News and content

Why all startups should embrace (and seek out) critics

Critics can help your startup uncover hidden issues and improve your customer experience. Find out how to use constructive criticism to create better products and services.

V21 Annual Study: The Year of Living Cautiously

The mission of the V21 study is to examine early-stage financing dynamics amongst the industry’s highest quality startups. We analyze and report on the trends and characteristics of companies invested in by at least one of the 21 elite venture capital firms, the “V21."

The Vectorious Revolution: Pinecone, developer empowerment, and our AI-first future

The vector representation of data, and the types of processing it requires, is the lingua franca of AI and truly horizontal in its impact. An ever-expanding array of data, models, and applications benefit mightily from this new information architecture, and Pinecone has emerged as the leading data platform upon which they are built

The state of generative AI

While there are still technical challenges to overcome, the future of generative AI looks promising, and it will unquestionably play an increasingly important role in our lives.

Voices of the Market: RSA Conference 2023

It is apparent, in our view, that the security ecosystem is more advanced, more prepared, and more engaged than ever before. It is not clear, however, that our collective work is sufficient to change the current trajectory of cyber attacks, which seems to be only “up and to the right”. Fundamentally new approaches may indeed be called for. 

Enterprise trends from YC W23 Demo Day

Last week, the YC Winter 2023 batch presented their new businesses to an invitation-only group of investors, press, and others in the startup community. The two days included 265 startups, who were selected by YC from a pool of 20,000 applicants. 

The Cannonball Effect

Partnering with AirOps to bring AI to work

AirOps is launching a series of AI apps that are task specific, easy to install and configure, and are scalable and available everywhere. We are proud to announce our partnership with the AirOps team and lead their $7 million seed round.

The top 4 ways to hire A-players for your initial startup team

Find out why hiring top performers is crucial to the growth and success of your startup — and get some tips on how to identify and attract A-players for your team.

How Userflow bootstrapped to millions of ARR with three people and PLG

Learn from Userflow’s co-founder how the user onboarding app startup beat the odds with bootstrapping and PLG — while enabling PLG for other companies.

Big tech and generative AI: What the incumbents are up to

The world’s biggest tech companies revealed their plans for incorporating generative AI into their products and services at recent earnings calls. Read this round-up to find out what’s on the horizon for GenAI.

Aircraft Carriers, Death Stars and Why “Seed is the New A”

The early-stage financing world is changing rapidly. But what won’t change is what it takes to build a great company, and the absolute priority and intense difficulty of laying the foundation right the first time.

No Sign of a Venture Slowdown (Yet) Amongst Leading Firms

The V21 tracks the investment activity of a select group of the industry’s top venture firms. It is no secret that most startups fail, and that returns for the median venture firm often lag the S&P 500. The V21 data set represents more of the quality and less of the clutter.

Wing Congratulates Gong on its $65 Million Series C: “The Virtuous Data Cycle” in Action

We wish to congratulate the entire team at Gong on their tremendous progress. Gong was founded by Amit Bendov and Eilon Reshef, and it has been our honor to partner with them in their journey.

Crash Analytics: What the Last Two Downturns Tell Us About the Future of Early Stage Financing

Trust, Safety and Data: Wing Invests in Spectrum Labs’ $10 Million Series A

The Spectrum Labs team has deep experience building data-driven enterprise technology businesses. Founders Justin Davis and Josh Newman were key leaders at Krux Digital, a pioneer of marketing data technology that was acquired by Salesforce.

Seed is the New A – But What’s Next?

The 2021 V21 analysis will reveal a sharp reversal of some of the trends we’ve been documenting to date. Most notably, deal sizes and valuations will undoubtedly decline, as will the number of deals closed.

Why Data-First Applications Will Come To Rule Enterprise Software

Next-generation systems of record will be built around data at their core. The smarter incumbents are already trying to respond, but this could be an even more difficult transition for them than the leap to the cloud. Most won’t make it.

The Wing Manifesto, Part II: The DMC Shift

Data, Mobile and Cloud are driving a wave of change at a scale that we see only once in a generation. It is bigger than anything we’ve seen before and creates massive potential for innovators with great ideas. We look forward to working with founders and their early teams to lead this change and build companies that matter.

Powering Production ML: Why Wing Invested in Pinecone

We look forward to working closely with Edo and the entire Pinecone team to enable the next wave of ML applications as AI takes center stage in the Modern Enterprise.

Buzzy Storytelling Startup Tome Raises $43 Million From A Who’s Who In AI

Snowflake, before it was obvious

Snowflake is now a public company -- an overnight success, eight years in the making! I first met founders Benoit Dageville and Thierry Cruanes in January 2013 (Marcin Zukowski was still in Europe) and led Wing’s investment in the Snowflake seed financing soon after. We have invested in every Snowflake financing since, right up to today’s historic IPO. But when we made our initial decision, things weren’t quite so obvious.

The Modern Enterprise

The Modern Enterprise is an agile workplace built on data and powered by AI. As these technologies touch more people and processes, their impact grows exponentially and transcends traditional organizational boundaries.

CopyAI: Automated Creativity Tools Generate Business Content in Seconds

Writing business content is hard and time consuming—however, the need for great business writing only continues to grow. The acceleration of fully-digital products and experiences now means almost everyone at a business is a copywriter—whether you are the CEO, working in product, or writing ads for marketing campaigns.

Atlassian, Slack And The Promise Of ChatOps

Enterprise messaging services are starting to turn themselves into broader-based platforms. This is creating a new set of opportunities for startups that develop applications which can be embedded in the new communication tools.

Creating A Local Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Gaurav was recently invited to give the keynote speech at a startup conference run by Washington University in St Louis. During the event, he was interviewed by the local PBS television station and the conversation focused on what it takes to build a successful local entrepreneurial ecosystem. You can hear his thoughts in the video below:

Inc. Magazine on the Rise of Jasper and the Special Relationship between the Company's CEO and One of Wing's Co-Founders, Gaurav Garg

The 25 Hottest Startups that Launched in 2015

For Cybersecurity, Machine Learning Offers Hope Beyond The Hype

Bold claims have been made about the potential of machine learning to improve the state of cyber security. At least some of them will turn out to be accurate.

How To Build A Vibrant Local Innovation Ecosystem

Gaurav Garg, one of Wing's co-founders, gives his thoughts on the importance of creating local innovation ecosystems that are self-reinforcing.

Ten Business Tech Trends For 2016

As the New Year approaches, the team here at Wing has highlighted some of the most important trends we think will shape the enterprise tech landscape in 2016.

Instart Logic Raises $45M Series D Round for its Application Delivery Platform

Jasper: An Incredible Journey

Cisco's proposed acquisition of Jasper is a significant milestone in the development of the Internet of Things. In this post, I look back on my 11 years working with an incredible company and an exceptional entrepreneur--and explain why Jasper is a great example of Wing's approach to working with startups.

Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Jasper Technologies, Inc.

Cisco To Buy Jasper Technologies For $1.4 Billion

Cisco To Pay $1.4 Billion For Internet Of Things Firm Jasper

Speaking In Code: Microservices Are A Platform For The Next Wave Of Mass Communications

Next-generation ambient IT infrastructure—and the ability to use it without the cognitive burden of having to understand how it works—will bring a whole new dynamic range to the creation and dissemination of ideas.

Cisco to Buy Jasper In $1.4B ‘Things’ Push

Why Did Verizon and Hearst Acquire Complex Media? It's Simple

Oak’s CEO, Healey Cypher, Interviewed On CNBC

The Ruckus Wireless Story

The proposed acquisition of Ruckus Wireless by Brocade is a personal milestone for me. After Redback Networks, it's the second occasion that I have been a co-founder of a built-from-scratch, venture-funded public company. Here are some of the lessons from Ruckus's journey.

Startup YesPath Launches AI-Driven Platform That Automatically Targets Marketing Content

The Ruckus Wireless Story

Oracle Acquires Opower in $532M Deal

Moogsoft Raises $30M in Series C Funding to Fuel Global Market Expansion

Tigera Raises $13M In Series A Funding From NEA And Wing Venture Capital

Ashfaq Munshi, a Former CTO of Yahoo, Joins Pepperdata as CEO

A Q&A With Mohit Aron, CEO Of Cohesity

Wing is an investor in Cohesity, whose CEO, Mohit Aron, is a pioneer of hyper-convergence. As Cohesity approaches its first anniversary, it seemed a very good time to catch up with Mohit, and to talk about the company's progress.

Juvo: An Authentically Mobile, Data-First Application For Finance

Juvo, a Wing portfolio company that announced its global launch today, provides a financial identity and mobile financial services to prepaid phone users.

Dtex Systems Appoints New Executive Leadership

Juvo Launches with a Reach of 100M Users, Pursues Mission to Provide Financial Identity to Prepaid Mobile Users Worldwide

Juvo Reckons It Has Solved The Prepaid Credit Crunch

Oracle Buys VC-backed Palerra

Oracle Snaps Up this Startup to Boost Cloud Security

IoT Insecurity: A Clear And Present Danger For The Enterprise

The implications of an internet of insecure things were highlighted once again recently, when hackers leveraged tens of millions of IP addresses from a range of connected devices, including IP cameras, baby monitors, and home routers, to launch a massive Distributed Denial-of-Service attack on Dyn, a domain name systems service provider.

Cybersecurity Startup Shape Security Raises $40M Round

IoT Startup State Of The Union 2016

As part of ongoing research into The Internet of Things, we have been studying the state of the IoT startup ecosystem. This slide deck contains some of the data we’ve analyzed so far and we will be publishing more material in the weeks ahead. If you would like more information about our work please email us at info@wing.vc

Trireme Open-Source Security Project Debuts for Kubernetes, Docker

Cable & Wireless Partners with Juvo to Open Up Access to Mobile Financial Services in the Caribbean

For World's Unbanked People, Juvo's Steve Polsky is Turning Cellphones into an Entry Point for Loans

Wing Venture Capital Raises $250M Second Fund

The Wing Manifesto: Welcome To Wing Two

Wing Venture Capital, Founded by Former Accel and Sequoia VCs, Closes Second Fund at $250M

Food Analytics Startup Clear Labs Raises $13M

Announcing Wing's Investment In Clear Labs

Helping companies and governments to investigate and respond to food-related safety problems is a vital mission in today’s increasingly interconnected world. That’s why we’re delighted to announce our investment in Clear Labs, the world’s first food analytics platform for retailers and manufacturers.

Charter, Verizon Among Group to Trial New 'Open Caching' Platform

Clear Labs Raises $13 Million Series B To Scale NGS Platform And Analytics Offering For The Food Industry

Wing And The Internet Of Things

Two of our partners were interviewed recently about their views on the Internet of Things and its likely evolution. Gaurav Garg appeared on Stacey Higginbotham's IoT Podcast.

The Genomics Intelligence Revolution

At Wing, we are hugely excited about the potential of advances in genomics and data science to produce innovative startups. In a recent article in TechCrunch, I and Mahni Ghorashi of Clear Labs explored the changes driving the Genomics Intelligence Revolution.

HP Enterprise to Acquire Nimble Storage for about $1B

Rediscovering The Fundamentals Of Lending

Lending is an ancient business model—borrowing was invented early in the economic development of our species. Yet, we appear to have forgotten many of the fundamental elements of a profitable lending business in recent years.

Why Cohesity Founder Left Nutanix Before its IPO

Juvo Quietly Grows to 23 Countries on Four Continents

ScyllaDB Raises $16 Million To Facilitate App Building

Announcing Wing's Investment In SlashNext

Existing cyber security products are failing to protect businesses against emerging threats. SlashNext's innovative technology catches attacks they miss.

Wing's IoT Startup State Of The Union: An Update

Last October, we published a report on the state of the IoT startup ecosystem. Here's an update that includes fresh data and analysis through to the end of 2016.

Punt on Nutanix and Keep Your Eye Out for Cohesity's IPO

Cybersecurity Startup SlashNext Raises $9M

Snowflake Rakes in $100M to Grow its Data Warehouse as a Service

Data Storage Startup Cohesity Raises $90M

ServiceNow Acquires Qlue And Invests In BuildOnMe To Deliver Intelligent Automation To Everyday Enterprise Work

Aporeto Raises a Combined $14.5M of Funding to Deliver Simpler, Stronger, More Scalable Cloud-Native Security

Aporeto and the Future of Cloud-Native Security

As more and more applications embrace the micro-service architecture, Aporeto has the opportunity to become a truly strategic security provider for the cloud-native enterprise.

CloudPost Networks Raises $4M Series A Round Led by Wing Venture Capital to Transform IoT Security

A New Perspective On Cyber Risk

The Next Wave of Devices Brings the Next Wave of Risks: Wing Leads Seed Financing for CloudPost Networks

Today we are happy to reveal our investment in CloudPost Networks. Wing has led CloudPost’s $4 million seed financing, along with industry luminaries Dominic Orr, Dan Warmenhoven, Pankaj Patel and Prakash Bhalerao.

Cohesity Ranks #4 in Forbes "Next Billion Dollar Startups 2017" List

Shining a Light on Dark Data for Sales: Gong's Data-First Approach to Conversation Intelligence

We're excited to announce our investment in Gong, an AI-powered Data-First business application that enables sales organizations to extract hugely valuable intelligence from sales calls.

The Virtuous Data Cycle

AI-powered Data-First applications aren’t just data-driven; they’re “data-driving” too. Engineered to achieve broad deployment, they consume large original datasets, but also generate significant data exhaust of their own.

Gong, an AI-Based Language Tool to Help Sales and Customer Service Reps, Nabs $20M

Juvo Raises $40M to Bring Financial Inclusion to Emerging Markets

A Q&A with Steve Polsky, Founder and CEO of Juvo

Since emerging from stealth in September 2016, Juvo has been on an impressive growth trajectory. The company has increased the number of mobile subscribers it reaches via partnerships with mobile operators from 100M to 500M across 25 countries and four continents.

Juvo Announces Collaboration with Samsung NEXT to Deliver Vision of Access for All

Captain401 Rebrands as Human Interest, Raises $11M to Help Small Businesses Set Up 401(k) Accounts

Tigera Raises $10M to Help Enterprises Secure their Cloud Native Applications

Snowflake Computing Lands Whopping $263M for its Data Warehouse

Snowflake Closes $263 Million in Growth Funding to Enable Data Economy

Blockchain 101 by Wing Venture Capital

2017 witnessed a Cambrian explosion of new cryptoasset projects and a commensurate interest in the space by entrepreneurs, investors, institutions and governments.

Cumulus Networks Raises $43M in Series D Financing to Accelerate Global Adoption of Open Networking

Human Interest (Formerly Captain401) raises $11 Million Series A to Serve Small Business 401(k) Market