Member-only story
2020–01–19 | The Week At Work
| Microsoft Teams Ad Push | The Downside Of Work Chat | Workboard Raises $30M | VCs Hot For Work Tech |
Stowe Boyd | @stoweboyd
Stories
Microsoft launches global ad campaign for Teams, Slack competitor | Megan Graham reports on a big marketing push from Microsoft positioning Teams as the market-leading work chat tool over Slack. I discuss this at more length in Microsoft Has Grand Ambitions For Teams.
:::
How Slack ruined work | Sean Hargrave takes a negative tack on Slack, and really on work chat in general, citing the downside of synchronous, insistent communication. I expand on this and related themes in You Have To Go Slow To Go Fast.
:::
WorkBoard triples again in 2019, raises $30M from a16z to celebrate | Alex Wilhelm reports on a round by OKR tool Workboard:
WorkBoard, a SaaS startup that provides goal setting and management software to other companies, announced today that it has closed a $30 million Series C. The new capital comes less than a year after the startup raised a $23 million Series B. WorkBoard has raised $66.6 million to date, according to Crunchbase.
Andreessen Horowitz’s David Ulevitch led the round, which saw participation from Microsoft’s M12, GGV and Workday Ventures, each of which had put money into the company in preceding rounds.
Why did WorkBoard announce a Series C just 10 months after its Series B? That’s what we wanted to find out. As it turns out, the answer is growth.
Among other interesting aspects of this OKR solution, they have included a native integration of Microsoft Teams and Office 365. A Microsoft acquisition in the future? Valuation was not disclosed.
:::
Everyone Wants a Piece of Enterprise Tech Companies | Sarah McBride discusses the shift in VC toward enterprise tech, away from consumer tech:
According to PitchBook data compiled for Bloomberg, last year the normal order of funding in venture capital flipped. Enterprise technology companies, which specialize in software or services for businesses — long the dowdiest landing pad for venture dollars — attracted $30.42 billion, PitchBook data shows, about one-third more cash than consumer technology companies.
That funding total is growing fast. Enterprise companies’ venture haul for 2019 was almost double the previous year’s. Meanwhile, the cash going to consumer companies fell by almost a quarter between 2018 and 2019, according to PitchBook data, to $23.26 billion.
