VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2021

Looking ahead at 2021, with vaccines being rolled out (slowly) in the developed world, it feels like we have a grip on what the year ahead might look like – the new normal. Disclaimer: we have three portfolio companies in the consumer mobile space, still in stealth). This may also trickle down to Google and Amazon.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Audio Forecast Social Media 207

VC Cafe

MARCH 17, 2023

Generative AI is already being used in developer workflows. At GDC, the Games Developer Conference, in San Francisco next week, generative AI is sure to be one of the hot topics. In the meanwhile, AI is here not to replace game developers, but to be a helper, writer, tutor, debugger, sketch artist, etc. Will it work?

Generative AI 195

Generative AI Stealth IP San Francisco 195

BeyondVC

JANUARY 5, 2022

With COVID raging at the beginning and end of the year, it is all the more amazing what our portfolio companies have accomplished the last twelve months. Today, we are up to announce boldstart v + opportunities ii, $230m to continue backing Developer First + SaaS founders from Day 1 to Scale. 1/ We started @boldstartvc in 2010 w/ $1m.

Stealth 78

Stealth Cofounder SQL Open Source 78

VC Adventure

APRIL 8, 2010

Recently Dan Frommer over at the Silicon Alley Insider wrote about the reemergence of “stealth mode ”. With one of our portfolio companies, Trada , recently emerging from 18 months of quiet operations, we’re taking the subject up once again (very timely if Frommer’s post is any indication). Tags: stealth.

Stealth 81

Stealth SEM Portfolio Operations 81

Cracking the Code

JANUARY 25, 2021

just months after it came out of stealth. Building a ubiquitous platform that enables B2B payments at the right time and place, integrating with other suppliers’ offerings, improves the customer experience, extends Melio’s reach and fuels the rise of adoption within vertical SaaS products.

B2B 62

B2B Cloud Europe 62

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Mari is now building a new venture in human-machine interaction within the Samsung accelerator, currently in stealth mode. Her work included heading Nokia’s location-based services business and app portfolio for emerging markets, which she built from a back-of-a-napkin idea to a 100-person organization with over 10 million users.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

VC Cafe

AUGUST 3, 2023

started in 2019, raised $18M to date) Atly – a community based map, designed to help people discover their next favorite place by providing insights shared by others with similar interests (founded in 2018, raised $33M to date) Candivore – an Israeli gaming studio, developer of Match Masters, a competitive match-3 puzzle game.

B2C 148

B2C Generative AI Artificial Inteligence 148

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

View from Seed

MARCH 29, 2018

We don’t seed companies that are developing drugs or medical devices that will require FDA approval. For example, our portfolio company WHOOP started out as a product focused on elite athletes, but over time has expanded to prosumer customers, medical researchers, and front-line workers at large-scale employers.

Vertical 120

Vertical Stealth Portfolio Seed Capital 120

SVPG

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Customer Archetype = Persona. Small Batch = Incremental/Continuous Development and Deployment. Portfolio Thinking = Portfolio Grooming. A head start is rarely large enough to matter, and time spent in stealth mode-away from customers-is unlikely to provide a head start. Value Capture = Monetization Strategy.

Lean 63

Lean Stealth Portfolio Engineer 63

mashable.com

JUNE 11, 2013

Your first product will likely be just a little bit ugly, and thats okay — its part of getting to market quickly and testing your idea in front of live customers. How many entrepreneurs opening words are about how stealth their project is, followed by a 10-page NDA to hear word one? Not Listening to Current (or Future) Customers.

Cofounder 111

Cofounder Technical Review Startup Software Review 111

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 29, 2016

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: 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.

Stealth 60

Stealth Canada Azure Architecture 60

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Kapor is the original designer of Lotus 1-2-3 and former CEO of Lotus Development. Kapor Capital’s expansive portfolio includes Bit.ly The firm’s portfolio includes the likes of Gist , Lijit , Brightleaf, Memeo, SimpleGeo , StockTwits and Zynga.

Angel Investor 80

Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

Lightspeed Venture Partners

DECEMBER 10, 2014

We had seen Lightspeed portfolio company Nicira disrupt networking layers 2-3 with an architecture that consisted of highly distributed scale out software elements coupled with centralized control, culminating in an acquisition by VMWare for $1.25B in the summer of 2012.

Architecture 113

Architecture Stealth Agile Distribution 113

Occam's Razor

APRIL 23, 2012

Choose the right metric and they'll create the most glorious digital experience in the universe, the perfect acquisition campaign, the most amazing customer service channel. That incentive removes a focus from the important entity, your customer, and places it on the secondary entity, your advertiser. News has them.

Metrics 152

Metrics Analytics Search Channel 152

BeyondVC

FEBRUARY 12, 2014

This means we invest in product-driven engineering teams where all of the development is done in house and where rapid iteration is a key to success. While this sounds simple, there is a ton of work that goes into helping our portfolio companies get to a successful Series A. The other big theme is one of big data.

Seed Stage 110

Seed Stage Agile Viral API 110

Cracking the Code

MARCH 28, 2022

This post is part of Accel’s Secrets to Scaling series, where leaders from across our portfolio share their learnings and advice with the next generation of European and Israeli entrepreneurs building global winners. Starting a bookkeeping service was the fastest way to engage with customers. Let’s talk about your financing strategy.

B2B 62

B2B Cofounder Small Business 62

Scalable Startup

FEBRUARY 1, 2013

So originally the customer was the Department of Defense. It was the first customer for the computer. Marc Andreessen: We have a bunch of stealth investments. I mean, this is a big, big thing — big change for us, so we have a bunch of stealth investments — I mean, companies that haven’t talked about what they are doing yet.

Software Review 22

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Stock 22

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 12, 2016

When we started Flybridge over thirteen years ago, we developed a firm mission statement that we would treat early stage founders as our valued customers and have lived by this mission throughout our history. That’s a funny line for many because, historically, VCs are viewed (and at times reviled) as judges or overlords.

New York City 20

New York City Early Stage Artificial Inteligence Boston 20

Up and Running

JULY 14, 2015

See if you can start developing at that kind of thing. Peter: You’re going to develop, develop, develop and if you don’t get kicked out of the the accelerator, you will get funding of some sort. Peter: Or all the business but not the development knowledge let’s say. Take your idea there.

Incubator 60

Incubator Email Startup Oregon 60