Enterprise Weekly #472: Stormy Cloud Earnings, Scaling Product & Fundraising, and More
Work-Bench is an enterprise software VC firm leading Seed rounds. If you are or know anyone thinking about founding an enterprise software startup — we’d love to meet! Please reach out to chat. 📩
It’s been a brutal week for cloud earnings. Among the 10 largest cloud software providers by ARR, eight have experienced their stocks sell off by an average of 9% the day after their latest reports. Most notably, Salesforce announced a revenue increase of a record low 11%, missing analyst expectations for the first time since 2006.
While these companies have attributed their slower growth to the usual culprits – budget scrutiny, longer deal cycles, deal compression, and slowing projects – many are skeptical of whether their AI strategies will move the needle.
At the same time, it’s no secret that investors are pumping their money into the AI giants - Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet. These four companies generated more market value this month than the entire S&P 500, with Nvidia representing over 50% of this total. Last week, Nvidia beat earnings expectations with a 427% surge in demand for its data center category. However, the jury is still out on whether this rapid growth and AI’s current hype is sustainable.
Lastly, for anyone who missed our recent NY Enterprise Tech Meetups, check them out online:
Scaling Product from 0 to 1 with Kevin Wang, CPO of Braze where he talks about navigating early-PMF waters and where your team should focus post-PMF.
The VC Perspective on the Voyage Across Stages with Andreessen Horowitz, Lux Capital and Work-Bench on how to overcome the challenges of fundraising, growth, and AI-hype in today’s market. Shoutout to
for featuring it in their newsletter today!
🖥️ Join our most tactical (virtual) Enterprise Masterclasses:
Tuesday, June 18: Top Do's and Don'ts of Pricing Product at Seed with repeat founder and GTM advisor Rob Bailey
Wednesday, June 26: 10 Quick Wins to Grow Pipeline with OpenView’s Kyle Poyar
Wednesday, July 24: 5 Battle-Tested Leadership Tactics of Highly Successful Founders with David Politis, Founder of BetterCloud
📚 Read more news:
Mashable: Ticketmaster Hacked. Breach Affects More than Half a Billion Users
TechCrunch: Firefly forges on after co-founder murdered by Hamas
The Verge: Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $6B to Fund Its Race Against ChatGPT
The Verge: Google’s Potential Massive Leak of Its Search Algorithm Documentation
📚 Read more (th)reads:
Company: Spring Health
Role: Strategic Account Manager
Technology: Mental Healthcare
Funding: $371M from Work-Bench, Northzone, Rethink, Kinnevik, Tiger Global
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
HoundDog.ai raises $3.1M led by E14 Fund, Mozilla Ventures, and Ex/ante
Risk / Security • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Founders: Amjad Afanah, Joohwan Oh, Sudipta Mukherjee
Zendata raises $2M led by PayPal Ventures, Geek Ventures, and Others
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Ducky raises $2.7M led by Penny Jar Capital
Sales / Marketing • Pre-Seed • Nashville, TN
Kintsugi raises $6M led by Link Ventures
Sales / Marketing • Series A • San Francisco, CA
StructureFlow raises $6M led by Fintop Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • London, UK
Rows raises $8.7M led by Indico Capital Partners
Future of Work • Venture • Berlin, Germany
GaiaNet raises $10M led by Lex Sokolin, Brian Johnson and Others
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Spectrum Life raises $18.5M led by Act Venture Capital
HR Tech • Series B • Dublin, Ireland
Maven AGI raises $20M led by M13
Future of Work • Series A • Boston, MA
Supervizor raises $22M led by Orange Ventures
Future of Work • Venture • Paris, France
Firefly raises $23M led by Vertex
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series A • Tel Aviv, Israel
Transcend raises $40M led by StepStone Group
Risk / Security • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Hg acquires AuditBoard for ~$3B
Risk / Security • Acquisition • Los Angeles, CA
Harness acquires Split Software for an Undisclosed Amount
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Acquisition • Redwood City, CA