Ideaforge

At Slack, every one of our processes and features has been designed with the primary goal of making Slack a workplace tool that feels human. We see ourselves as our users’ hosts, and we want them to feel comfortable and happy every time they’re in Slack. Our product isn’t just built for work — it’s built for people doing work, and everything we create is meant to forward our mission of making work life simpler, more pleasant and more productive.

Our job is to understand what people want, and then translate that value through thoughtfully designed, well-functioning products and features.

Against the backdrop of an unprecedented shift to remote work, we’ve seen an influx of people turning to Slack to make the transition to a digital-first workplace. Building thoughtful, intuitive products that add value, delight and human-centric experiences into peoples’ working lives has never been more important.

To ensure we’re meeting our customers where they’re at, we created a set of guiding “product principles” that inform everything we build, and which serve as the foundation for our entire product decision-making process.

There’s business value in improving an organization’s processes, and we’ve been able to provide better experiences for our customers by enacting ever-evolving product principles and using them to evaluate our products and features. Any company can benefit from having product principles — it’s all about how you develop and deploy them across your organization.

First, what are product principles?

Product principles are essential guidelines that help teams evaluate work across functions, as well as up and down the decision-making chain, by ensuring all work ladders up to the organization’s ultimate goals. Better alignment, in turn, leads to better and faster product decisions.

Product principles should always evolve to keep up with the changing ways you work and what your customers need. At Slack, we currently have five principles that guide us:

1. Don’t make me think.
2. Be a great host.
3. Prototype the path.
4. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
5. Make bigger, bolder bets.

By implementing these principles into all we build across teams — design, legal, marketing and more — they provide a shared framework for decision-making that keeps us aligned and therefore able to make better decisions, faster.

The idea of having principles themselves isn’t a new concept, but the creation process behind building and promoting these principles is often overlooked or underdeveloped.

Start with your product philosophy

Before building the principles themselves, it’s important to first establish your product philosophy, which will inform how your organization will ultimately view and abide by its principles.

At Slack, we embrace an approach we call “getting to the next hill.” While there is a long-term product strategy, we don’t spend a lot of time debating exactly where we’ll be in one or two years from now. Instead, we focus on more immediate, incremental moves to improve our customers’ working lives.

We’ve found that because Slack is used in so many different ways by so many different companies, it’s better to learn from how our customers use our features than from endlessly debating aspirational future ideas.

Source: Tech Crunch

In a move designed to directly challenge Amazon, Walmart today announced it’s dropping the $35 minimum order requirement for its two-hour “Express” delivery service, a competitor to Amazon’s “Prime Now.”  With Walmart Express Delivery, customers can order from Walmart’s food, consumables or general merchandise assortment, then pay a flat $10 fee to have the items arrive in two hours or less.

The service is useful for more urgent delivery needs — like diapers or a missing ingredient for a recipe, SVP of Customer Product, Tom Ward, noted in an announcement. They’re not meant to sub in for larger shopping trips, however — Express orders are capped at 65 items.

Today, Express Delivery is available in nearly 3,000 Walmart stores reaching 70% of the U.S. population, Walmart says. It builds on top of stores’ existing inventory of pickup and delivery time slots as a third option, instead of giving slots away to those with the ability to pay higher fees.

Like Walmart’s grocery and pickup orders, Express orders are shopped and packaged for delivery by Walmart’s team of 170,000 personal shoppers and items are priced the same as they are in-store. This offers Walmart a potential competitive advantage against grocery delivery services like Instacart or Shipt, for example, where products can be priced higher and hurried or inexperienced shoppers aren’t always able to find items or search the back, having to mark them as “out of stock.”

In theory, Walmart employees will have a better understanding of their own store’s inventory and layout, making these kind of issues less common. It will also have direct access to the order data, which will help it better understand what sells, what replacements customers will accept for out-of-stocks, when to staff for busy times and more.

In addition to grocery delivery, Express Delivery competes with Amazon’s Prime Now, a service that similarly offers a combination of grocery and other daily essentials and merchandise. Currently, Prime Now’s 2-hour service has a minimum order requirement of $35 without any additional fees in many cases — though the Prime Now app explains that some of its local store partners will charge fees even when that minimum is met, and others may have higher order minimums, which makes the service confusing to consumers.

Walmart’s news comes at a time when Amazon appears to be trying to push consumers away from the Prime Now standalone app, too.

When you open the Prime Now app, a large pop-up message informs you that you can now shop Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh from inside the Amazon app. A button labeled “Make the switch” will then redirect you. Meanwhile, on Amazon’s website touting Prime’s delivery perks, the “Prime Now” brand name isn’t mentioned at all. Instead, Amazon touts free same-day (5-hour) delivery of best sellers and everyday essentials on orders with a $35 minimum purchase, or free 2-hour grocery delivery from Whole Foods and Fresh.

When asked why Amazon is pushing Prime Now shoppers to its main app, Amazon downplayed this as simply an ongoing effort to “educate” consumers about the option.

Walmart, on the other hand, last year merged its separate delivery apps into one.

After items are picked, Walmart works with a network of partners, including DoorDash, Postmates, Roadie and Pickup Point, as well as its in-house delivery services, to get orders to customers’ doorsteps. This last-mile portion has become a key area of investment for Walmart and competitors in recent months — Walmart, for example, acquired assets from peer-to-peer delivery startup JoyRun in November. And before that, a former Walmart delivery partner, Deliv, sold to Target.

This is not the first time Walmart has dropped order minimums in an attempt to better compete with Amazon and others.

In December, Walmart announced its Prime alternative known as Walmart+ would remove the $35 minimum on non-same day Walmart.com orders. But it had stopped short of extending that perk to same-day grocery until now.

To some extent, Walmart’s ability to drop minimums has to do with the logistics of its delivery operations. Walmart has been turning more of its stores into fulfillment centers by converting some into small, automated warehouses in partnership with technology providers and robotics companies, including Alert Innovation, Dematic and Fabric.

And because its stores are physically located closer to customers than Amazon warehouses, it has the ability to deliver a broad merchandise selection, faster, while also turning large parking lots into picking stations — another thing that could worry Amazon, which is now buying up closed mall stores for its own fulfillment operations. 

Walmart today still carries a $35 minimum on other pickup and delivery orders and same-day orders from Walmart+ subscribers.

Source: Tech Crunch

On a recent episode of Extra Crunch Live, Bain Capital Ventures’ Matt Harris said that if you had asked him a year ago what would happen to venture capital during a pandemic lockdown, he would have replied “it would have fallen off a cliff.” Before the world changed so fundamentally, VCs and founders alike believed they needed to meet in person to build trust before signing paperwork that would financially and emotionally bond them together for years and years.

Today, the landscape is very different. More institutional capital is flowing into startups at much faster rates and a good deal of credit must go to the virtual pitch meeting. Founders can now take 30+ meetings in a single day, but are they making the most of those meetings?

At TechCrunch Early Stage in April, Melissa Bradley will talk us through how to nail your virtual pitch meeting and take questions from the audience.

Bradley is the co-founder of Ureeka, a venture-backed mentorship platform for SMBs that pairs founders with experts and mentors. Bradley is also founder and managing partner of 1863 Ventures, a business development program that accelerates underrepresented entrepreneurs (a group Bradley calls the New Majority) into their hyper-growth phase.

She’s also a professor at Georgetown University’s business school, teaching impact investing, social entrepreneurship, P2P economies and innovation.

In short, Bradley deeply understands what it’s like to sit on both sides of the table, as a VC and a founder, and even more deeply understands what it takes to have a successful virtual meeting from her experience building Ureeka (which is entirely virtual).

Bradley joins an all-star cast of speakers at TC Early Stage, an event that is packed with breakout sessions focused on all the core competencies that a startup needs to be successful. Here’s a preview of some of the sessions going down at TC Early Stage:

• How to Get An Investor’s Attention (Marlon Nichols, MaC Venture Partners)
• Four Things to Think About Before Raising a Series A (Bucky Moore, Kleiner Perkins) 
• How Founders Can Think Like a VC (Lisa Wu, Norwest Venture Partners) 
• Finance for Founders (Alexa von Tobel, Inspired Capital) 
• Building and Leading a Sales Team (Ryan Azus, Zoom CRO)
• Keys to Nailing Product Market Fit (Rahul Vohra, Superhuman)

That’s not all. The TC Early Stage curriculum is being spread across two events, with fundraising and operations represented on April 1 & 2 and fundraising and marketing deep dives on July 8 & 9. Folks who buy a ticket to just one event will get three months of Extra Crunch for free, and folks who buy a dual-event ticket will get six months of Extra Crunch membership for free.

An Extra Crunch membership comes with access to:

• Weekly investor surveys
• Fundraising, growth, monetization and workforce advice from startup experts
• Market analysis
• Late-deep dives
• Access to weekly Extra Crunch Live events

And much more! Really, what are you waiting for? Pick up a ticket to TC Early Stage here or use the widget below:

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Source: Tech Crunch

It may be tough to remember, but there was a time long ago when Justworks wasn’t a household name. Though its monthly revenue growth charts were up and to the right, it had not even broken the $100,000 mark. Even then, Bain Capital Venture’s Matt Harris felt confident in betting on the startup.

Harris says that, with any investment (particularly at the early stage of a company), the decision really comes down to the team and more importantly, the founder.

“Isaac is a long-term mercenary, but short- and medium-term missionary,” said Harris. “The word that really comes to mind is ‘structured.’ If you ask him to think about something and respond, he’ll think about it and come back with an answer that has four pillars underneath it. He’ll create a framework that not only answers your specific question, but can prove to be a model that will answer future questions of the same type. He’s a systems thinker.”

In 2015, Justworks closed its $13 million Series B, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Harris took a seat on the board. Since, the duo have been working closely together as Justworks has grown into the behemoth it is today.

But these relationships work both ways. Oates said that one of the main things he looks for in an investor is how they’ll react when the chips are down.

“Different people behave different ways under stress,” said Oates. “And people show their values and integrity in those types of situations. That’s when these things are tested. The simple way I think about this is, will this person pick me up from the airport in a pinch?”

Though he’s never asked, he believes Harris absolutely would.

On Extra Crunch Live, Harris and Justworks CEO Isaac Oates sat down to talk through how they resolve disagreements, why Oates never changed what must be one of the most simple pitch decks I’ve ever seen in my life, and how founders should think about pricing their products.

They also gave live feedback on pitch decks submitted by the audience in the Pitch Deck Teardown. (If you’d like to see your deck featured on a future episode, send it to us using this form.)

We record Extra Crunch Live every Wednesday at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT. You can see our past episodes here and check out the March slate right here.

Episode breakdown

• Working through disagreements — 11:30
• The Justworks Series B Deck — 15:00
• Pricing the product — 25:00
• Pitch deck teardown — 33:00

Working through disagreements

Despite their glowing praise of one another at the top of the episode, the founder/investor duo haven’t always seen eye to eye. But they did provide an excellent framework around how founders and VCs should wade through disagreements around the business.

Oates gave an example from 2017. He was considering putting in a dual-class stock, which would give a kind of high-vote, low-vote structure to the company. He said that it interested him because he’d seen other companies out there who were vulnerable after going public, whether it be activist shareholders or other outside forces, and that that might prevent a CEO from thinking about the long term.

Harris disagreed and gave a long list of reasons why that neither shared on the episode. However, Oates said that one of the great things to come out of that disagreement was seeing how Harris went about this decision.

Harris introduced Oates to every expert on this particular subject that he knew, asking them to have meetings and discuss it further.

In the end, Oates ultimately stuck to his guns and decided to go forward with the dual-class stock, but armed with all the information he needed to feel confident in the decision.

“I learned a lot about how Matt thinks and how he approaches decisions,” said Oates. “The process of making decisions is just as important as the content. As I’ve gotten to know him more, it means that when we find something where we don’t necessarily agree, we’re able to step back and make sure we have an intellectually rigorous way to process it.”

The story reminded me of a similar conversation with Ironclad CEO Jason Boehmig and Accel’s Steve Loughlin. They explained how much time and energy they spent early on in their investor/founder relationship talking about the “why” behind opinions and strategies and decisions, plotting out the short-, medium- and long-term plan for the company.

“I want to know what you want the company to look like so that I can push you and we can have constructive conversations around the plan,” said Loughlin. “That way, I’m not getting a phone call about whether or not they should hire a head of customer success without any context or a true north in mind.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here.

Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors.

Kicking off with a tiny bit of housekeeping: Equity is now doing more stuff. And TechCrunch has its Justice and Early-Stage events coming up. I am interviewing the CRO of Zoom for the latter. And The Exchange itself has some long-overdue stuff coming next week, including $50M and $100M ARR updates (Druva, etc.), a peek at consumption based pricing vs. traditional SaaS models (featuring Fastly, Appian, BigCommerce CEOs, etc.), and more. Woo! 

This week both DoorDash and Airbnb reported earnings for the first time as public companies, marking their real graduation into the ranks of the exited unicorns. We’re keeping our usual eye on the earnings cycle, quietly, but today we have some learnings for the startup world.

Some basics will help us get started. DoorDash beat growth expectations in Q4, reporting revenue of $970 million versus an expected $938 million. The gap between the two likely comes partially from how new the DoorDash stock is, and the pandemic making it difficult to forecast. Despite the outsized growth, DoorDash shares initially fell sharply after the report, though they largely recovered on Friday.

Why the initial dip? I reckon the company’s net loss was larger than investors hoped — though a large GAAP deficit is standard for first quarters post-debut. That concern might have been tempered by the company’s earnings call, which included a note from the company’s CFO that it is “seeing acceleration in January relative to our order growth in December as well as in Q4.” That’s encouraging. On the flip side, the company’s CFO did say “starting from Q2 onwards, we’re going to see a reversion toward pre-COVID behavior within the customer base.”

Takeaway: Big companies are anticipating a return to pre-COVID behavior, just not quite yet. Firms that benefited from COVID-19 are being heavily scrutinized. And they expect tailwinds to fade as the year progresses.

And then there’s Airbnb, which is up around 16% today. Why? It beat revenue expectations, while also losing lots of money. Airbnb’s net loss in Q4 2020 was more than 10x DoorDash’s own. So why did Airbnb get a bump while DoorDash got dinged? Its large revenue beat ($859 million, instead of an expected $748 million), and potential for future growth; investors are expecting that Airbnb’s current besting of expectations will lead to even more growth down the road.

Takeaway: Provided that you have a good story to tell regarding future growth, investors are still willing to accept sharp losses; the growth trade is alive, then, even as companies that may have already received a boost endure increased scrutiny.

For startups, valuation pressure or lift could come down to which side of the pandemic they are on; are they on the tail end of their tailwind (remote-work focused SaaS, perhaps?), or on the ascent (restaurant tech, maybe?). Something to chew on before you raise.

Market Notes

It was one blistering week for funding rounds. Crunchbase News, my former journalistic home, has a great piece out on just how many massive rounds we’re seeing so far this year. But even one or two steps down in scale, funding activity was super busy.

A few rounds that I could not get to this week that caught my eye included a $90 million round for Terminus (ABM-focused GTM juicer, I suppose), Anchorage’s $80 million Series C (cryptostorage for big money), and Foxtrot Market’s $42 million Series B (rapid delivery of yuppie and zoomer essentials).

Sitting here now, finally writing a tidbit about each, I am reminded at the sheer breadth of the tech market. Termius helps other companies sell, Anchorage wants to keep your ETH safe, while Foxtrot wants to help you replenish your breakfast rosé stock before you have to endure a dry morning. What a mix. And each must be generating venture-acceptable growth, as they have not merely raised more capital but raised rather large rounds for their purported maturity (measured by their listed Series stage, though the moniker can be more canard than guide.)

I jokingly call this little section of the newsletter Market Notes, a jest as how can you possibly note the whole market that we care about? These companies and their recent capital infusions underscore the point.

Various and Sundry

Finally, two notes from earnings calls. The first from Root, which is a head scratcher, and the second from Booking Holdings’ results.

I chatted with Alex Timm, Root Insurance’s CEO this week moments after it dropped numbers. As such I didn’t have much context in the way of investor response to its results. My read was that Root was super capitalized, and has pretty big expansion plans. Timm was upbeat about his company’s improving economics (on a loss ratio and loss-adjusted expenses basis, for the insurtech fans out there), and growth during the pandemic.

But then today its shares are off 16%. Parsing the analyst call, there’s movement in Root’s economic profile (regarding premium-ceding variance over the coming quarters) that make it hard to fully grok its full-year growth from where I sit. But it appears that Root’s business is still molting to a degree that is almost refreshing; the company could have gone public in 2022 with some of its current evolution behind it, but instead it raised a zillion dollars last year and is public now.

Sticking our neck out a bit, despite fellow neo-insurnace player Lemonade’s continued, and impressive valuation run, MetroMile’s stock is also softening, while Root’s has lost more than half its value from its IPO date. If the current repricing of some neo-insurance players continues, we could see some private investment into the space slow. (Fewer things like this?) It’s a possible trend we’ll have eyes on this year.

Next, Booking Holdings, the company that owns Priceline and other travel properties. Given that Booking might have notes regarding the future of business travel — which we care about for clues regarding what could come for remote work and office culture, things that impact everything from startup hub locations to software sales — The Exchange snagged a call slot and dialed the company up.

Booking Holdings’ CEO Glenn Fogel didn’t have a comment as to how his company is trading at all-time highs despite suffering from sharp year-over-year revenue declines. He did note that the pandemic has shaken up expectations for conversations, which could limit short-term business travel in the future for meetings that may now be conducted on video calls. He was bullish on future conference travel (good news for TechCrunch, I suppose), and future travel more generally.

So concerning the jetting perspective, we don’t know anything yet. Booking Holdings is not saying much, perhaps because it just doesn’t know when things will turn around. Fair enough. Perhaps after another three months of vaccine rollout will give us a better window into what a partial return to an old normal could look like.

And to cap off, you can read Apex Holdings’ SPAC presentation here, and Markforged’s here. Also I wrote about the buy-now-pay-later space here, riffed on the Digital Ocean IPO with Ron Miller here, and doodled on Toast’s valuation and the Olo debut here.

Hugs, and have a lovely weekend!

Alex

Source: Tech Crunch

Storm Ventures, a venture firm that focuses on early stage B2B enterprise startups, announced this week that it has promoted Pascale Diaine and Frederik Groce to partners at the firm.

The two new partners have worked their way up over the last several years. Groce joined Storm in 2016 and has invested in enterprise SaaS startups like Workato, Splashtop, NextRequest and Camino. Diaine joined a year later and has invested in firms like Sendoso, German Bionic, InEvent and Talkdesk.

Groce, who is also a founder at BLCK VC and helped organize the Black Venture Institute to create a network of Black investors, says that these promotions show that venture needs to be more diverse, and Storm recognizes this.  “If you think about the way our team works, that’s the way I think venture teams will need to work to be able to be successful in the next 40 years. And so the hope is that over time everyone does this and we’re just early to it,” Groce told me.

Unfortunately, right now that’s not the case, not even close. According to research by Crunchbase, just 12% of venture capitalists are women and two-thirds of firms don’t have any female investors. Meanwhile, only about 4% of ventures investors are Black.

Those numbers have an impact on the number of Black and female founders because as Groce points out the lack of founders in underrepresented groups is in part a networking problem. “In a business that’s predicated on networks if you don’t have diversity in the network, or the teams that are driving those networks, you just can’t make sure you’re seeing great talent across all ecosystems,” he said.

Diaine, who is French and started her career by founding Orange Fab, the corporate accelerator of the European Telco Orange, has brought her international business background to Storm where they helped her tune that experience to an investor focus and supported her as she learned the nuances of the investment side of the business.

“I don’t come from the VC world. I come from the innovative corporate world. So they had to train me and spend time getting me up to date. And they did spend so much time making sure I understood everything to make sure I got to this level,” she said.

Both partners bring their own unique views looking beyond Silicon Valley for investment opportunities. Diaine’s investment include a German, Brazilian and Portuguese company, while Groce’s investments include companies in Chicago, Atlanta and Seattle.

The two partners have also developed an algorithm to help find investments based on a number of online signals, something that has become more important during the pandemic when they couldn’t network in person.

“Frederik and I have been working on [an algorithm to find] what are the signals that you can identify online that will tell you this company’s doing well, this company growing.You have to have a nice set of startup search tracking [signals], but what do you track if you can’t just get the revenue in real time, which is impossible. So we’ve developed an algorithm that helps us identify some of these signals and create alerts on which startups we should pay attention to,” Diaine explained.

She says this data-driven approach should be helpful and augment their in-person efforts even after the pandemic is over and increase their overall efficiency in finding and tracking companies in their portfolios.

Source: Tech Crunch

While Denmark and Copenhagen don’t often come up as a destination for European startups, it has a thriving local tech scene that’s home to some of the better startup conferences. After all, who doesn’t want to visit Copenhagen?

A highly educated population, great universities, excellent healthcare and great transport links to Europe make the city as good a place as any to start up a company.

Amongst our investors, we found the trends they were most interested in included sustainable supply chain logistics, esports and gaming, enterprise SaaS, climate tech, deep tech hardware, agritech and edtech. And many said they are interested in the future of work and the transition to different ways of working.

Companies they are excited by included: Afresh Technologies, Seaborg Technologies (nuclear reactors), Labster (virtual science labs), Normative.io (social and environmental impact measurement) and DEMI (connecting with chefs).

In general, investors said they are focused on their home ground but are also spreading their wings to the “New Nordics” (Nordic and Baltic) region. Some are also investing in large European and North American hub cities.

The “green shoots” of recovery they see are appearing in anything digital that comes with a community, as well as among startups that are able to leverage the pandemic to generate new business models that are faster than incumbents.

Use discount code EXTRAKNASE to save 25% off a 1-year Extra Crunch membership.
This offer is only available to readers in Europe and expires on April 30, 2021.

We surveyed:

• Sara Rywe, associate, byFounders
• Mads Hørlyck, associate, Maersk Growth
• Henrik Møller Kristensen, associate, Bumble Ventures
• Benjamin Ratz, partner, Nordic Makers
• Mark Emil Hermansen, associate, Astanor
• Eric Lagier, managing partner, byFounders

Sara Rywe, associate, byFounders

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?
Software and tech (I’m personally extra excited about the “future of work,” fintech, and “future of food”).

What’s your latest, most exciting investment?
Digitail (a veterinary software provider solving the gap between the ever-growing expectations of millennial pet parents and the experience offered by veterinarians with their current tools).

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?
I would like to see more founders with global ambitions in the “uniquely transformative” software category (the same way Airbnb transformed the hotel industry and Uber transformed the taxi industry). Many startups we see today are building a feature instead of a full solution and their vision is about making industries incrementally better. So, here’s a callout to all of you Nordic or Baltic visionary founders out there: Write me!

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?
We always look for competent, visionary and passionate founders building products that people love. As an industry-agnostic VC, we keep our eyes open for a range of different opportunities.

Which areas are either oversaturated or would be too hard to compete in at this point for a new startup? What other types of products/services are you wary or concerned about?
Some of the current trends that I see include:
Fintech: salary advances, factoring, sustainability reporting and measurements.
Food tech: alternative protein, pet food, food waste.
Future of work: virtual offices, collaboration, productivity tools.
If you decide to enter any of the above-mentioned industries, I therefore encourage you to really be thoughtful in how you differentiate yourself and/or how your team is better suited to execute on the mission.

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?
<50%. We invest across the Nordics and Baltics and I’m covering Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Which industries in your city and region seem well positioned to thrive, or not, long term? What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?
Denmark is very well positioned to succeed in sustainability and energy (many good talents coming from e.g., Vestas and DTU), consumer goods (there’s a large history in the country around building brands such as Lego, Carlsberg, etc.), and biotech (Novo Nordisk among others playing a big part). Moreover, software scaleups such as Peakon, Pleo, and Templafy are really leading the way for a new generation of tech startups to thrive in Denmark. When looking at Danish founder particularly, I’m very excited to see companies such as Qvin revolutionizing healthcare for women by using period blood as an opportunity for a noninvasive blood test.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?
They should be very excited! Just look at what we’ve seen in 2021 so far:
Exits: Peakon $700 million exit and Humio $400 million exit.
Large rounds: Public.com raising $220 million, Vivino raising $115 million and Labster raising $60 million led by Andreessen Horowitz

Do you expect to see a surge in more founders coming from geographies outside major cities in the years to come, with startup hubs losing people due to the pandemic and lingering concerns, plus the attraction of remote work?
Somewhat. We already see a lot of innovation outside of Copenhagen in cities such as Aarhus and Odense.

Which industry segments that you invest in look weaker or more exposed to potential shifts in consumer and business behavior because of COVID-19? What are the opportunities startups may be able to tap into during these unprecedented times?
One industry that has been hit hard by COVID-19 is of course travel and hospitality. The flipside of this is that we see a lot of innovation due to that. Examples from our own portfolio include:
AeroGuest — a platform that allows for a “touch-free” travel experience (skipping lines and reception desks, direct online room booking, etc.).
BobW — a new type of sustainable travel accommodation bringing the best of both worlds: “home meets hotel.”

How has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy? What are the biggest worries of the founders in your portfolio? What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now?
COVID-19 has not impacted our investment strategy massively and we have the same focus as before (investing in software and tech). With that said, we are happy to see some industries getting an uplift in these difficult times, such as sustainability and impact.
The biggest worries of our portfolio company founders have been around volatility and uncertainty. Since the first lockdown our advice has been simple: You can’t control the outcome. We’ve therefore worked together to ensure that they have some proper scenario planning in place and that we think creatively of how to mitigate eventual negative effects on their business.

Are you seeing “green shoots” regarding revenue growth, retention or other momentum in your portfolio as they adapt to the pandemic?
Tame — one of our portfolio companies — expanded their event platform to also include virtual events, which made it really take off in COVID times.
Corti — another portfolio company of ours — could in less than four weeks build a product for helping fight COVID-19 with artificial intelligence.
Both of these companies are good examples of how “adapting their products” due to the pandemic led to great results.

What is a moment that has given you hope in the last month or so? This can be professional, personal or a mix of the two.
The sudden rise of awareness around impact and ESG among VCs! Several great conversations have been held on how to improve our ways of working.

Who are key startup people you see creating success locally, whether investors, founders or even other types of startup ecosystems roles like lawyers, designers, growth experts, etc. We’re trying to highlight the movers and shakers who outsiders might not know.
Some of the extraordinary founders that I look up to from Denmark include:
Jakob Jønck (Simple Feast), Andreas Cleve and Lars Maaløe (Corti), Sara Naseri and Søren Therkelsen (Qvin), Niels Martin Brochner, Jarek Owczarek and Viktor Heide (Contractbook), Jacob Hansen, Esben Friis-Jensen, Jakob Storm and Christian Hansen (Cobalt) among others.
There’s also a range of great investors in Denmark including Helle Uth, Christel Piron, Alexander Viterbo-Horten and Anders Kjær amongst others at PreSeed Ventures and Daniel Nyvang Mariussen with his team at Bumble Ventures. Also, the Danish tech ecosystem would not be what it is without all the work that Vækstfonden does.

Mads Hørlyck, associate, Maersk Growth

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?
Supply chain/logistics including sustainable supply chains.

What’s your latest, most exciting investment?
Afresh Technologies.

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?
In general there are still plenty of opportunities across various parts of the supply chain. We have no particular specific preferences as such at the moment.

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?
Digital solution to drive efficiencies across one or more subparts of the supply chain, both upstream and downstream focus.

Which areas are either oversaturated or would be too hard to compete in at this point for a new startup? What other types of products/services are you wary or concerned about?
Freight forwarding has been maturing in Europe and North America with several large startups in both regions. However, the market is still large but it requires a strong new model as it’s also low margins.

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?
Less/little focus on Denmark. Main priority in large European/North American hubs.

Which industries in your city and region seem well positioned to thrive, or not, long term? What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?
Startups with the medical and supporting functions tech are doing well. We are excited about Onomondo in the Danish scene — also a portfolio company of ours.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?
As an upcoming opportunity. Several tech hubs have been created and there is a general good environment including state-backed loans/pre-seed investments and fairly many angels to get going.

Do you expect to see a surge in more founders coming from geographies outside major cities in the years to come, with startup hubs losing people due to the pandemic and lingering concerns, plus the attraction of remote work?
We don’t expect any significant changes to the founder-environment in Denmark (too little country).

Which industry segments that you invest in look weaker or more exposed to potential shifts in consumer and business behavior because of COVID-19? What are the opportunities startups may be able to tap into during these unprecedented times?
We see an increased focus on our investment area: Supply chain/logistics as people throughout the pandemic have been much more exposed to and dependent on flexible and reliable supply chains. All the way from supply resilience, supply chain visibility, fulfillment and to last-mile delivery. Consumers have the power to drive changes in supply chains.

How has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy? What are the biggest worries of the founders in your portfolio? What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now?
Sales conversion rates decreasing/pipelines drying out. Advice is, like everyone else, to minimize cost and extend runway by getting as close to profitability as model allows. Based on this funding needs can be discussed.

Are you seeing “green shoots” regarding revenue growth, retention or other momentum in your portfolio as they adapt to the pandemic?
Yes, we have seen some startups being able to leverage the pandemic over incumbents due to their more flexible and digital structure.

What is a moment that has given you hope in the last month or so? This can be professional, personal or a mix of the two.
We have yet to see a default wave both globally within our investment area but also in general in Denmark.

Henrik Møller Kristensen, associate, Bumble Ventures

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?
Some of the trends we’re excited about are (1) the growing market of digital media and entertainment, in particular esports and gaming, (2) enterprise SaaS, e.g., related to the future of work, (3) climate change solutions, e.g., deep tech hardware and software, and (4) e-commerce businesses, in particular digital native vertical brands and direct-to-consumer cases.

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?
Products and services to satisfy the needs of the aging population. The number of elderly people will be growing significantly over the next decades, establishing a growing market for products and services to satisfy the needs from this demographic change and reduce the pressure on societies.

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?
We highly value team and traction. We are looking for exceptional founders with strong competencies in engineering, product and commercial, preferably with years of experience from the industry they are entering with a new solution. We prefer some indication of product-market fit. We like methodical revenue growth driven by paying customers, rich cohort grids and controllable funnels that proves a robust core business. We don’t like products that are still 2-3 years away from monetization. This means that we will miss the next Facebook, but we are okay with that.

Which areas are either oversaturated or would be too hard to compete in at this point for a new startup? What other types of products/services are you wary or concerned about?
Traditional social media and apps that require millions of users before being able to turn on the business model. SaaS marketing tools also seem crowded.

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?
Next week we will announce our first investment outside Denmark. This is our first step toward being present not only in Denmark, but in the Nordics.

Which industries in your city and region seem well positioned to thrive, or not, long term? What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?
Well-positioned industries in Denmark are medtech, fintech, gaming and clean tech. We’re excited about GamerzClass, Pie Systems, LeadFamly, Omnigame, Organic Basics, Cap desk, Roccamore, Too Good To Go, Pleo, Tradeshift, SYBO, Unity and more. Exceptional founders are Victor Folmann from GamerzClass, Sunny Long from Pie Systems, Frederikke Antonie Schmidt from Roccamore and Christian Gabriel from Capdesk.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?
Historically, there has been a need for more capital and talent to keep successful growth-stage startups in Denmark and not have to move to foreign countries to attract talent and capital. However, the investment climate is getting better. Greater access to capital and talent go hand in hand, and what is really changing the investment climate for the better is founders of successful Danish startups turning back to Denmark and reinvesting in the startup community.

Do you expect to see a surge in more founders coming from geographies outside major cities in the years to come, with startup hubs losing people due to the pandemic and lingering concerns, plus the attraction of remote work?
I think we’ll see more attraction to remote work in the future. However, I believe it is important for startups to be close to other great like-minded startups, founders, advisors and investors, not only virtually but in real life. Establishing a great network and personal relationships are very important factors to succeed and remote is not suited very well for that in my opinion.

Which industry segments that you invest in look weaker or more exposed to potential shifts in consumer and business behavior because of COVID-19? What are the opportunities startups may be able to tap into during these unprecedented times?
The travel and hospitality industry look weaker and we’ll see a shift toward lower demand due to remote work and sustainability issues. On the other side, gaming, e-commerce and digital products and services are growing as you will have more people online behind the screens.

How has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy? What are the biggest worries of the founders in your portfolio? What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now?
We are still happy to invest despite COVID-19. Gaming has, for example, been positively affected by COVID-19, however, many startups are also struggling due to COVID-19. The best a startup can do is to manage the runway, have close dialogue with their investors, cut costs and try to pivot to the changes. Look for opportunities, not boundaries.

Are you seeing “green shoots” regarding revenue growth, retention or other momentum in your portfolio as they adapt to the pandemic?
Not yet. Only a few of our portfolio companies are negatively affected by COVID-19.

What is a moment that has given you hope in the last month or so? This can be professional, personal or a mix of the two.
Investors are willing to make new investments and help out struggling portfolio companies. Founders are keeping their heads high and making the best out of the new circumstances. In some cases it actually stimulates new innovations.

Benjamin Ratz, partner, Nordic Makers

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?
Energy and the transition to a fossil fuel society, data as governance and the changing role of education.

What’s your latest, most exciting investment?
Seaborg — building modular, small and safe nuclear reactors.
Labster — virtual science labs that help students all over the world immerse in science and STEM.

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?
Improving the public sector.

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?
Views on how and if the world has permanently changed in behavior due to the pandemic.

Which areas are either oversaturated or would be too hard to compete in at this point for a new startup? What other types of products/services are you wary or concerned about?
Micromobility, teledocs.

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?
100%.

What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?
Willa. Corti.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?
A lot of founders leaving success stories of the region.

Do you expect to see a surge in more founders coming from geographies outside major cities in the years to come?
No but we expect the cities to produce more.

Mark Emil Hermansen, associate, Astanor

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?
Food and agrotech.

What’s your latest, most exciting investment?
DEMI.

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?
I’d love to see more food tech companies that “get food” — the human element of it that is. Too many startups focus only on the technology, less on the fact that it should be deeply human centered. This is so prevalent that I instinctively stay away from startups dubbing themselves as “food tech” — food is not tech and tech is not food and therein lies the challenge and the prize. Here’s a read that kind of sums it up.

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?
Anything that reminds me of these first lines from “On The Road”: “They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn …”.

Which areas are either oversaturated or would be too hard to compete in at this point for a new startup? What other types of products/services are you wary or concerned about?
DNVB.

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?
25% local (DK is still immature from a startup standout — yet the opportunity is that the VC footprint is small and relatively unsophisticated).

Which industries in your city and region seem well positioned to thrive, or not, long term? What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?
Companies: Online communities such as DEMI.
Founder: Erez Galonska of Infarm.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?
Tons of opportunity if you have access to the right deal flow/pedigree.

Which industry segments that you invest in look weaker or more exposed to potential shifts in consumer and business behavior because of COVID-19? What are the opportunities startups may be able to tap into during these unprecedented times?
Communities that transcend digital (like Tonsser and DEMI).

How has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy? What are the biggest worries of the founders in your portfolio? What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now?
Worries: Uncertainty and recruitment strategy.
Advice: Survive and prepare.

Are you seeing “green shoots” regarding revenue growth, retention or other momentum in your portfolio as they adapt to the pandemic?
Anything physical that has retail footprint. Anything digital that has a community footprint.

What is a moment that has given you hope in the last month or so? This can be professional, personal or a mix of the two.
That everyone’s pumped for what’s about to come (post-COVID) and the realization (or hope?) that nothing will be as before.

Who are key startup people you see creating success locally?
Kasper Ottesen, Highbridge (legal).
Kasper Hulthin (entrepreneur and investor).
Christian Tang-Jespersen (investor).

Eric Lagier, managing partner, byFounders

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?
Future of work, productivity improvement platforms.

What’s your latest, most exciting investment?
Normative.

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?
Future of recruiting.

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?
Passionate founders, solving big problems to build a better tomorrow.

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?
We are focused on the New Nordics (Nordic and Baltic) region having shown the biggest growth potential in Europe.

Which industries in your city and region seem well positioned to thrive, or not, long term? What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?
Climate tech, health tech, fintech. Normative, Corti, Lucinity.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?
Copenhagen is booming and there is now a strong foundation of experienced founders building really transformative companies.

Do you expect to see a surge in more founders coming from geographies outside major cities in the years to come, with startup hubs losing people due to the pandemic and lingering concerns, plus the attraction of remote work?
No — but I expect to see much more diverse teams with a priority on remote first.

Which industry segments that you invest in look weaker or more exposed to potential shifts in consumer and business behavior because of COVID-19? What are the opportunities startups may be able to tap into during these unprecedented times?
An acceleration of online, remote, e-commerce and general faster pace of transactions.

How has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy? What are the biggest worries of the founders in your portfolio? What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now?
COvid-19 is a giant accelerator of future trends. Those founders that have adapted best will be the winners of tomorrow.

Are you seeing “green shoots” regarding revenue growth, retention or other momentum in your portfolio as they adapt to the pandemic?
Absolutely.

What is a moment that has given you hope in the last month or so? This can be professional, personal or a mix of the two.
How founders persevere in these times of massive change.

Who are key startup people you see creating success locally?
Jakob Jønck, founder, SimpleFeast; Kristian Rönn, founder, Normative; Andreas Cleve and Lars Maaløe, founders, Corti.

Source: Tech Crunch