Earlier this year we penned our thesis on the new cloud security stack. Software development consists of infrastructure, applications, people, & data.
Cloud security will ultimately be governed by these same four mega categories:
- Infrastructure
- Identity
- Applications
- Data
@defunkt
1) the Google VPs on the deal ended up at GitHub anyways and 2) there just wasn’t same level conviction just wasn’t there. I remember those convos and a reason I ended up leaving after the whole process.
Q1’23 cloud earnings are in and annualized net new revenue Y/Y is a good representation of where we are in this cycle - down 26% Y/Y and expected to continue to decrease to ~30-35% in Q2’23.
- AWS: Net new down 41% Y/Y
- Azure: Net new down 14% Y/Y
- Google Cloud: Net new down 8%
Our thoughts on the
@databricks
&
@Snowflake
. They both made it abundantly clear that data has gravity. And, despite the size, sophistication, or abstraction that off-the-shelf, third party models offer, enterprises want the ability to train, fine-tune, and run models directly on
It's a big day for the Battery team! We are thrilled to share that
@DanelDayan
and Max-Julian Kaye have been promoted to principal.
In addition, Becca Jones has been promoted to vice president and
@JackMattei
, Isabel von Stauffenberg and Katie Solarz promoted to associate.
.
@Battery
wanted credit for my nice charts so we started a blog. We’ll write about trends across the cloud software market + practical advice for founders. The best convos happen in our team meetings & we hope to use this forum to share these learnings.
The Condensing the Cloud team — including
@NeerajVC
,
@Dthakker02
,
@BrandonGleklen
,
@DanelDayan
and more from our team — will post regularly on broader cloud trends, the path ahead for cloud-business practitioners, market commentary, advice to founders and individual perspectives.
Thankful and so lucky for the chance to work alongside such incredible partners, founders, and teams every day!
Hopefully one day my own firm will also recognize me, but until then back to work! 😀
We're thrilled to share that Principal
@DanelDayan
was named to the 2023
@BusinessInsider
list of the Rising Stars of Venture Capital!
See the full list and read Danel's profile here:
Cloud giants all mentioned that optimizations are stabilizing and new workloads are picking back up again. As headwinds subside, AI is proving it can catalyze the next phase of growth.
Microsoft is the early frontrunner in capturing AI workloads. Azure AI ended Q4 CY23 with
1/ We published our 2nd Cloud Software Spending Report today. The backdrop is the recent SVB events have shown that fed policies have implications that go beyond the tech industry. We are only beginning to see the unraveling of the era of excess.
Capital covered up a lot of inefficiencies the last 2 years and the last 8 months it feels like every conversation has been about refocusing GTM.
We codified our learnings in our
#OpenCloud
report. Highlighting 3 in particular here.
1) PLG is not a panacea. It's one strategy.
A bit late to the earnings commentary but, regardless, sharing our analysis on Cloud Giants earnings. Was hoping we would get more clarity on the state of cloud spending, budgets, recovery, but instead we got essentially more of the same. (1/n)
Three under discussed data points on $MSFT.
1) >200 customers already using OpenAI on Azure.
2) Azure ML rev has increased >100% for the last 5 qrts.
3) MSFT security is benefitting from vendor consolidation. It's now a $20B biz making it one of the largest security companies.
2-days until
@battery
#OpenCloud
& with last week's cloud earnings there is a lot to unpack.
AWS: $82B run rate, +28% growth, 26% op. margins
Azure: $52B run rate, +42% growth, 44% op. margins
Google Cloud: $28B run rate, +38% growth, (10%) op. margins
@OnlyCFO
The other takeaway imo from making this slide is that the $1-2b val range is actually no man's land in the public markets. You gotta show a path to $3b EV with scale + predicability + story. It is just not enough to be a "unicorn" anymore.
Just published our Cloud Software Spending Survey where we asked 100 CXOs (CTO, CDO, CPO, CISO) about how they are thinking about budgets in this environment, where they are allocating budget, and how they are planning for 2023 and beyond.
Enterprise technology budgets are more resilient than one might expect, according to new findings from our State of Cloud Software Spending report – in fact, the majority of CXO respondents expect to increase their total technology budget for 2022.
Cloud earnings showed we’re not out of the woods yet but demand & optimizations have stabilized; new “AI” workloads are driving incremental growth.
Plug:
@BatteryVentures
#OpenCloud
conference is in 2 weeks w/ 150+ with founders and CEOs where we'll talk about this + more.
I helped acquire DORA while at Google and was a big internal advocate for getting the deal done because of what
@nicolefv
would bring to Google. Excited to see her join
@shankuniyogi
and the rest of the
@github
team. More power to developers!!!
Y’all, I am super excited to announce that I will be joining GitHub as VP of Research & Strategy. My first day will be March 30, after I take a short break to enjoy some naps, Diet Coke, and ice cream. You can read more about it here:
This is such a great lens into the personal journey of VC and how that manifests into investments, relationships, anti patterns of experience, etc. 10/10
@loganbartlett
.
Ep 40:
- a conversation w
@benchmark
’s
@peterfenton
about his path into venture, mentors, investing in what can go right, what makes great founders & the current market
- plus Rahul Ligma &
@corporayshid
has a podcast
Apple:
YT:
Having a multi-product story and multiple next acts is such an important part of being a public co. This is $DDOG. Infra monitoring in '12, APM in '17, & +7 products since. 25% of customers use 4+ and "hundreds" use 6+.
$CRM & $NOW mastered this. $TWLO & $CRWD are catching up.
I've been obsessed with Robot Operating System (ROS), the open source backbone to many robotics applications we interact with. As the robotics industry modernizes, we are excited to support
@eliothorowitz
and
@Viam
in rebuilding this underlying platform!
PS. They are hiring!
There is $600B shifting from on-prem to cloud and this is condensing value creation cycles. Take $SPLK, $MDB, $TLND; both with on-prem + cloud products. On-prem took 10 yrs to get to $100M ARR. Their cloud products only took 3!! More to come at
@BatteryVentures
#OpenCloud
summit.
2/ Last week marked the end of CY22 earnings w/ GitLab reporting Q4 earnings. Cloud software companies saw growth decelerate by 26% on average in 2022, compared to just 9% the year before. The convergence to cloud provider growth %s and absolute decel are what spooked us most.
@kelseyhightower
Apps inspire infrastructure, then that infrastructure enables new apps. These aren't distinct phases but iterative processes.
I feel like static sites -> server side abstraction/functions infra is a recent example.
@usv
talks about this in a great post.
$CSCO buys Valtix
$HPE buys Axis
M&A rumors on Noname Security
1) Never dismiss network sec. You either tap into cloud network traffic, analyze mirrored traffic, or ultimately support an agent analyzing packets. This is such a large part of sec spend, directly and indirectly.
You're in their DMs, we're in their community channels. We're not the same. My framework for understanding community-led growth and how to tie community to GTM. Selling bottom-ups means selling org-in and communities and can come pre or post PMF.
@chetanp
One incredible stat from their recent earning release is:
- 10 million active cloud Jira and Confluence users
- Long term goal of >100 million active cloud users
We are significantly underestimating the number of developers there are and there will be!
@KateClarkTweets
How early we are in terms of cloud adoption and everything that is still unlocking in ML, Security, Dev Tooling, etc
Here are 44 slides that share out thoughts on why we're still excited (and what that means for founders) despite the market environment.
"Hi! Apologies for the last minute request but any chance we can push YC demo day to the same day next week? Something came up and I haven't slept in 3 days. Appreciate the flexibility. Thanks!"
- VC
We've had a thesis on OpenCloud — open source and cloud-native tech working with new cloud distribution models. Excited to see
@SumoLogic
fit right in & join our growing family of companies going after this opportunity. Congrats
@Dthakker02
and the team!
We’re one week away from our annual
#OpenCloud
event & earning season is upon us. We’ll be watching how software companies index themselves to the cloud. The median growth for a cloud biz is 80% vs. non-cloud of 30%. That's an extra 50% of growth by indexing to the cloud!
16 public software companies were trading at >25x EV/Rev last year. *0 trade at those levels today.*
The market went from pricing expectations to fundamentals.
Great report from
@BrandonGleklen
and the
@BatteryVentures
team!
Since 2017, we've released an annual report covering the cloud trends we're studying at
@BatteryVentures
.
We sat down to write this year’s version . . . and then kept re-writing it.
So we're switching things up!
🧵👇
@matt_slotnick
I remember at Google when
@pauljudge
walked in to pitch Luma Wifi and had jailbroken a Google Wifi router and installed their firmware to show how easy an integration would work. The collective "how'd you have our system" and amazement was legendary.
Many functions of software are a series of funnels you have to progress through: Sales, CS, Eng, etc. Most have quantifiable metrics.
There isn't much around your community if you're an
#opensource
or bottoms-up Co. Some ideas we'll talk about at
@BatteryVentures
#OpenCloud
.
“We believe the current enterprise-security model is unsustainable given the move to cloud-native practices.” Read this great article by
@Dthakker02
in
@Forbes
on why security concerns need to be addressed early in the software-development cycle:
AWS showed us how to run apps in the cloud.
Netflix showed us how to build apps for the cloud.
@orkesio
is showing us how to orchestrate workflows across the cloud.
Excited for what this team is building. Congrats
@jeugeorge
& team. They are hiring .
Orkes has officially launched! We’ve raised $9.3M in funding to support the growing Netflix Conductor OSS community and bring the power of Conductor to even more enterprises . Read more in this great story from
@ingridlunden
@techcrunch
on the news:
A lot of the reaction to the earnings of the big 3 cloud providers is due to this commentary in the earnings calls.
This isn’t necessarily new commentary either, it’s a reiteration of what we heard last quarter as well that is persisting.
What actually runs on containers that support many cloud-native apps today?
1. Load balancers
2. Databases and data stores
3. Streaming and messaging brokers
4. CI/CD pipelines
5. Secrets mgmt.
@buccocapital
@jaminball
@edsim
We published it just last week and it’s already out of date! Separately, 7x the number of public cos at $5b need to make their way into publics or M&A with an average post-$ $3B. Obviously not all sitting on those last reported marks but it’s still going to get messy.
It’s a great day at LinearB! We’re announcing our $50mil 🤯 Series B, led by
@tribecap
with
@83NorthVC
,
@BatteryVentures
and
@SalesforceVC
🥂 🥳
With this round, our total funding is $71M, and we’re incredibly thankful for all of our investors.
Did my very first podcast w/
@the_prion
and
@software_daily
on what it was like to run M&A at
#Google
and why large tech companies spawn innovation. Hint bc solving problems at their scale requires new solutions. If you're bored, give it a listen. 🙏
#cloudnative
#cloudcomputing
@jasoncwarner
Apache Pinot for user-facing real-time analytics.
Gazette for data access across batch and streaming.
Using llambda or functions for stateful applications.
Anything security related bc at this point it's a big data problem... moving sec to data science.
When you’re a “cloud” company growing 112% Y/Y, adding $10M a quarter in net new cloud revenue, with $664M of contractually committed revenue up 72% Y/Y, raising guidance on the strength of cloud bookings, yet are ONLY 38% cloud. $CFLT
Contrary Research tells the stories of the world’s most interesting private tech companies.
Today we’re launching Contrary Research Radio, hosted by Kyle Harrison (
@kwharrison13
), to dive deeper.
Our first guest is Aidan Gomez (
@aidangomezzz
), CEO of Cohere.
Spotify:
1/What makes an awesome cloud product?
We spent time inside the products of
@getpostman
,
@confluentinc
, and others in our portfolio to find out.
There are 8 design principles that embody why the cloud is so important and the impact it can have on user experience.
We're extremely excited to announce that longtime
#tech
operator &
#gotomarket
specialist
@renebonvanie
is joining us as an exec in residence to help our security & infrastructure companies scale. Here’s why we think he’ll be a great addition to the team.
The secret of an API biz is that u end up controlling the data path. At some scale it makes sense to build vertically vs expand horizontal w/ more API use cases.
$TWLO has marketing automation + customer service. Now tie customer identity together under one data model w/ Segment
Scoop: Twilio has agreed to acquire fellow cloud company Segment for $3.2 billion, sources tell
@forbes
. The startup was last valued at $1.5 billion in 2019.
@InvestiAnalyst
Increased competition and willingness to spend are low, categorically. GitLab and DDOG has done a good job expansion product portfolio but historically ARPUs are pretty low compared to rest of enterprise software.
Google has entered into an agreement to acquire
@Mandiant
, a leader in dynamic cyber defense and response. We look forward to welcoming the team to Google Cloud →
With cyberwarfare in the news yet again, security remains top of mind for enterprises in 2022.
Last year was historic on all accounts:
- $25B in cyber funding (+130% y/y)
- 6 highest-valued security startups are now worth $50B combined.
- Growing list of cyberattacks like Log4J
With cyberwarfare in the news yet again, security continues to be an investment area that should remain top-of-mind for enterprises.
@DanelDayan
&
@renebonvanie
discuss 5 themes that we hope will spark a dialogue with founders, investors, and operators.
Rockstar team with
@brian_singer
,
@marcinkurc
,
@KitMerker
and the rest aside, what I find interesting of this category is that SLAs and the supporting SLOs are one of, if not, the only engineering metrics written into customer contracts and tied to pricing. Excited for
@nobl9inc
!
Software Snack Bites
#22
: State of OpenCloud Report Deep Dive
- 1st post of 2022 covering some personal news 🤣
- Diving into my favorite annual report on OSS and infra software from
@BatteryVentures
- GTM models, software trends, and of course the ☁️
After two amazing years building the Bridgecrew team, platform, and open-source community, we’re thrilled to continue our journey with Palo Alto Networks! 💜
Read more about the proposed acquisition in our blog by Bridgecrew co-founder & CEO
@IdanTendler
.
Every big tech co has a CorpDev person refreshing this slide (cc 2016 when the SW market plunged). Bet $AYX, $TEAM, $BOX, $DDOG, $DBX, $ESTC, $RNG, $ZEN, etc are on a few lists. Who else?
Also, Salesforce may have been early to use
@Glassdoor
for M&A. Google followed after this.
For AI Cos going forward we'll need to understand what is committed burn vs variable (i.e., what % of burn is pre-committed dollars going straight to inference and training benefiting either the cloud providers or Nvidia)
Committed ARR -> Adjusted EBITDA -> Committed Burn.
Access to compute resources—at the lowest total cost—has become a determining factor for the success of AI companies.
@appenz
gives his framework for breaking down the cost factors, and thinking about the current landscape.
@akhenosiris
But still clears pref stack so late stage gets 1x and early gets 3-4x. Seeing a lot of these happen. No different than Laminar / Rubrik or Axis / HP
In '18, Github bet on $MSFT Azure. They sold for $7.5B in an all stock deal. Today that is worth ~$15B (assuming all things equal).
Github went from 28M devs to 40M+. All research services claim ~20M devs worldwide. Github is a better proxy.
Dev create value.
#opencloud2020
Not all open source communities are created equally. Dev personas in your community can be:
- Users -> asks questions on using product
- Contributors -> answers questions on using product
- Maintainers -> creating code
Should we be spending more time understanding these nuances?
Yet, the private markets and public markets have never been so divided. Highly valued software unicorns have a high bar to meet to transition to successful public companies and we are seeing how this is playing out in real time.
More to come!
#OpenCloud
Excited to continue to support
@orkesio
and partner with
@oneabhishek
and
@NexusVP
! Orkes is becoming the developer platform managing durable workflows and state for distributed and emerging AI applications.
Orkes has raised $20M in Series A funding. Since our launch in 2022, we have seen amazing growth and are grateful for all who have believed in our platform so far. Read more about about our announcement here:
8 (cont.)/ - IDPs keep coming up among platform teams; my hunch is that env. as a service companies fill this gap. Familiar dev exp. + control plane for DevOps teams on the backend to integrate w/ Terraform. cc
@Railway
,
@_localstack
,
@shipyardbuild
,
@DevZeroHQ
Another interesting observations in the sector deep dives is where tools sit from a priority vs a budget perspective. Ex. observability is a top 10 security budget item but primarily used by developers. We’ll likely see more categories where users and buyers aren’t the same!
In a data-driven world, enterprises want to maintain control of their proprietary data, and vector databases serve as a critical component to enable better model creation with proprietary use case/domain-specific data.
Lot's of small (relative)/unannounced M&A deals recently. AMZN/Eero. MS/Solium. CARB/Webroot. MSFT/BrightBytes. CRM/Griddable, etc..
@FT
said it best "Small deals can be beautiful." Low risk for Big Co with outsized return potential. Just recall the $133M Priceline/Bookings deal.
All the tech companies are banks now.
- Apple Credit Card
- Google Checking
- Facebook Pay
- Square
- Toast Capital
Now just waiting for Salesforce to offer invoice financing. $BB+ industry....
#enterprise
🙄
@jaminball
Between the NOW and DDOG results the end-to-end consolidation story seems to be playing out at the expense of best-of-breed / point solutions.
Thoughts on Logo Velocity
As the economic environment changed, the 1st thing we noticed was a slowdown in New Logo added / qtr. among companies. Companies were still meeting ARR projections but the composition of that ARR was meaningfully different.
3) Everyone has a different demand gen funnel and no one knows what are the right things to measure.
So we
@BatteryVentures
did it for you. Product-led converts PQLs at 3x higher due to buyer intent and
interaction and amplifies traditional demand gen metrics when combined.
@chadbyers
VC doesn't teach you how and when to sell. It just assumes natural exit events - IPO, Sale, Shutdown. Been one of the harder learnings over the last year.
Atlassian is an execution machine:
$412M rev (+33% y/y)
Profitable w/ 34% FCF margins
Beat estimates 17/17 past qtrs
6K net new customers; 171K total
March was strongest month of new cloud cust. adds
60% growth in migrations from server to cloud
Their cloud transition is real
This is what my hometown (Manila, Philippines) currently looks like. It's one of the most populated cities in the world with a population of 100M+. Lockdown is extreme & the president has threatened to shoot citizens who defy
#coronavirus
lockdown. Feeling lucky today to be in SF
@chiraag_deora
In 2015, I said I'd invest part of my first years banking bonus. I opened up a lending club account instead of coinbase. Today I finally completely exited from my sub sub sub prime loans on lending club and realized a 5% IRR over the last 5 years.
@jaminball
NTM growth rates across the SaaS universe today are in the same band of 20%+/-; strong growth durability over a long period of time but unclear if you can underwrite a reacceleration story.