Aikido: Bundling Cyber Security for SMEs — After years of unbundling, bundling is sexy again. B2B software’s new mantra is about efficiency, value for money, simplicity and focus — and cybersecurity is no exception. This is especially true for SME and mid-market companies. This segment is not served well by the plethora of complex, expensive and deep…

PLG Trifecta Score: SaaS Heaven or SaaS Hell? — Published in Connect Ventures Opinions In Part 1 we introduced the framework of PLG Trifecta a simple way for product-led founders to boost their PLG superpower. In this Part 2, we’ll share practical tips to score PLG potential and to let founders figure out if they are in SaaS Heaven…

Making work “work better” for smart teams — I am thrilled that Connect Ventures is once again backing the formidable duo Gabriel Hubert and Stanislas Polu in their new journey with Dust. We are participating in the today announced 5M€ seed round led by Sequoia, together with XYZ, GG1, AIGrant and others great microVCs and angels. At Connect…

Collaboration on live product. Where it naturally belongs. Everyone should be able to contribute to product development. Even a marketer like myself 😎 Figma made collaboration easy during the “build” stage. But once a product enters the “post-build” stage, the iteration workflow begins, and it can get messy very quickly…

CS without the BS When you focus your investment activity on SaaS as I do, you know that the Customer Service (CS) category is like the Champion’s League of B2B software — it is the largest software category in terms of business impact and market value. Why? because every company…

Build teams collaboratively Prior to going into VC, I co-founded a company that I ran as CEO for 7 years before getting acquired in 2008. Like the majority of startups, over the years, we underwent many changes. The product went from content to software to a mix of both; the…

After 15 years of partnering with top product people and investing in their product companies, I can conclude that product LOVE is the ultimate superpower but it is damn hard to come up with a repeatable process for creating it. Through loved products in our portfolio (Citymapper, Thursday, Typeform, Progression…

From Problem to Purpose, how Oyster has become a unicorn in less than 24 months — Oyster, the global HR platform and Employer Of Record that empowers the hiring of distributed teams across borders, today announced $150 Million in Series C funding. The funding also establishes Oyster as a unicorn less than two years after our launch. We were the first investor in Oyster, and as…

What I learned from Typeform on how to reach SaaS Heaven — Typeform announced today that it has raised $135 million in Series C funding. Techcrunch news here At Connect we are very proud to have been early believers in Typeform. We led Typeform’s Seed round in 2014 and fully participated in their following A and B rounds. While we are certainly…