The Investing Edge

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empow – Delivering on the Unmet Promises of Cybersecurity

The Investing Edge

I am thrilled to announce Ascent’s investment in our newest portfolio company, empow. While I am excited for all of our investments, this one feels special in that it exhibits several of the core themes of Ascent’s strategy: It’s a thesis driven investment based on months of research and outreach. It’s partnering with an exceptional entrepreneur from across the Atlantic to help build a US presence.

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Reimagining the Future of Work in the Enterprise

The Investing Edge

The world of work as we know it is in a state of flux – automation, robotics and other digital innovations are altering the fundamental nature of work. These developments bring the promise of higher productivity, safety, convenience and overall increased efficiencies, but also raise questions about the larger impact of technology on jobs, skills, recruiting and dozens of other workplace fundamentals.

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Ascent B2B IT Forum: Reimagining the Future of Work in the Enterprise

The Investing Edge

The proliferation of technology is impacting our everyday lives in a big way. From navigating our route to work to facilitating mundane everyday tasks, technology is proving as disruptive as anything we’ve ever experienced. The workplace is no exception – where every employee used to show up and work from nine to five and leave work behind at night and on weekends, today’s workplace looks much different.

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VC Due Diligence is a two way street

The Investing Edge

Borrowing an enterprise sales term, the “ funnel ” for startup opportunities at a venture firm starts very wide and ends up extremely narrow, and there are numerous stages along the way. From initial call or email to actual funding, there is a massive filtering process. The magnitude varies amongst firms, but to give you a sense, at Ascent, we see roughly 1,000 B2B business proposals throughout a given year, we meet with between 100 and 200, initiate diligence on 20 to 25, get really serious w

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Who Will Buy your Emerging Software Company?

The Investing Edge

As entrepreneurs who have been through the fund raising process know, this question is one they should be prepared for when speaking with potential venture investors. Giving some real thought and analysis as to who will be a potential acquirer and why is important as it the mostly likely way that investors will eventually get a return on investment.

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How the Splash Customer Team Transformed the Company

The Investing Edge

Customer account management, which includes customer success, customer support and implementation is the key to a growing a SaaS business. This department, which typically develops after sales and engineering, is often the difference between business success or failure because its main function is to keep your existing customers happy and growing. Without it, SaaS companies could run out of money constantly trying to replenish lost customers.

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Talent Acquisition Tech: It’s About Automation, Not AI. Yet.

The Investing Edge

At HR Tech 2018 “Artificial Intelligence” was the phrase of the week, slapped onto as many tag lines as possible. But after demo-ing many technologies at the Expo, I’m not convinced we’re there yet. HR tech tends to lag most other industries, and according to research by Future Workplace only 6% of TA leaders are using AI. Instead, there is still plenty of work to do around automating simple and repetitive aspects of the recruitment process, which make up approximately