Meet David Arndt, Associate at Dawn
David is an Associate at Dawn and covers Enterprise Software in DACH and Israel. Let’s meet him!
Why B2B software VC?
Companies born today are built differently from the ground up, and incumbents try to capture previously inconceivable flexibility, modularity, and agility by moving to the cloud. We see massive room for growth for companies supporting and catalysing this transition.
Most exciting moment at Dawn?
Seeing a hugely exciting investment come together in a very short period of time, with a very high intensity due diligence phase and several sleepless nights.
What do you think is the most interesting trend in the industry, and why?
The advent of cloud has triggered a massive spur in the build-out of digital infrastructure and the structural shifts are massive, but not frictionless. I am most interested in the things that help cope with the challenges that arise in the process, be that tooling, resource optimization, orchestration, architecture, governance.
And the quick-fire round!
Netflix series you most recently binged on and you would recommend
Not a big series junkie :-)
Favourite SaaS metric and why
Retention, retention, retention. I know I’m giving the same answer here as all my colleagues at Dawn, but it’s true: high dollar retained revenue is the greatest testament to product-market fit and in my eyes, the most meaningful metric for many of the companies we’re looking at Series A and B.
Best book for a much-needed holiday
‘The Book of Why’, by Turing Award winner Judea Pearl. It explores our scientific understanding of the relationship between cause and effect and introduces the formalisms that can be used to ask ‘causal questions’. That’s something that has become increasingly important in machine learning research — but some of the concepts are also applicable in everyday life.
Best and worst thing to see in a deck
Best thing: a storyline that is supported by great numbers (even if very early).
Worst thing: when the numbers in the deck paint a more positive picture than the data room.
Recipe for the perfect evening/weekend?
Eating out, ideally Middle-Eastern! Huge fan of Israeli, Lebanese and Persian cuisine. Delamina is my favorite place to go in London.
If you could build one company right now, what would it be?
Very good question. One thing would be optimizing for cold VC inbound. I would probably go for a landing page with zero information and cryptic header that reads ‘One API for everything’.
Best piece of advice you have given or received?
Get a job you’d do for half the salary. (To the Partners at Dawn: please ignore this bit for my annual review :-))
