Editor's Note: Receive this free weekly round of ProWellTech news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7:00 am PT). Sign up here. While ProWellTech was busy producing our first Disrupt online this week, the IPO market has gotten even more exciting than expected, so here's a quick look. Snowflake, Jfrog, Sumo Logic and Unity raised their price ranges days before the IPO to satisfy what seemed to be growing enthusiasm from public markets. Yet each still opened more than its offering price, with the value of cloud data warehousing company Snowflake doubling to make it the largest software IPO in history and Unity up 30%.
Despite the pandemic and various major turmoil around the world, the promise of these companies is helping to keep optimism from retail investors to people considering starting a business.
Here's a quick look at our coverage of the top companies in the IPO process this week, in chronological order:
Snowflake and JFrog Increase IPO Ranges While Tech Markets Remain Hot (EC)
On his way to the IPO, Palantir hires a chief accountant and gains NYSE approval for the trade
What awaits us in IPO for JFrog, Snowflake, Sumo Logic and Unity (EC)
Aggressive IPO pricing of JFrog and Snowflake indicate strong demand for cloud shares (EC)
Unity increases IPO price range after JFrog, Snowflake aims for steep debut valuations
Go Public Now While Software Ratings Don't Make Sense, Part II
In his fourth SEC review, Palantir tries to explain what the hell is going on
It started when Unity started trading
Unity Software has a strong opening, gaining 31% after fixing prices above its raised range
And don't miss the additional notes from Alex Wilhelm that will arrive later in the Exchange weekend newsletter.
Stop 2020
Our 10th annual kickoff conference was our first remote this year, but in my humble opinion it managed to capture the same kind of vibe.
First, a SaaS cannabis company took home the top prize in the Startup Battlefield contest ... these days we're really living in the cloud. Here's more, from Matt Burns:
Growing cannabis on an industrial scale involves managing margins and continuously complying with compliance laws. For many growers, large and small, this is the constant input of data from seed to sale. Canix's solution uses a robust enterprise resource planning platform with a strong bias towards reducing the time it takes to enter data. This platform integrates seamlessly with common accounting software and Metrc, an industry-wide regulatory platform, through the use of RFID scanners and Bluetooth-enabled scales. Canix was launched in June 2019 and in just over a year (and during a pandemic), it has acquired over 300 customers in more than 1,000 growing plants and monitoring the movement of 2.5 million plants.
Next, here's a particularly concise view of the future of startups, from Benchmark's senior partner Peter Fenton.
I think this opportunity to build the tools for a world that is "post office" has just opened and it's as exciting as anything I've seen in my adventure career. Walk around right now and see these ghost towns, with gyms, lessons you could take [and so forth] and now maybe you go online and do Peloton, or that lesson that maybe you do online. So I think a whole field of opportunity will shift into this post-place delivery mechanism which is really exciting. [It] it could be 10 to 20 years of innovation that has just been brought forward today.
The truth is, I didn't have time to watch all the speeches - I was busy with the Extra Crunch phase and other stuff, and that didn't even matter the programming we had going on. Then check out the quick selection of choices below. To find out more, you can browse the full agenda and watch the videos here.
In the coming weeks we will also be offering coverage of the EC phase and an analysis of our conversations for subscribers (which includes anyone who bought a ticket and redeemed it for an annual subscription).
In the real world, Tik Tok is still on its way to a complete shutdown despite frantic deal efforts by countless parties. At some point this week, it appeared that Oracle and various business interests had a plan to keep Tik Tok alive as an independent company that would IPO (with some sort of national security oversight), and maybe that will happen again? I doubt Trump and his advisers will follow that plan, given the national security problem of leaving China-controlled algorithms and the long-term commercial problem of US consumer technology being banned there as well.
Meanwhile, the Bytedance-owned company has just announced 100 million users in Europe. Apparently it was a push from the press to counter the bad news, but as Ingrid Lunden notes, it's hard to know what this user base means without the United States. To which I would add, European regulators are already busy looking for foreign technology companies. I can't imagine they will leave such a popular app alone.
It's another reminder that the next era won't offer startups the same chance for global success.
How to hire your first engineer (if you are a non-technical founder)
Lucas Matney spoke with technical leaders and startup founders to understand a key problem that many readers of this newsletter have had before (myself included). How to find someone who can turn your business into a tech company? Here's the intro, with the whole thing about Extra Crunch:
ProWellTechTheir advice included how to manage technical interviews, find technical talent, how to decide if your first hired engineer should become a CTO, and how to give your best along the way if you're not ready to start worrying about hiring an engineer quite yet. . Everyone I spoke to was quick to warn that their suggestions weren't for everyone and that overcoming limited knowledge often comes down to touching the right people to help you and provide a greater understanding of your options. .
I've broken down these tips into a digestible guide that focuses on four areas:
- Procurement of technical candidates.
- How to conduct interviews.
- Make an offer.
- Taking a non-traditional path.
For the whole week
Call the VCs in Zurich and Geneva: take part in The Great ProWellTech Survey of European VC
Open to the public through Chamath Palihapitiya SPAC
Black Tech Pipeline proves the "pipeline problem" isn't real
Gaming companies are reportedly the next targets in the US government's potentially broader Tencent purge
Extra crunchEquity Monday: TikTok mess, two funding rounds and Nvidia will buy ARM
3 VCs discuss the state of SaaS investments in 2020
The stages of traditional fundraising
Making sense of 3 rounds of edtech extension
Facebook investor Jim Breyer chooses Austin as Breyer Capital's second home
Are high dropout rates depressing earnings for app developers?
#EquityPod: Schools are closing their doors, but Opendoor is not
Hello and welcome back to Equity, ProWellTech's venture capital podcast ( now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the titles.
This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton is myself hosted a live recording at Disrupt for digital reception. It was a lot of fun, although of course we can't wait to bring the live show back to the conference next year, vaccine permitting.
Luckily we had Chris Gates behind the scenes by changing the dials, Alexandra Ames entering the program and some people to watch live.
- The Great American SPAC-Off: As both Opendoor and Desktop Metal approach public markets on the wings of SPACs, we wonder why. And why we have to keep talking about SPAC, which we don't want to do.
- But public markets are hot and active, with companies like JFrog and Snowflake going public to great effect. JFrog had a great IPO. Snowflake had a crazy IPO.
- But there was also a lot of action from private markets, including Airtable which raised $ 185 million, ApplyBoard raised $ 55 million. extension and Tonal raised $ 110 million, because connected fitness is hotter than SaaS at the moment.
- We also redid Natasha's adventure trends piece, delving into how to come to belief in a remote world. Apparently, we have notes on video games.
- And there were two new bottoms, including one from the Chainsmokers (hot, fun, awesome) and another from Greylock (traditional, Victorian and huge). In a more serious comment, the Greylock rise continues the era of mega-funds.
What did we talk about? All of this (and some very, very bad jokes):
And then we tried to play a game that may or may not make it to the final version. Either way, it was great to have Equity back at Disrupt. And there's more. Hugs from us!
