Tag: cloud

Enterprise SoftwareInfrastructureSaaS

Why I love and fear AWS

Posted on by Ed Sim

The AWS launch of Amazon Connect (see techcrunch article) got me thinking about the current state of play in SaaS. Amazon Connect is a call center in a box, the same tech it uses in-house for their current platform. With that release, companies like Talkdesk and others have much to fear. While I see partnerships with companies like zendesk, salesforce and freshdesk to integrate voice with chat and email, I also firmly believe that it is just a matter of time before AWS continues to extend outward and deploy their own chat/email customer support system to go after their partners. Trust me, it will happen.

I fully acknowledge and love AWS for the opportunity to fund so many amazing founders who are fully leveraging the power of the cloud platform and services. What I also greatly fear is that Amazon and AWS have proven that they are amazing at taking markets that become hyper competitive and just blowing them up overnight with the lowest cost and good enough offering. AWS has also proven that it will continue to move upstream in the stack from the pure infrastructure layer to the application layer.

Here are a few examples:

  1. Amazon Quicksight (launched 10/15) –  fast, easy to use business analytics at 1/10 the cost of traditional BI Solutions
  2. Amazon Chime (launched 2/17) – frustration-free online meetings with exceptional audio and video quality – companies like gotomeeting (Citrix) made a smart move selling to LogMeIn
  3. Amazon Workdocs (1/15) – fully managed, secure enterprise storage and sharing service, users can comment on files, share, etc – box, dropbox watch out

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Enterprise SoftwareInfrastructure

Apps sell infrastructure

Posted on by Ed Sim

Pivotal just announced it did over $270mm of revenue in 2016 from Cloud Foundry helping large companies with digital transformation. That’s some nice growth from the $115mm the year earlier.

The initial Pivotal Cloud Foundry sales pitch was that it gave big companies a way to build new applications that run in a public cloud (rented space on Amazon (AMZN, +0.47%) Web Services, Google (GOOG, +0.34%) Cloud Platform or Microsoft (MSFT, +0.62%) Azure) or private cloud (flexible infrastructure that runs in a company’s own data center.

The need for faster, better software deployment resonated with older companies facing competition from smaller, newer rivals that already use cloud computing. You could argue, for example, that Hilton (HLT, +0.05%) and Hyatt (H, -0.47%) hotels should worry more about Airbnb (AIRBNB) than about each other.

This is yet another sign how large companies are embracing cloud technologies and microservices to be more agile. At the end of the day, it’s not about buying Cloud Foundry because of infrastructure savings, its the ability to quickly and scalably deploy new applications quicker to meet business needs. That’s the bet Pivotal made many years ago, and it’s paying off.

Remember if you are selling infrastructure – stop, sell apps to the heads of business who have a huge sense of urgency to get things done. Most of them also have pretty sizable budgets as well. The byproduct of all of this is saving money but that is not what moves the needle.

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Enterprise SoftwareVenture Capital

boldstart in 2016, enterprise tech in 2017 year in review, outlook for enterprise tech in 2017

Posted on by Ed Sim

2016 was a banner year for boldstart, and we could not have achieved any of this without the amazing support of our boldstart family and the founders who have given us the opportunity to invest in and partner with them.

Before diving into the standard year-end predictions on the enterprise, I thought I would share some data on our firm and our founding teams from 2016:

  1. we welcomed 9 new enterprise founding teams to the portfolio including Workrails (started by venture partner Jeff Leventhal), BigID, Hypr, Init.ai, and 5 stealth companies
  2. Thematically our new investments include 5 infrastructure/dev platforms, 3 security, and 2 SaaS; 4 are using some form of AI or machine learning; geographically 4 are in NYC, 3 Bay Area, 1 Canada, 1 Chicago
  3. 8 of our portfolio companies raised follow on Series A rounds with > $70mm raised and an average size of almost $9mm — announced rounds include Kustomer, Robin, Emissary, Replicated and Front — geographically 2 in NYC, 3 Bay Area, 1 Canada, 1 LA, 1 Chicago
  4. 4 of our portfolio companies raised Series B financings with close to $70mm raised and an average financing size greater than $17mm — announced rounds include security scorecard, handshake, and wevr — geographically 2 in NYC, 1 LA, 1 Canada
  5. fund iii had an oversubscribed closing of $47mm

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