Angular Ventures

Congrats to our portfolio company lunar.dev for receiving the Silver Award at the 19th Annual 2024 Globee® Awards for Technology! They were recognized for their Consumption Gateway solution, which provides businesses with a scalable API gateway infrastructure that can be controlled from one place. We’re excited to see what the Lunar.dev team will do next!

I recently canceled a subscription after not logging in for about 7 months. The company reached out and asked how they could improve my experience. They should have reached out after I hadn't logged in for a month, not when I canceled. The same goes for your portal and partner program. Nurture relationships to keep them from going stale.

I have often argued with technical founders who believe that building the best technology will sell by itself. Even in deep tech, this "belief" is not enough. Thanks, Angular Ventures Gil Dibner, for sharing your insights 🙏

Some of the biggest enterprise tech stories worth reading this week: - Despite an estimated $400B invested in AI this year by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft, The Economist reports the technology has had surprisingly little economic impact so far amid concerns around data security, biased algorithms, and hallucinations. - A new report from Antler examines why Europe has struggled to produce a truly globally dominant tech giant. A key factor is the dearth of technical founders, with just 26% of European unicorn founders having technical backgrounds compared to 70% in the US. However, the tides are changing and due to layoffs there's been a significant increase in European technical founders. - The “rule of 40” for healthy SaaS companies may be officially antiquated. After analyzing data from over 100 public companies, Sammy Abdullah of Blossom Street Ventures argues that the rule of 40 is gone. - In sectors facing funding crunches like e-commerce and fintech, we’re seeing an emerging trend of heavily funded startups merging with rivals to extend runways and position them for future growth amid fewer competitors. - When it comes to GenAI investments, top VCs have collectively backed startups in the space to the tune of $9.5B across 92 rounds over the past few years. While some bets like OpenAI and Scale AI have paid off, others have fizzled. - Some seed investors are turning to specialized “pro rata” funds to maintain their ownership stakes in hot startups. These funds provide capital for seed VCs to exercise their pro rata rights and avoid dilution when larger VCs lead later rounds. Get the full stories in this week’s The Angle, linked in the comments below. And don’t forget to subscribe to get more enterprise tech news updates every week!

Last week, we hosted our Productique #2 event in Madrid. Meeting so many founders building product-first businesses in Spain was great. Some of them came from Barcelona, Valencia or Malaga, among others, for the event. I hope you found the event valuable. The topic this time: 💰 How to structure free value to get paid 🤑 💰 Two amazing speakers: Leah Tharin, B2B advisor to startups, Product and Growth GotPhoto.com | fotograf.de David Peterson, former growth Airtable and currently Partner at Angular Ventures Here are my takeaways from the presentation and panel discussion. You can see the full video in the comments (the initial 10 minutes don't have very good quality sound, but then it is good, and I would really recommend you to listen to it. It's so interesting!) 👉 The principles of scaling value: we give something for free, so we build intent, and then we ask for something (ie data or money); we give something again, and we ask for something again. 👉 Most customers that try the product, don't buy it. In the SMB sector, the conversion from free to pay is around 7%. In the enterprise sector, the conversion from free (PoC) to pay is 20%. 👉 While many of the free users will not convert to pay, they can be a good way to promote your product (recommendations, worth of mouth) and they might bring on someone who might buy your product. 👉 Some free users don't pay only because the time is not right. They might convert to paid in the future, though. 👉 How do we define what goes into the free product and the paid product? ➡ What NOT to do: look at the features we have and define the ones that go into the free product and the ones that go into the paid product - please DON'T do this ➡ What to do: look into the usage, the features and the additional services, to determine the free plan (usage, unlimited) or paid plan. 👉 The reasons for customers to pay for the product can be: paying for features (the more features, the higher price) and/or usage (ie compute credits, API calls, etc). Most companies define their pricing based on a mix of both, features and usage. 👉 I don't think you can do PLG without PLS. Every user of a self-serve product reaches a ceiling when they need to talk to a business representative. In some cases, they need help because the product is too complex, they can use their personal card to pay because the price is already too high, or they have an individual use case, but they need to bring their team on board to collaborate. Big shout to Paddle, Amplitude and Amazon Web Services (AWS) for supporting us and Wayra for hosting us at their offices in Madrid. It is always a pleasure to work with you all @esther Leigh Anne Cooke Andrew Davies Paula Molinar Sarah W. Martina Niggli Stefania Hau Leon Rees Patricia Suhrcke Esther Trapadoux Marta Antunez Paloma Castellano Sebuh Mesfin

New blog post: I’ve spent 20 years investing in and working with deeply technical founders at a very early stage. Looking back, there seems to be one overwhelming determinant of success for those technical teams. In my experience, success is highly correlated with how obsessive a founding team is about developing an extraordinarily efficient go-to-market (GTM) machine. At first blush, this statement may seem obvious. I even hesitated if it was worth trying to write about it — as I feared I would get accused of stating the obvious. But I’m going to attempt it. If it changes the trajectory of one company, it’s worth it. https://lnkd.in/daRwMRXs

Adam Marsden is #hiring. Know anyone who might be interested?

Calling all #Munich founders and our extended network: we still have a few seats left for our event on global success principles for B2B startups in Munich this Wednesday! Join me and Christian Buchenau from SquareOne Venture Capital will talk about company building for B2B SaaS and DeepTech businesses looking to scale globally. As two funds with similar investment philosophies and decades of experience in early-stage investing, we look forward to sharing our key learnings with you and making some new connections. Registration is still open: https://lu.ma/7dqipp25 We’ll enjoy a few drinks afterwards, finishing just in time for the European championship semi-finals! 🙌  A big thanks goes to our friends from Amazon Web Services (AWS) for hosting us in their Munich space. Feel free to share this with your network. See you there! cc: David Peterson Gergo Kalcsics

🚀  Exciting News from Gartner Hype Cycle! 🚀 lunar.dev has been recognized as a significant player in the evolution of AI Gateways! This recognition underscores the future of API management, focusing on the need to manage the consumption of crucial APIs, such as AI APIs. As AI projects continue to scale, the need for effective management and security of AI provider connections has become paramount. Enter AI gateways, also known as multi-LLM gateways. These gateways are game-changers, offering: 🔒 Enhanced Security: Safeguarding API keys issued by AI providers and ensuring robust data privacy. 💰 Cost Management: Monitoring and controlling access costs, preventing unexpected bills. 📊 Visibility: Utilizing observability and analytics features for comprehensive insights into API usage. ❇ Optimization: Providing a unified API for seamless access to multiple AI providers. Gartner emphasizes the critical role of AI gateways in delivering runtime traffic management and implementing policy controls for AI services. These gateways are pivotal in managing interactions between applications and AI models, reducing risks, and optimizing costs. However, as this is a new and evolving category, it’s essential to conduct thorough evaluations before choosing a vendor. Important factors to consider include latency, redundancy, and the complexities of caching AI API responses. We’re incredibly proud to be mentioned alongside innovative vendors such as Aguru, Cloudflare, IBM, Kong, Martian, Portkey, and Radiant in this transformative space. 🚀