Welcome to Ascent’s 2018 recap blog post. We couldn’t be more thankful for the opportunity to work with the smartest, most passionate and kind entrepreneurs and investors on a daily basis. 2018 was filled with lunchtime laughter, personal and professional growth, and plenty of new projects. We look forward to working with you in 2019 […]
The highlight of AWS Re:Invent is always the much anticipated keynote from CEO Andy Jassy. This year, over a three hour span, Jassy took us slide after slide through the dozens of new features AWS is rolling out. These were received by a mix of cheers and panic attacks from their competitors and hundreds of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
As an early stage enterprise tech investor, I was excited to go back to SaaStr Annual this year. For VCs, industry conferences are great for meeting with entrepreneurs, stress testing investment theses and learning from industry leaders to help our own portfolio companies. Since we are early stage investors at Ascent, most of the sessions […]
By: Baiyin Zhou and Luke Burns — As software continues eating the world, it has certainly changed the recruiting department in a big way. We aren’t the only investors excited about investing in and supporting this space – more than $1 billion was poured into HR technology in 2017. HR Tech: A Brief History Modern […]
For those of you still recovering from Dreamforce 2017, I interviewed Amy Holtzman, VP of marketing at leading event marketing platform Splash, to get the inside scoop on how they planned and executed on their own Dreamforce presence. For startups who don’t have the budget to buy a booth, take over a coffee shop, host […]
We’re fully into the cold weather in New England, watching the snow-guns fire away in the northern ski areas, recovering from Thanksgiving, and closing in on year-end numbers. We wish you all a blockbuster Q4. Here’s some of what we’ve been reading: Industry Themes In Innovation That Matters 2017, sponsored by the U.S. Chamber […]
