re trying to build a different venture firm, that’s not about what we think next the big idea is, but is focused on building actual technology that we can use ourselves.

That also means the firm is mostly focused on products that can be used by small and medium businesses.

“We’re not an enterprise martech fund, we’re a small- and medium-sized business martech fund,” Leahy said. “We’re looking for pieces of technology that hundreds of thousands of users can be a part of.”

Early investments include SMS marketing company Postscript and analytics company Yaguara (acquired by Chord).

“As one of the earliest investors in Postscript, Hawke Ventures has worked with us since the beginning,” said Postscript President Alex Beller in a statement. “The entire Hawke org has been value-add since day one, and we’re proud to continue our partnership with Hawke as we build the definitive platform for Conversational Commerce.”

Origin stories are satisfying because we already know the hero will overcome the odds — and in doing so, they’ll reveal their core strengths.

This week, we published a four-part series about how Klaviyo co-founders Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen bootstrapped their startup into an e-commerce marketing automation platform now valued at $4.15 billion.

Neither founder was bitten by a radioactive spider or received a serum that enhanced their entrepreneurial skills; instead, they focused on outreach to prospective customers to find out what they were willing to pay for and largely ignored the competition.

“Bootstrapping Klaviyo, it came out of this: ‘Hey, if we are super-disciplined about finding a problem that someone will pay us to solve, we have a real company,'” said Hallen.

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Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription

Even though millions of us respond every day to the personalized, automated emails sent through its platform, Klaviyo still isn’t a well-known brand. Our ongoing series of EC-1s offers entrepreneurs real insight into growing and scaling successful companies, but they’re also extremely useful for consumers who want to understand how the internet really works.

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch; I hope you have a great weekend.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

The Klaviyo EC-1

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman

• Part 1: How Klaviyo transformed from a lifestyle business into a $4.15B email titan
• Part 2: How Klaviyo used data and no-code to transform owned marketing
• Part 3: Marketing in 2021 is emotional and not just transactional
• Part 4: Drama and quirk aren’t necessary for startup success

Micromobility’s next big business is software, not vehicles

Image Credits: slowcentury (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Several micromobility companies once operated in my city, but consolidation has reduced that to a small handful.

Now that many consumers are buying their own e-bikes and e-scooters, shared dockless micromobility “just hasn’t proven itself to be a profitable line of business,” Puneeth Meruva, an associate at Trucks Venture Capital, told TechCrunch.

There’s only one dockless electric moped provider in my town, so price is no longer a consideration. Instead, my first priority is to find a vehicle with the best-charged battery. (San Francisco has a lot of hills, and you never know where the day might take you.)

Larger players like Lime and Bird have vertically integrated tech stacks for fleet management features like this, but there are also opportunities for startups — imagine a “phantom scooter” that drives itself to a neighborhood with high demand or a moped that alerts drivers if there’s traffic ahead.

This in-depth industry analysis shows how increased regulation on the local level and changing consumer habits are pushing micromobility providers to adapt and innovate.

“Whether you want to stack regulatory compliance on the vehicles, do safety features like ADAS or add mapping content, you kind of need this platform where you can actively develop and launch new apps on the vehicle without having to bring it back to the factory,” Meruva said.

Enterprise security attackers are one password away from your worst day

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, then one might say the cybersecurity industry is insane.

Criminals continue to innovate with highly sophisticated attack methods, but many security organizations still use the same technological approaches they did 10 years ago. The world has changed, but cybersecurity hasn’t kept pace.

Data scientists: Bring the narrative to the forefront

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By 2025, 463 exabytes of data will be created each day, according to some estimates. It’s now easier than ever to translate physical and digital actions into data, and businesses of all types have raced to amass as much data as possible in order to gain a competitive edge.

However, in our collective infatuation with data (and obtaining more of it), what’s often overlooked is the role that storytelling plays in extracting real value from data.

The reality is that data by itself is insufficient to really influence human behavior. Whether the goal is to improve a business’ bottom line or convince people to stay home amid a pandemic, it’s the narrative that compels action, not the numbers alone.

As more data is collected and analyzed, communication and storytelling will become even more integral in the data science discipline because of their role in separating the signal from the noise.

Business continuity planning is a necessity for your fund and portfolio

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We all need to be taking precautionary measures, not just in light of COVID, but to ensure our firms can continue to thrive when faced with unexpected tragedy.

So ask yourself this question: “What would happen if I or my partner(s) checked into the hospital tomorrow and had no phone and/or was too sick to call anyone, and that went on for two or three weeks (or longer)?”

If the answer is “I’m really not sure,” then you don’t have a business continuity plan.

Outdoor startups see supercharged growth during COVID-19 era

Image Credits: rubberball (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

After years of sustained growth, the pandemic supercharged the outdoor recreation industry. Startups that provide services like camper vans, private campsites and trail-finding apps became relevant to millions of new users when COVID-19 shut down indoor recreation, building on an existing boom in outdoor recreation.

Startups like Outdoorsy, AllTrails, Cabana, Hipcamp, Kibbo and Lowergear Outdoors have seen significant growth, but to keep it going, consumers who discovered a fondness for the great outdoors during the pandemic must turn it into a lifelong interest.

Once VMware is free from Dell, who might fancy buying it?

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Dell last week agreed to spin out VMware in exchange for a huge one-time dividend, a five-year commercial partnership agreement, lots of stock for existing Dell shareholders and Michael Dell retaining his role as chairman of its board.

So, where does the deal leave VMware in terms of independence, and in terms of Dell influence?

Time-strapped IT teams can use low-code software to drive quick growth

Image Credits: Westend61 (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Many emerging and mature organizations survive or die based on their ability to scale. Scale quicker. Scale cheaper. Scale right.

Typically the IT team bears that burden — on top of countless other demands. IT teams move mountains for their organizations while scaling the tech platform as fast as possible, putting out the latest infrastructure fire and responding to countless day-to-day requests.

The most helpful gift any chief information officer or chief technology officer can give their IT teams is more time. Many people think that means adding another team member. But it could be as simple as introducing a low-code integration platform.

European VC soars in Q1

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

A stunning first quarter in venture capital funding was not restricted to the United States; Europe also had one hell of a start to the year.

The venture capital world kicked off its 2021 European investing cycle with enough activity to set the continent on the path that would crush yearly records.

Inside the data, there’s lots to unpack, including which sectors of European startups stood out in terms of capital raised, rising seed and late-stage deals, and dollar volume. We’ll also need to discuss exits — the Deliveroo IPO and its various woes was not the only transaction from the period worth understanding.

We’ll keep in mind that all venture capital data lags reality somewhat, as many deals from a particular period are not disclosed or discovered until long after they actually occurred.

In this case, it makes the numbers all the more impressive.

UiPath raises IPO range, still targets lower valuation than final private round

Image Credits: Zastrozhnov (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Robotic process automation unicorn UiPath went public this week, concentrating our focus on its value.

UiPath raised its last private round when the markets were most interested in public offerings and is now going public in a slightly altered climate.

In numerical terms, UiPath raised its IPO range from $43 to $50 per share to $52 to $54 per share. That’s a 21% jump in the value of the lower end of its range and an 8% gain to the value of the upper end of its per-share IPO price interval.

UiPath is also selling more shares than before, which should make its total valuation slightly larger at the top end than a mere 8% gain. So let’s go through the math one more time.

Insurtech startups are leveraging rapid growth to raise big money

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

The investment landscape for insurtech startups is off to a hot start in Q2 2021. Since the end of the first quarter, we’ve seen several players in the broad startup category announce new capital.

But, as anyone who’s familiar with startups that offer insurance-related products and services knows, the sector is enough of a mixed bag that one needs to segment down to get clarity on how constituent companies are performing.

Let’s discuss insurtech’s 2020 as a whole, peek at some preliminary 2021 venture data and then dive deep into what we’ve collected regarding growth among insurtech marketplace players.

Covering longitudinal progress of specific startup categories is one of our favorite things to do. So, please, walk with us!

Deep Science: Introspective, detail-oriented and disaster-chasing AIs

Image Credits: Kehan Chen / Getty Images

Research papers come out far too frequently for anyone to read them all. That’s especially true in the field of machine learning, which now affects (and produces papers in) practically every industry and company.

This column aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in, but not limited to, artificial intelligence — and explain why they matter.

This week, we dove into “introspective failure prediction,” using ML to identify dangerous moles, and spotting cows from space.

Who’s funding privacy tech?

Image Credits: Gearstd (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

With strict privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA already listing big-ticket penalties — and a growing number of countries following suit — businesses have little option but to comply.

It’s not just bigger, established businesses offering privacy and compliance tech; brand-new startups are filling in the gaps in this emerging and growing space.

Privacy isn’t dead, as many would have you believe. New regulations, stricter cross-border data transfer rules and increasing calls for data sovereignty have helped the privacy startup space grow thanks to an uptick in investor support.

This is how we got here, and where investors are spending.

A cooling trend in public markets makes UiPath’s down-round IPO a win for the company

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

UiPath is not worth $36 billion, as we might have expected, but at a figure below $30 billion.

At $29.1 billion, UiPath has a roughly 35x run-rate multiple. That just about ties it for eighth-best overall. Among all public cloud companies. That means that UiPath is insanely valuable, just not that insanely valuable.

So what went wrong with the company’s final private round? The Exchange’s hunch is that UiPath’s final private investors expected the market to stay as hot as it once was, but it has cooled since the first two months of the year. So, instead of UiPath coming to the market in the expected climate, the company instead had to price where it did because the weather predicted by its final private price had already chilled.

Those investors gambled, in other words, hoping that a last-minute, pre-IPO round could snag them a rapid return on a company going public in a hot market. That didn’t work out.

And how bad is that? Not very! UiPath’s IPO is more a meeting of private-market exuberance and modestly more conservative public markets. It’s nothing to cry about.

4 ways martech will shift in 2021

Image Credits: d3sign (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The second half of 2021 will bring incredible growth, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time.

Here’s how marketing in tech will shift — and what you need to know to reach more customers and accelerate growth this year.

First and foremost, differentiation is going to be imperative. It’s already hard enough to stand out and get noticed, and it’s about to get much more difficult as new companies emerge and investments and budgets balloon in the latter half of the year.

Additionally, tech companies need to be mindful not to ignore the most important part of the ecosystem: people. Technology will only take you so far, and it’s not going to be enough to survive the competition.

Tactically, the most successful tech companies will embrace video and experimentation in their marketing — two components that will catapult them ahead of the competition.

Ignoring these predictions, backed by empirical evidence, will be detrimental and devastating. Fasten your seatbelts: 2021 is going to be a turbocharged year of growth opportunities for marketing in tech.

Dear Sophie: How can I get my startup off the ground and visit the US?

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophie,

I’m a female entrepreneur who created my first startup a few months ago.

Once my startup gets off the ground — and as COVID-19 gets under control — I’d like to visit the United States to test the market and meet with investors. Which visas would allow me to do that?

—Noteworthy in Nairobi

As UiPath closes above its final private valuation, CFO Ashim Gupta discusses his company’s path to market

Despite a somewhat circuitous route, UiPath closed its first day as a public company worth more than it was in its Series F round — when it sold 12,043,202 shares at $62.27576 apiece, per SEC filings. More simply, UiPath closed on Wednesday worth more per-share than it was in February.

How you might value the company, whether you prefer a simple or fully diluted share count, is somewhat immaterial at this juncture. UiPath had a good day.

TechCrunch spoke with UiPath CFO Ashim Gupta, curious about the company’s choice of a traditional IPO, its general avoidance of adjusted metrics in its SEC filings and the IPO market’s current temperature.

How are VCs handling diligence in a world where deals open and close in days, not months?

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

The global venture capital market had a cracking start to the year. Coming off a 2020 high, VC totals in the United States, in Europe, and among competitive verticals like insurtech and AI are on pace to set new records in 2021.

The rapid-fire deal-making and trend of larger venture checks at higher valuations that The Exchange has tracked for some time require private-market investors to make decisions faster than ever. For venture capitalists, the timeline for reaching conviction around a startup’s thesis and executing due diligence has become compressed.

Some venture capitalists are turning to data to move more quickly. Some are spending more time preparing to be vetted themselves. And some investors are simply doing the work beforehand.

We were tipped off to the concept of pre-diligence during the reporting process for a look into recent fundraising trends in the AI/ML space. Sapphire investor Jai Das, when asked about how he was handling a competitive and swiftly moving market for AI startup investments, said that “most firms are completing their due diligence way before the financing actually happens.”

How does that work in practice?

Customer care as a service: Outsourcing can help your startup wow clients 24/7

Image Credits: MartinvBarraud (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Your clients might not demand 24/7 customer service yet, but they’re certainly hoping for it.

But how can a startup with a lean staff provide round-the-clock customer care? There are several options available, but more than ever, outsourcing is one of them.

When should your startup consider outsourcing its customer care? And what should you look for in a provider?

Here are some insights on what customer care as a service (CCaaS) can do for you, and how fast-growing startups have been leveraging this new class of partners to boost customer satisfaction.

5 emerging use cases for productivity infrastructure in 2021

Image Credits: Erik Isakson / Getty Images

Productivity infrastructure is on the rise and will continue to be front and center as companies evaluate what their future of work entails and how to maintain productivity, rapid software development and innovation with distributed teams.

Understanding the benefits, use cases and steps to consider can propel organizations into the next phase of digital transformation.

To sell or not to sell: Lessons from a bootstrapped CEO

Image Credits: Klaus Vedfelt (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The clock begins ticking on a startup the day the doors open. Regardless of a young company’s struggles or success, sooner or later the question of when, how or whether to sell the enterprise presents itself. It’s possibly the biggest question an entrepreneur will face.

For founders who self-funded (bootstrapped) their startup, a boardroom full of additional factors comes into play. Some are the same as for investor-funded firms, but many are unique.

After 18 years of bootstrapping a BI software firm into a business that now serves 28,000 companies and 3 million users in 75 countries, here’s what I’ve learned about myself, my company, about entrepreneurship and about when to grab for that brass ring.

Put happiness at the center of the decision, and let your intuition — the instincts that made you the person you are today — be your guide.