Milestones, gratitude, and the challenges ahead
Reflections on an IPO, a big round, and the ones that got away
For me, last week seemed like a unique point in time when about a decade’s worth of work suddenly came into the spotlight all at the same time.
Three milestones. In the same week: (1) JFrog went public on Nasdaq and began trading at a $5.75B valuation. (2) Snyk announced a $200M fundraising round at a $2.6B valuation on continued revenue growth. And (3) the Bessemer/Salesforce/Forbes “Cloud 100” was announced — including four companies that I backed in their first financing round: JFrog, SiSense, Snyk, and Front. Of the 30 companies I backed over 12 years prior to establishing Angular Ventures in 2018, these four unicorns are undoubtedly the most successful. I was incredibly fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and with the right state of mind when each of these four crossed my path.
- SiSense (2010) took months of deep diligence and dragging reluctant colleagues over the line.
- JFrog (2012) was highly controversial at the time because no one was convinced there was any money to be made in development tools (as it turns out, there is).
- Front (2014) was passed on by the firm I worked at at the time, so I joined the angel round (with my firm’s permission) — one of the first angel checks I ever wrote. I also nearly passed because I worried about barriers to entry, but Mathilde Collin was simply one of the most impressive early-stage founders I’d ever met. It was, admittedly, a tiny check, but it helped set me on a course to setting up Angular.
- Snyk (2015) was one of a handful of AngelList syndicate investments I made between going off independently and raising Angular I. I was blown away by Guy Podjarny’s vision for dev-centric “shift-left” security and basically camped out outside his office until he agreed to cut me into an oversubscribed round. I wrote up a memo for Snyk and could barely get the round filled — as virtually none of the syndicate members understood or agreed with the vision. Some even wrote me detailed explanations as to why they were passing.
Fear. So last week, I put my “buy” orders in on FROG stock and watched Shlomi, the JFrog CEO, get interviewed on CNBC with my wife and daughter looking on quizzically. It was a unique and wonderfully strange experience. Many VCs I know do great work for a whole career and never get to see a portfolio company go public. I know how much of a role luck plays in all of these outcomes — and how difficult it is even after all this time — to attribute success as a venture capitalist to any specific set of actions or attributes. They say VC has a long feedback cycle — and it does — but now on the other end of that feedback cycle, I am left wondering what the feedback actually is. The many misses- the many fantastic companies that I passed on (or know in my heart of hearts that I would have passed on) continue to haunt me. I passed on Wix, Yotpo, Waze, BigID, and many others. I would have passed on Walkme, Fiverr, Showpad, Pipedrive, Hopin, and many others. What can I learn from these errors in judgment? Am I still making those errors today? What is the balance between work and luck?
The challenge ahead. Even more frightening is the long feedback cycle that lies ahead. Investment decisions made in 2020 will yield results — one hopes — sometime in the next five to ten years. If they are less successful., we’ll probably know sooner. Ultimately, we are trying to identify founders with high levels of ambition, extraordinary capability, and — crucially — a differentiated vision of how the technology landscape will unfold and what needs to be built today to create the possibility for greatness tomorrow. That hasn’t changed — but even as the IPO confetti settles, the challenge remains as daunting and as humbling as ever.
Gratitude. My most profound feeling right now — aside from what I hope is a helpful dose of humbling fear — is gratitude. I am deeply grateful to the founders of all the companies I’ve worked with for allowing me to be a small part of their stories — many of which are still being written. I’m grateful to all the founders I met with and did not ultimately invest in for sharing their stories and visions with me. I’m grateful to my former colleagues at Genesis, Gemini, Index, and DFJ Esprit for the many learnings they enabled and for putting up with my impassioned arguments for the investments I believed in. I am grateful for my partners, colleagues, and investors in Angular Ventures without whom I could not even attempt this work. Most of all, I am grateful for the support of my family (Millia and Maya) who continue to put up with the early morning meetings, the late night calls, the alternating bouts of exuberance and terror, the imposter syndrome that won’t go away, and the never-ending highs and lows of the best job I can think of.
