Female Foundry Week 146: Big, Bold, and Fast. User journeys in the AI era. From Zero to Hero. Female Foundry x Tech.eu Summit.
Welcome to The Week 146, 2024 Edition of the Female Foundry newsletter!
Female Foundry - the Future of Venture is Here.
In the news
German deinstruct, co-founded by Charlotte Rothert and Mona Feder, bags a €16.5M Series A led by HV Capital powered platform to improve safety, training, and efficiency for frontline workers; Reykjavik-based Circular Library Network, co-founded by Anna C W De Matos, raises an undisclosed Pre-Seed round from Impact Shakers, Fundforward and angel investors.
UK-based Thena Capital, founded by Esther Reynal de St Michel Richardot, Pamela Walker Geddes and Tatum Getty, launches Fund I with first close of £27m to back high-potential founders in areas such as oncology, chronic conditions, cardiovascular, neurology, mental health, care service delivery and women’s health.
Spotlight
Big, Bold, and Fast.
Google’s owner, Alphabet, announced landmark bid to acquire cloud security ‘startup’ unicorn Wiz this week for eye-popping $32bn (all-cash!), only eight months after Wiz turned down a $23bn offer last summer (at the time, Assaf Rappaport, Wiz’s founder reportedly said ‘We are going to go so big, we are going to make so much money in the future that you won’t regret it.’ - it looks like he was right!). Google’s acquisition is the largest deal ever made by Google and marks a pivotal moment for cloud computing, AI and cybersecurity.
Few might know, but Assaf himself is no stranger to big (and fast) exits—after leaving Microsoft’s Azure cybersecurity division in 2012, he founded Adallom, which was acquired by (surprise, surprise) Microsoft for $320m—a mere three years later! - Enough for a 31 year old to enjoy the beach for the rest of his life? Not so quickly.
In 2020, Assaf jumped back into the founder's seat with three others, yet again pressing on that speed pedal. In just 16 months, Wiz became a unicorn, with a $1.7bn valuation. By October 2021, its valuation had ballooned to $6bn and by February 2023, that figure had jumped to $10bn. Last May, the company raised $1bn in funding, reaching a $12bn valuation (!).
As Wiz's success grew at the breakneck speed, so too did its reputation. Last year, Wiz was reportedly already generating over $500m from high-profile clients like Salesforce, LVMH, BMW, and Slack, and is on track to hit $1bn in annual recurring revenue in 2025.
But this story is not only about timing, speed and huge potential of AI, it is also about big, big winners.
Once the deal goes through (closure projected for 2026), and given the continued sluggishness of the IPO market (Wiz’s second option), it seems likely that regulators (and the new White House administration) will approve it-the deal will be a huge payday for several people. - Shardul Shah, the partner of INDEX Ventures was Wiz’s first backer (he also led the second funding round for Adallom - a small world).
Now Index, the first backer, has seen its total $245m stake balloon to $4.3bn (17.55x return). Insight Partners, holding 8% of Wiz, is set to gain $2.7bn from the sale (15.5x return). Sequoia Capital, an early investor, will net around $3bn from its $10m investment, (300x return!). Cyberstarts, which co-led Wiz's 2020 Seed round with a $6.4m investment, now stands to make a stunning $1.3bn, resulting in a 203.125x return.
For now?
As businesses increasingly move to multi-cloud environments, Google’s acquisition of Wiz underscores its urgency of staying at the forefront of cloud services of the future. With AI, both funding and investment opportunities are evolving faster than ever, and only those founders (and investors) ready for a rollercoaster ride will stay relevant in the near future.
Fundraising
User journeys in the AI era.
What a fantastic week. I hope you too are engaging in some great conversations with innovators, disruptors, and builders shaping the new era these days! I could share so much of what I have learned and observed this week alone about building in the AI era—but I am now running late to a Sunday brunch with a friend, so I will plant just one thought here today.
How are you thinking about your user journeys today? See, in a world where your ideal customer is not likely to be your user, and where that user is also no longer likely to be a person (but an agent)—or, more specifically, dozens of different agents—how are you thinking about the user experience of your product and the user journey in the AI era? - I hope you are still with me? Where would I start? First, I would step back and look at the fundamental way in which a person (soon less likely), an agent, and a hybrid (agent-person) system engages with your product. How is your product’s value captured (integration), delivered (experience), and recognised (KPIs) by different users - is it a seamless process? Is it flexible/scalable? If it’s an agent - what are its objectives? How do you facilitate an end-to-end process to deliver maximum value?
Analysis
From Zero to Hero.
This week I have talked a lot about speed, but who are the founders behind today’s unicorns? A new study of 2,791 founders behind 1,110 U.S. unicorns found that 40% had previously launched companies, and those with Israel Defense Forces experience were 3x more likely to build billion-dollar startups (see this week’s Spotlight above). Tech giants are also strong launchpads, with Google producing 96 unicorn founders, followed by Microsoft (64) and IBM (42). Elite universities also played a key role, with Stanford (43), MIT (40), and Harvard (33) leading the way.
Serial entrepreneurship is also a common theme. Financial services had the highest rate of serial entrepreneurs (61%) and as much as 60% of unicorns have at least one repeat founder, with some exceptions - read: Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.
Community
Female Foundry x Tech.eu Summit
Female Foundry is an official partner of Tech.eu Summit and I hope to see you in London this week! - I’m one of the speakers joining the Summit, get your ticket here and let’s meet!
FREE ticket draw winners: Three winners of Tech.eu Summit complimentary £750 + VAT tickets are Darshan (cM4TC2), Hasina (Dfje0w), Kiki (YbsCWV). Congrats! - I will get in touch with you shortly. You can view the draw here.
Hiring
This week hiring:
CULT MIA ➯ Finance Accounts Executive | PLANTED ➯ Sales Manager | LangWatch ➯ Business Development Executive.
Events This Week
Monday, March 24, Lisbon ➯ LisboaUX | Wednesday, March 26, Berlin ➯ AI in Production Meetup | Thursday, March 27, Berlin ➯ Deep Tech Night | Friday, March 28, Amsterdam ➯ Foreign Founders Breakfast.
It’s been a busy week. Enjoy your Sunday!
Agata
Written by Agata Leliwa Nowicka, an investor, a startup adviser, a two-time entrepreneur, and a founder of Female Foundry based in London.
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Check femalefoundry.co for more fundraising tools and investor content. View other Female Foundry articles.