Enterprise Weekly 421: Revenge Startups, Amazon's Generative AI Play, and More
More than 330,000 people have lost their jobs at tech companies since early 2022, with about 168,000 job losses just this year (and more on the way), according to Layoffs.fyi. While this has certainly impacted the lives of many, we’re starting to see one silver lining – a surge in entrepreneurs. The timing is two-fold:
On one hand, a pool of highly trained tech workers now have the free time and oftentimes lofty severance packages to build and launch what’s being coined as a “revenge startup.” On the other hand, VC Seed investment is much harder to come by these days, dropping 53.1% in the US in Q1 YoY to $3.3B, according to PitchBook.
While some VCs have been quoted saying “the startups that drive exceptional returns have been thinking of their idea their entire lives,” in the enterprise world, we couldn’t disagree more. Many of these new “revenge startups'” are being built by former functional operators who had boots on the ground day-in and day-out and who understand the pain points and gaps within their tech stack firsthand.
If you’re thinking about founding an enterprise software company (or recently have) and want to join one our monthly Future Founders Dinners in NYC - sign up here or join one of our many other events below.
On the generative AI front, Amazon launched a service called Amazon Bedrock that allows AWS customers to host and customize foundation models directly on AWS. In a shareholder letter this week, Amazon’s CEO warned that cloud sales were in trouble, slowing 7% in Q4 YoY with more declines expected throughout 2023 as customers look to cut costs. So while competitors like Microsoft and Google have made headway and headlines integrating AI chatbots into consumer products (i.e. search engines), Amazon is taking a different approach by selling a model deployment platform directly to enterprise customers.
🖥️ Go to more events:
Meet Work-Bench Cybersecurity Investor Kelley Mak at RSA (April 24 - 26, in-person, SF)
Winning Pricing Strategies During a Downturn (April 25, virtual)
Sales Masterclass: A Formula For Pitching CIOs with 7x CIO Mark Settle (May 2, virtual)
How to Validate Your MVP (May 3, in-person, NYC)
📚 Read more news:
Business Insider: 44 of the Most Promising Generative AI Startups of 2023
Sierra Ventures: IT Leaders Give Mixed Signals on What Lies Ahead - 2023 CXO Survey
The Information: Cybersecurity Firm Zscaler Loses Coveted Spot in Gartner Ranking Due to ‘Sales Arrogance’
Company: Pace
Role: Customer Engineer
Technology: Product-Led Revenue Platform
Funding: $5M from Work-Bench and AlleyCorp
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Ampersand raises $4.7M led by Matrix Partners
Future of Work • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Founders: Ayan Barua, Lauren Long (CTO)
Spotted Zebra raises $1.8M led by Playfair Capital
Future of Work • Seed • London, UK
Patri raises $2.4M led by Kickstart Fund
Sales / Marketing • Seed • Salt Lake City, UT
DBeaver raises $6M led by Headline
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Wilmington, DE
Cerbos raises $7.5M led by Omers Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • London, UK
Rupert raises $8M led by Cortical Ventures and IA Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • New York, NY
Spendflo raises $11M led by Prosus Ventures and Accel
Future of Work • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Otterize raises $11.5M led by Index Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Remote
NetBox Labs raises $20M led by Flybridge Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series A • New York, NY
Elevate raises $28M led by Anthemis
HR Tech • Venture • Denver, CO
Cybersyn raises $62.9M led by Snowflake
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • New York, NY
Spring Health raises $71M led by Undisclosed Investors
Future of Work • Venture • New York, NY
🌟Work-Bench portfolio company
ID.me raises $132M led by Viking Global Investors
Risk / Security • Series D • Mclean, VA