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Quaterly Roundup Edition

March 26, 2023 by Jay Cuthrell newsletter devx vc mergers acquisitions graphql

Music: James Elmore - Quarter Past Nine (1954)

This week is a quarterly roundup of links to DevEx/DevX VC funding and M&A related news you might have missed.

Getting Informed

This week we take a break from music inspired layout and will focus on the key news in January, February, and March you might have missed relating to DevEx/DevX related venture capital funding as well as mergers and acquisitions. Don’t worry, we’ll be back to music inspired layout again in April.

Why the break? Feedback and metrics have intensified the experimental itch.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linking-linkedin-lessons-learned-jay-cuthrell/

Also, readers asking “what do I need to know” and “what is going on with VC lately” about recent news is worth exploring. Here’s to this experimental issue and more experiments to follow.

January

There are some really amazing companies, making a difference in how practitioners and organizations can accelerate their journey in both platform, engineering, as well as overall cloud adoption. Some of those companies remain independent, and others have been acquired.

https://www.techmeme.com/230125/p35#a230125p35

Even with a constant drumbeat of gloom and doom in tech news coverage (because something something deal flow), there are actually _many_ bright spots and stories to celebrate. As I said back in 2012, in the rush to report, always consider the tone of the coverage in all things tech journalism related.

February

I’m no Pollyanna, but if you were only paying attention to headlines, it would seem that venture capital has closed every door and settled in for some kind of existential hibernation. Unfortunately, for those headline writers, it doesn’t really make sense if you are looking at developer experience related investing.

https://www.techmeme.com/230201/p35#a230201p35

https://www.techmeme.com/230207/p36#a230207p36

https://www.techmeme.com/230215/p18#a230215p18

https://www.techmeme.com/230215/p21#a230215p21

https://www.techmeme.com/230223/p29#a230223p29

https://www.techmeme.com/230227/p9#a230227p9

https://www.techmeme.com/230228/p20#a230228p20

https://www.techmeme.com/230228/p22#a230228p22

Also, there was M&A activity. For example…

https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/ibm-graphql/

Has venture capital slowed? Has venture-capital become more intense with regard to diligence? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

March

A few readers asked about the slowdown in news for mergers and acquisitions. Well, again, slowdown is relative.

https://www.techmeme.com/230302/p31#a230302p31

If you read Ed Sim or Tomas Tunguz, you probably noticed this tweet:

https://twitter.com/ttunguz/status/1639360890368847872

So, where will the investments be headed towards in the real of platform engineering and developer experience? Great question.

https://www.techmeme.com/230309/p26#a230309p26

https://www.techmeme.com/230314/p14#a230314p14

https://www.techmeme.com/230320/p20#a230320p20

While nothing in this newsletter or my content creation should be viewed as investment advice, I’d suggest looking at the DevOps Benchmarking Study 2023, Sequoia’s views on what comes next, and investments in quantum computing in order to identify some possibilities for what would make DevOps and platform engineering more aligned to beneficial business outcomes.

https://humanitec.com/whitepapers/devops-benchmarking-study-2023

https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/ai-powered-developer-tools/

https://www.techmeme.com/230323/p36#a230323p36

Of course, many of these links were just a quick search away on Techmeme. Does that means the links are exhaustive? Hardly.

So, what will be the next big thing in DevX/DevEx related venture capital funding as well as mergers and acquisitions?

Until then… Place your bets!

Stay tuned!