The Ridget Spinner: Spring 2022 đ°
Q1-derful highlights from Ridge Ventures
Need some pep in your step? Some zing in your spring?
Our new Ridget Spinner is just the thing.
Q1 at Ridge had it all:
- New additions to our portfolio and investment team
- A thought leadership barrage
- Myriad awards and an acquisition to remember
Plus, we packed plenty of other Cadbury Creme Eggs for you to enjoy. Scroll down and satisfy your sweet tooth!
Cerby & Chisel Join The Ridge Familia (Plus: Decacorn Fever!)
Weâre gaga and giddy over our two newest additions to The Ridge Familia: Cerby and Chisel!
Cerby, founded by Belsasar Lepe and Vidal Gonzalez, is solving the $400 billion shadow IT problem. We led its $12M round to help the security automation platform plug the countless security gaps caused by unauthorized app use.
Chisel (founder/CEO: Praful Chavda) is the product managerâs best friend. PMs hamstrung by old-school spreadsheets and slides can tap Chiselâs all-in-one solution to manage roadmaps, align product teams, and elicit feedback from customers.
Elsewhere on the Ridge radar, online hate eraser Spectrum Labs raised its Series B and Bolt entered decacorn territory ($11B valuation) thanks to $355M in fresh funding.
Ahoy, Mateys! Ridge Adds Three Venture Partners
Say hello to our three new Venture Partners: Wendy Phillips, Minn Kim, and Indranil âIndyâ Guha!
Wendy is a seasoned software entrepreneur who started her career as a VC at Advent International. She co-founded Gather Digital, and ran its sales and biz dev, after the company was acquired in 2017.
Minn is a Partner at On Deck, previously having invested at Bloomberg Beta, Bloomberg LPâs early-stage VC firm. Sheâs a future-of-work phenom with investments like Gatheround, Chef, and Skan to her name.
Indy leads marketing, partnerships, and channel sales at Signifyd, a billion-dollar fraud prevention business. Heâs sat on all sides of the table: as a VC (Bain Capital), board member, and marketing/sales extraordinaire.
VCs on Skis: The Ridge Founder Summit Returns
In March, we returned to Tahoe for our annual Ridge Founder Summit.
The novice skiers on our team (names redacted) repeatedly fell down but always got back up â a perfect encapsulation of the founder journey!
An avalanche of gratitude to all of the LPs, founders, and friends who spent the two days with us. Tremendous thanks to Ridge founders Matt Kilmartin (Habu), Jack Welde (Smartling), David Spector (ThirdLove), and Erik Swan (Bestomer) for facilitating awesome group sessions on building early momentum, rapid scale, sales success, and leading through crisis.
Special thanks to distinguished guests Melissa Knox and Chris Hecht for leading discussions on exit strategies and Chetna Mahajan, Joe Colliss, and Reena Tiwari for enlightening all of us on how best to get IT, procurement, and legal to be allies in the buying process.
Acquisition Alert! Trifacta & Alteryx Become One
We love to see our companies thrive, especially a signature Ridge investment like Trifacta, who we backed in 2016 to keep data clean as a whistle.
Data analytics platform Alteryx recently acquired Trifacta. Itâs an immaculate pairing of Trifactaâs flexible cloud-native data management and Alteryxâs low code/no code offering.
Prior to the acquisition, Trifacta had branched out to the Asia-pacific region; launched its Data Engineering Cloud for Snowflake; and continued to excel in its partnership with Google Cloud.
A rollicking congrats to CEO Adam Wilson, co-founders Sean Kandel, Joe Hellerstein, Jeffrey Heer, and the entire Trifacta team!
âThe Word Processor is Mightier Than the Swordâ
âTwas another quarter full of erudite thought leadership.
On the Ridge side, Partner and Chief Insight Officer Yousuf Khan landed a CIO how-to in TechCrunch while penning LinkedIn articles for Vest Side Stories.
New Ridge Venture Partner Wendy Phillips launched a LinkedIn series of her own: a two-part meditation on choosing the right B2B SaaS sales structure.
Ridge portcos waxed philosophical, too. Ontic exec Fred Burton reflected on the January 6th US Capitol attack and explained how we can prepare for similar threats. Ketch founder/CEO Tom Chavez, meanwhile, shared some cogent soundbites in a Fast Company profile.
A Red Carpet Affair
Deduce kicked off award season with a biggun â Fast Company named them the most innovative security solution of 2022. A week later, Deduce partnered with Auth0.
Zipline did some plaque-stacking of its own, landing in the CB Insights Retail Tech 100 while founder/CEO Melissa Wong nabbed a spot on Rethink Retailâs Top Retail Influencer list.
Ever the work culture trailblazer, Brazeâs UK office was honored as one of the countryâs best workplaces.
Cliff Notes
â°ď¸ Crainâs NY wrote about Near Space Labsâs out-of-this-world balloon fleet.
â°ď¸â°ď¸ NPR explained how Discordâs business model is changing social media.
â°ď¸â°ď¸â°ď¸ Vox used SafeGraph data in its coverage of Pelotonâs tailspin.
Marching into Q2
Thatâs the end of our Q1-derful Ridget Spinner. Stay tuned for some epic news in the weeks ahead.
See you in Q2!
