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Enterprise SoftwareVenture Capital

boldstart in 2016, enterprise tech in 2017 year in review, outlook for enterprise tech in 2017

Posted on by Ed Sim

2016 was a banner year for boldstart, and we could not have achieved any of this without the amazing support of our boldstart family and the founders who have given us the opportunity to invest in and partner with them.

Before diving into the standard year-end predictions on the enterprise, I thought I would share some data on our firm and our founding teams from 2016:

  1. we welcomed 9 new enterprise founding teams to the portfolio including Workrails (started by venture partner Jeff Leventhal), BigID, Hypr, Init.ai, and 5 stealth companies
  2. Thematically our new investments include 5 infrastructure/dev platforms, 3 security, and 2 SaaS; 4 are using some form of AI or machine learning; geographically 4 are in NYC, 3 Bay Area, 1 Canada, 1 Chicago
  3. 8 of our portfolio companies raised follow on Series A rounds with > $70mm raised and an average size of almost $9mm — announced rounds include Kustomer, Robin, Emissary, Replicated and Front — geographically 2 in NYC, 3 Bay Area, 1 Canada, 1 LA, 1 Chicago
  4. 4 of our portfolio companies raised Series B financings with close to $70mm raised and an average financing size greater than $17mm — announced rounds include security scorecard, handshake, and wevr — geographically 2 in NYC, 1 LA, 1 Canada
  5. fund iii had an oversubscribed closing of $47mm

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Enterprise SoftwareEntrepreneurshipVenture Capital

The 4 Kinds of Series A Rounds in Enterprise roadmap for understanding how to go from seed to Series A

Posted on by Ed Sim

A wise VC once told me when dinner is served, you eat. When it comes to fundraising, I’ve learned that if someone is trying to invest now, you should strike while the iron is hot. Given that the headwinds are getting stronger, we at boldstart have been advising all of our portfolio companies to raise as much as they can as soon as they can and to make sure that every dollar spent has a real ROI.

Related to this, the question I am often asked is “what metrics do I need to hit” to get that next round. While super important, I always like to understand where the business is in its lifecycle before answering. Having spent the last week in several meetings with startups going from seed to A, I thought I would break down the various types of A rounds and the major ??? to success:

The 4 kinds of A rounds:

  1. No A round. Sucks. — self explanatory
  2. Vision A round, super hard — raise on the promise and pre-launch, on the vision, huge market with the killer team that can build and scale. sometimes easier to raise on the promise and the expectations of amazing success than after the launch
  3. Metrics A round, easier — killer metrics, repeatable growth and predictable sales model, used to be $80–$100k MRR/$1mm ARR, the bar is raising…
  4. Hybrid A, toughest — this is where you are between 2 and 3 and the hardest to get done.

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