Opinions and Thoughts on Venture Capital, Investing, and Startups
Enterprise IT Infrastructure has probably the most disciplined budgeting process and most rigorous procurement department. Not that they are always on target, but they have a very clear understanding of the different buckets, ROI, impact on operations, and necessary multi-vendor management. Enterprise IT infrastructure organizations know the percentage their enterprise wants to spend on IT … Continue reading Scaling First Revenue: IT Infrastructure.
One of my favorite analysts at 451 Research is Brenon Daly. One of his remarks at the recent RSA 2018 Analyst Breakfast caught everyone's attention: We see about 120 to 140 infosec transactions every year in our Tech M&A Database. There are about 2,000 infosec vendors we are tracking, and venture capital is adding more … Continue reading More Than A Decade of Supply for Infosec M&A Transactions
Talk about burying the lead: "The competitive strength of Tesla is not going to be the car; it's going to be the factory," Musk said. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/02/tesla-loses-another-675-million-in-q4-its-biggest-quarterly-loss-yet/ Car manufacturers have known that for years (though some seemed to have forgotten about it) If you ever toured the factory floor of BMW in Munich, you know how … Continue reading Production, not Product, as Competitive Strength
Short answer: Don't. Don't worry about your industry focus (yet), unless you are clearly a vertical solution for a very specific industry; unless you and your first sales team only have experience in selling into one specific industry and have no other contacts and you are determined to keep only this team for a while … Continue reading Scaling First Revenue: Industry Focus.
I'll start to spend my money calling everybody honey And I'll wind up singing the blues I'll spend my whole paycheck on some old wreck And brother I can name you a few Willie Nelson sings in I Gotta Get Drunk. Surely he must have meant Corporate Venture Capital groups, or "CVCs" for short. Different corporations … Continue reading Corporate Venture Capital Pitfalls.