The sheer volume of Demo Day is intimidating. But it is also one of the most efficient ways of witnessing the beginning of a market trend. Whereas it might typically take months or more to see a pattern emerge, the number of overlapping companies at Demo Day, coupled with the subsequent rapid dissection with other VCs lends itself to speedier absorption.
With that in mind, here are three companies that presented on Day 1, and what they reveal about the broader market.
1. Intersect Labs, and ‘No-Code’ Coming to Big Enterprise
Providing ‘predictive analytics in 3 clicks,’ Intersect gives companies an easy way to apply machine learning to their data.
Companies like Shopify, Webflow, and Carrd have risen to prominence by giving ‘makers’ a simpler way to present their business to the outside world. In short, these providers have focused on giving individuals (and small teams) an external face, along with some necessary back-end logic. We are now entering a new phase. Now that tooling has matured sufficiently, ‘no-code’ companies are increasingly taking aim at big enterprise. Companies like Clay, Retool, and Intersect Labs, offer robust platforms designed for internal use by bigger teams. While I expect many of these companies to still focus on acquiring makers in the short-term, their focus on the back-end gestures towards their future — as essential building blocks of both startups, and the Fortune 5000.
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*Also this batch: Draftbit, Midtype, Dashblock
2. Mighty, and the Lure of ‘Luxury Software’
This desktop app makes Google Chrome significantly faster, using 10x less memory.
Discussing Superhuman, Jason Calacanis mentioned that he initially found the concept ludicrous. Building a faster email service than Google? And worse, yet, making users pay a dollar a day for it? He nevertheless invested, and his leap of faith has paid off so far with the company recently announcing a raise from a16z. Vohra & Co.’s success seems to have opened the door for others to take a shot at supercharging software previously assumed to have been a commodity. Over the past couple years , companies like Woven and Clockwise have taken on the humble, while both Notion and Coda appear to be an effective job swallowing Google Docs.
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*Also in this batch: Dex
3. Nomad, and the Gap Left by Going Public
By charging drivers $99/month, Nomad is able to offer commission-free ride-sharing. Given that Uber/Lyft take 40% commission, this allows the company to give drivers 20% more of a fare, while still making rides significantly cheaper.
Now that Uber and Lyft have finally made their public bows (and are constrained by the vagaries of investor sentiment), there seems to be a willingness to take them on again. While I think we’re at the very beginning of this trend, I’ve been interested to see companies like Hitch (long-distance rides) and Onward enter the market and look to win share. I’m especially interested in Nomad’s driver-friendly, infrastructural take on the space, and the protocol-based approach discussed in this (amazing) NYT piece from Steven Johnson.
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*No others in this batch…