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Image Credits: Matejmo / Getty Images
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Earlier this week, Zack Whittaker polled a dozen top cybersecurity investors about where they are (and are not) putting their time and energy these days.
In a follow-up, he asked them how COVID-19 has transformed the investment landscape now that remote work is booming, companies are speeding up their shift to the cloud and threat vectors have expanded:
- Ariel Tseitlin, Scale Venture Partners
- Shardul Shah, Index Ventures
- Theresia Gouw and Mark Kraynak, Acrew Capital
- Niloofar Razi Howe, Energy Impact Partners
- Matt Bigge, Crosslink Capital
- Sarah Guo, Greylock Partners
- Deepak Jeevankumar, Dell Technologies Capital
- Umesh Padval, Thomvest Ventures
- Saam Motamedi, Greylock Partners
- Alex Doll, Ten Eleven Ventures
- Dharmesh Thakker, Battery Ventures
Their answers address topics ranging from increased IT budgets to fake coronavirus tests, but as one VC noted, “many of these trends were already underway, but COVID-19 is an accelerant.”
Best wishes for a a safe, relaxing weekend.
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist
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Image Credits: Thomas Winz / Getty Images
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In today’s column, Senior Editor Alex Wilhelm turns to yesterday’s ZoomInfo IPO to see what it signals for other SaaS players that are looking to go public.
“Whether or not you feel that this SaaS player was worth the revenue multiple its original, $8 billion valuation dictated — let alone that same multiple times 1.6x — the message from the offering was clear: the IPO window is open,” he writes.
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Every startup that aspires to go public must first create a bulletproof roadshow deck that communicates the value of their product, vision and team, but most of us are not great storytellers.
Enterprise reporter Ron Miller spoke to Atlassian president Jay Simons to learn about the process the company’s co-founders used to develop their deck and why the process was so integral to their success.
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Image Credits: Karen Dias/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images
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In a companion post to Ron Miller’s pitchdeck teardown, Alex Wilhelm parsed “the document from a financial perspective.”
Alex focuses on three elements: “the company’s history of efficient growth, its customer loyalty and its intriguing cost structure.”
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Image Credits: Steven Puetzer / Getty Images
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Although they were sheltering in place, founders and VCs are still signing fundraising deals, and investor interest is at a two-year high, according to Russ Heddleston, co-founder and CEO of DocSend.
DocSend uses three metrics to uncover real-time fundraising trends and “track the supply and demand in the marketplace, as well as the quality of pitch deck interactions.”
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Image Credits: z_wei / Getty Images
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ZoomInfo, a company with “a somewhat complicated history,” is worth around $8 billion after its public offering, so Alex Wilhelm pored through its latest S-1A to better understand the company’s valuation and recent earnings results.
The fundamentals: “if you bought shares of ZoomInfo, you’re buying into a company that could pay for itself — if it didn’t carry so very much debt.”
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Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
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The pandemic has led many companies to accelerate digital transformations once they accepted that their employees could work from home without disrupting continuity. As a direct result, SaaS firms have the wind at their backs.
Ron Miller and Alex Wilhelm examined the big numbers coming out of several firms, including Zoom, CrowdStrike, Box, Salesforce and Okta to better understand the rapid growth — and the huge opportunities that still remain.
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Image Credits: DisobeyArt / Getty Images
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What are you willing to do in the name of growth? Would you sit in a tub full of Coca-Cola and drop in several pounds of Mentos? Would you prank-smash someone else’s iPhone?
High school sophomore Topper Guild started a TikTok account and took it from zero to more than ten million followers in five months with a series of stunts, jokes and cliffhanger videos that boosted him into the ranks of major influencers.
In one of the most unorthodox and interesting Extra Crunch stories I’ve ever edited, Adam Guild gives us a look inside his brother’s growth strategy.
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Image Credits: Catherine Ledner / Getty Images
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Investors were expecting major gains, and they got them: SaaS companies Zoom and CrowdStrike reported earnings this week fueled by strong revenue growth.
Alex Wilhelm unpacks the numbers for both companies to track their growth and uses their revenue multiples and valuations as a lens to peer into the minds of investors.
“If you are in a hurry, the short answer is that the risk-on move toward SaaS stocks doesn’t look like its about to abate. For those bullish on software companies, it’s a good week.”
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Image Credits: Humatics
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MIT spinout Humatics is working with New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority to install ultrawide band radio beacons to pinpoint the location of RFID tags.
For the last two years, they’ve been using this tech to track five miles of subway and identify the exact location of six trains, “down to the centimeter.”
Researchers believe microlocation robotics can facilitate physical distancing between humans, allow multiple trains to run on the same track, or allow let humans and robots work in close proximity.
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Image Credits: David Talukdar / Getty Images
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Although valuations are lower, two fintech investors say some early-stage B2B startups are uniquely well-positioned to ride out the current uncertainty.
“With that in mind, we have put together a COVID resilience test that startups can use as a north star to grow their business in this new world,” write TX Zhuo and Colton Pace of Fika Ventures.
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Image Credits: Nodar Chernishev/EyeEm / Getty Images
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Because corporate VCs “measure ROI based on the strength of the strategic partnership with their portfolio companies as well as the financial return,” founders need to approach these relationships from a different angle than other investors.
If you’re seeking a closer bond with your CVC, here are several factors that will sharpen your thinking.
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Image Credits: Weee!
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Larry Liu moved to the Bay Area from China to work with a microcontroller company, but when he realized he couldn’t find many of the same foods that were familiar from home, he founded an online market.
Five years later, Weee! has seen its revenue increase 700% year-over-year in the era of COVID-19; Rita Liao interviewed Liu about what he learned from WeChat and Pinduoduo about user acquisition and product strategy.
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