Are we witnessing a major VC pullback? Is it temporary? What does that mean for startups? Certainly the topic du jour in startup circles.Here's what I'm seeing.IS THE PULLBACK REAL? Yes. The market is a bit all over the place, not everyone fully agrees on what's happening, and … | Continue reading
Full resolution version of the landscape image hereIt’s been a hot, hot year in the world of data, machine learning and AI. Just when you thought it couldn’t grow any more explosively, the data/AI landscape just did: rapid pace of company creation, exciting new product and projec … | Continue reading
Today, we are previewing a new public market index - the MAD (for machine learning, AI and data) index.Readers of this blog know that we have been tracking the data ecosystem since 2012, through annual landscapes (see the 2020 Data & AI Landscape).Over the last few years, a funny … | Continue reading
Perhaps this is slightly strange for an early stage venture VC, but I'm fascinated by entrepreneurs who bootstrap their tech startup and build them into very large, industry-leading companies. The odds of building a massive company are low enough for the lucky few that manage t … | Continue reading
In a year like no other in recent memory, the data ecosystem is showing not just remarkable resilience but exciting vibrancy.When COVID hit the world a few months ago, an extended period of gloom seemed all but inevitable. Yet, as per Satya Nadella, “two years of digital transf … | Continue reading
The upcoming nCino IPO is an interesting story, and a good reminder that strong cloud/SaaS companies can be built outside of the usual Silicon Valley or NYC venture path (even with VCs on board)(As a side note: we often do those S-1 summaries internally to keep tabs on the softwa … | Continue reading
While it’s certainly possible to build a tech giant solely in Europe, for most European startups, the path to building a global, category-dominating company most often involves building a strong presence in the US.As a result, sooner rather than later, European startups start th … | Continue reading
Ben Horowitz resoundingly falls in the category of "needing no introduction": a highly successful entrepreneur who navigated a perilous situation with his business (Loudcloud, which became Opsware) to a $1.6B acquisition by HP, he's also the founder of premier Silicon Valley vent … | Continue reading
No longer. But, also, kinda, yes... It’s complicated. When people talk about “fundraising seasons”, they mean that there are certain times of the calendar year when you should be running your fundraising process. And conversely, there are times of the year when you shouldn’t, … | Continue reading
Fundraising can feel like an awful lot of pushing. You push to get an introduction to investors, you push to get them to commit to a meeting, you push to convince them, you push to get them to issue a term sheet. Push, push, push. Historically, and for most people still, “pus … | Continue reading
It has been another intense year in the world of data, full of excitement but also complexity. As more of the world gets online, the “datafication” of everything continues to accelerate. This mega-trend keeps gathering steam, powered by the intersection of separate advances in i … | Continue reading
At the kind invitation of Rob May and the Botchain team, I had the opportunity recently to keynote Brains and Chains, an interesting conference in New York exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain.This is both an exciting and challenging topic, and th … | Continue reading
It’s been an exciting, but complex year in the data world. Just as last year, the data tech ecosystem has continued to “fire on all cylinders”. If nothing else, data is probably even more front and center in 2018, in both business and personal conversations. Some of the reason … | Continue reading