Weekly Wrap #1: Cloud, COVID and...
Welcome to the first edition of our weekly wrap, where we share our favourite insights from the technology and startup world.
There’s a lot of content and information flowing at the moment. So we’re cutting through the noise to bring you the best startup and technology insights from around the world. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to hear about, please let us know!
Feel free to forward onto your colleagues and friends.
State of the Cloud in 2020
Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) is a VC that is 100+ years old with $5B+ under management. They’ve been investing in SaaS since day dot, with investments in Spotify, LinkedIn, Box, Intercom. The list goes on.
Every year BVP produce a ‘State of the Cloud’ report. For 2020’s edition they distill twenty years of data on the private and public cloud market trends and share predictions that explain emerging cloud categories. A great weekend read.
It’s a pretty long report, so here’s the cut down version (TL;DR):
Cloud is growing faster than even BVP predicted. In 2008, the top 5 public cloud companies (Salesforce, Netsuite, Concur, Blackbaud, and Dealertrack), were worth US$13.9 billion. Just over a decade later, the market cap of the top five public cloud companies (Shopify, Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow, and PayPal) is around US$580 billion!
The future of work is remote. For many of us in the tech world, that’s nothing new. As we’ve written previously, this macro trend has been in the works for years as companies recognise the competitive advantage that remote work offers.
SaaS innovation has no boundaries and, contrary to popular opinion, there’s no monopoly by Silicon Valley. Australia, the UK, Israel and many other countries are also leading the way.
If you’re operating in a large, mature B2B industry, you’re likely next in line for disruption. The question isn’t how to avoid disruption, but how to plan and execute strategies to respond to it (let’s chat).
In a similar vein to #4 - expect to see almost every industry reinvented by an API.
COVID-19 is continuing to dominate our airwaves at the moment. So we present, COVID and…
COVID and… Tech Strategy
We’ve been speaking to a lot of CEO/CIO/CTOs recently about COVID impact on their technology strategies. In March, the world went into shock. In April, companies went into survival mode, quickly rolling out tech to support WFH and adapted business models - compressing into weeks what would have otherwise been 10 years of “digital” transformation.
Now in May, many are battling with this question:
How do you prioritise when everything seems urgent?
Aaron Levi (CEO at Box) has been tweeting about this too - an interesting thread of responses follows this tweet.
COVID and… Sales and Marketing Strategy
Hubspot are keeping a close eye on the impact of COVID-19 on sales and marketing. It might be time to refresh your sales and marketing strategy based on Hubspot’s analysis (based on March data):
New deals dropped around the world.
Buyers are still looking to engage, but purchasing and interaction has shifted online, with website traffic and customer-initiated conversations continuing to increase.
The two biggest marketing opportunities: focussing on education, not promotion; and consider whether to incorporate chat/conversational marketing into your strategy.
We are intrigued to see what the April data shows… stay tuned.
COVID and… Opportunity
In a world of negative news, we really enjoyed this motivational post from Niki Scevak, Partner at Blackbird (one Australia’s biggest VCs). Although it was written for startup founders, we think Niki’s post is a worthwhile read for all business leaders.
A stand out excerpt:
Now is also your greatest opportunity to change course, to confront your uncomfortable truths, and to seize a once in an economic cycle’s buffet of opportunities.
COVID and… Keeping Kids Busy
Going crazy trying to keep the kids entertained? Here’s a compilation of hundreds of age appropriate activities to engage your kids while stuck at home.
That’s a wrap!
We hope you enjoyed it. Please send us any feedback, we’d love to know what you think.
The team at Ignition Lane