Welcome back to another Startup Sitdown, an end-of-the-week series where I propose a directional arrow of progress and some interesting startups in line with that arrow.
A “directional arrow of progress” — a term coined by Josh Wolfe — means identifying the way an industry is trending, regardless of who the entrepreneurs or companies are.
Let’s get right into it…
Today’s directional arrow of progress: consumption-based models, specifically XaaS, enabled primarily by the cloud.
What is XaaS? (and no, it’s not the name of one of Elon’s kids)
XaaS stands for everything as-a-service. This can include platforms, software, infrastructure, or really anything that can provide iterative value (e.g. used over and over) to a business.
Some cool startups embracing this XaaS model today…
7-year-old NYC-based enterprise blockchain platform focused on developing applications on its “blockchain-as-a-service” platform
Recently raised $41 million in funding 🤑
3-year-old SF-based startup focused on decarbonizing America’s power grid through a cloud-agnostic “grid management as-a-service” platform
Secured $16 million in a Series A to expand its grid management software platform 🤑
Key Takeaways ⚡
Many tech companies have begun shifting to a consumption-based service model for providing products and capabilities. This isn’t surprising as the market is driven by customer needs, wants and desires.
This new business model facilitates an “only pay for what you need” commitment from customers, resulting in increased agility, new capabilities, and better management of costs and capacity.
Similarly to the paradigm of no-code methodologies (blog post on that here), the adoption of everything as-a-service business models enables infinite, but simple, scalability and real-time monitoring that could not be done with on-prem.
a wonderful example of this is Camus’ grid management as a service product where utilities subscribe to reliable, secure cloud-based tools.
By switching to the cloud, the utility industry — traditionally run on archaic systems — can unlock an entire world of capabilities that were impossible before.