It’s All About the Network

On June 13^th, 2018, Azure held our 12^th Annual CEO Summit, hosted at the Citrix Templeton Conference Center. Success for our companies is typically predicated on the breadth and depth of their networks in Silicon Valley and beyond. This event is a cornerstone of how we support this, providing a highly curated, facilitated opportunity to expand connections for business development, fund-raising, and strategic partner dialogue. It is also an opportunity for our portfolio companies to develop strong relationships with our investors, networks, and among each other, which provides business partnership opportunities, potential future investors and is a first step towards engaging with future acquirers. An incidental benefit to Azure is that the appeal of the event also leads to expansion of our own network.

Throughout the day, we had participation of nearly 70 corporate entities, venture funds and financial institutions, including Amazon, Google, Apple, P&G, Citrix, Ericsson, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Trinet, Arcserv, Citibank, SVB, and UBS, in addition to 28 of Azure’s portfolio companies, and six Canadian startups which were invited as part of Azure’s Canada-Bridge initiative. The Canadian companies were selected from a group of about 100 nominated by Canadian VCs. At the event, the six winners gained access to Azure’s Silicon Valley network not only through participation along with our portfolio CEOs in the approximately 370 one-on-one meetings we arranged but also through networking opportunities throughout the rest of the day and into the evening.

Nearly all the Azure portfolio companies participating gave demo-day style presentations to the full audience, which expanded the reach of their message beyond the more intimate one-on-one meetings.

Visionary Keynote Speakers

Azure was quite fortunate in once again having several visionary keynote speakers who provided inspiration and thought-provoking inputs from their experiences as highly successful entrepreneurs and investors.

The first was David Ko, currently President and COO, Rally Health, and formerly SVP, Yahoo and COO, Zynga (famous for Farmville which peaked at 34.5 million daily active users). David provided his vision for the consumer-focused future for managing health and shared lessons learned from his journeys both in taking Zynga public and in leading Rally Health as it has grown in eight years from a company with low single-digit millions in revenue to more than a billion in revenue. Rally works with more than 200,000 employers to help drive employee engagement in their health. Accessible to more than 35 million people, Rally’s digital platform and solutions help people adopt healthier lifestyles, select health benefits, and choose the best doctor at the right price for their needs. The company’s wellness solution focuses on four key areas to improve health: nutrition, exercise, stress reduction and preventive health. Given the astronomical increase in the portion of U.S. GDP spent on healthcare, David pointed out how critical it is to help individuals improve their “wellness” tactics. He believes this is one of the waves of the future to curb further acceleration of healthcare cost.

Shai Agassi, Former President, Product and Technology Group, SAP, and former CEO, Better Place responded to questions posed by me and the audience during a fireside chat.  Shai first shared his experience of building a business that successfully became integrated into SAP, but the heart of his session revolved around his perspectives on the evolution of the electric car and the future emergence of (safe) automated vehicles. He painted a vivid picture of what the oncoming transition to a new generation of vehicles means for the future, where automated, electric cars will become the norm (in 5-10 years). As a result, he believes people will reduce their use of their own cars and instead, use an “automated Uber-like service” for much of their transportation. In such a world, many people won’t own a car and for those that do, their autos will have much longer useful lives thereby reducing the need to replace cars with the same frequency. If he proves correct, this would clearly have major ramifications for auto manufacturers and the oil industry.

Our final keynote speaker was Ron Suber, President Emeritus, Prosper Marketplace, who is referred to as “The Godfather of Fintech”.  Ron shared with us his perspective that we’re at the beginning stages of the ‘Golden Age of Fintech’ which he believes will be a 20-year cycle. He expects to continue to see a migration to digital, accessible platforms driven by innovation by existing players and new entrants to the market that will disrupt the incumbents. What must be scary to incumbents is that the new entrants in fintech include tech behemoths like Paypal, Google, Amazon, Tencent (owner of WeChat), Facebook and Apple.  While traditional banks may have access to several hundred million customers, these players can leverage their existing reach into relationships with billions of potential customers. For example,  WeChat and Instagram have both recently surpassed one billion users. With digital/mobile purchasing continuing to gain market share, a player like Apple can nearly force its users to include Apple Pay as one of their apps giving Apple some unique competitive advantages. Amazon and WeChat (in China) are in a strong position to leverage their user bases.

All That Plus a Great Dinner

After an action packed daytime agenda, the Summit concluded with a casual cocktail hour and outdoor dinner in Atherton. Most attendees joined, and additional members of the Azure network were invited as well. The dinner enabled significant networking to continue and provided an additional forum for some who were not able to be at the daytime event to meet some of our portfolio executives.

The Bottom Line – It’s About Results

How do we measure the success of the Summit? We consider it successful if several of our companies garner potential investors, strike business development deals, etc.  As I write this, only nine days after the event, we already know of a number of investment follow-ups, more than ten business-development deals being discussed, and multiple debt financing conversations. Investment banks and corporate players have increased awareness of the quality of numerous companies who presented. Needless to say, Azure is pleased with the bottom line.