Here at Dawn, we’re big believers in focus. In an early-stage startup the possibilities truly are endless, and so it’s essential to do one thing better than anyone else. In this domain, hedgehogs usually beat foxes. Following that philosophy, the past few years have seen an explosion in the tooling for the data stack. First-generation data …

Salesforce, Shopify, Atlassian: the world’s most iconic and valuable SaaS companies are the ones that pioneered a category and have become synonymous with it. Category creation is notoriously difficult, as it involves forging one’s own path and educating buyers about a new concept. So at Dawn we get very excited when we see a business …

Buzz in the cyber space tends to be focused on shiny new tech that promises to provide a silver bullet. At Dawn, we see a gap for a new generation of cyber champions focused on using tech to supercharge security processes, not reinvent them. Today’s world is a hacker’s dream. With millions of employees across …

“In an ideal world, a security vulnerability is flagged, then resolved as quickly as possible by the relevant security, IT or DevOps teams.” We couldn’t disagree more. The problem–solution structure of the traditional security paradigm goes like this: Commercial software is plagued by vulnerabilities, and IT and security departments, already flooded with potential risks, are …

We’ve all heard of customer success — making sure that the person who’s bought your software and who will make the decision on renewal is happy and well looked after. SaaS businesses add customer service early on in their journey, ideally as soon as they have live deployments. But as a next phase of maturity, …

The venture debt industry has seen eye-watering growth over a decade-long bull run. In the US alone, volumes rose from $6bn in 2015 to $10bn in 2019, according to research from Kruze. And on the back of this, a vibrant ecosystem of lenders, advisors, brokers and service providers has sprung up to support this rapidly growing …

If just three months ago anyone had suggested that Western governments would be launching apps to track the movements of their citizens and record who they had met, the reaction would have ranged from hilarity to outright revolution. And yet these apps are arriving with hardly a ripple. These unprecedented and devastating times put the …

If giant, sleepy car companies can shift to make ventilators, then nimble software companies should have a much easier time repositioning their products to suit the current market; after all, software is just a bit of code — isn’t it? Indeed, the last few weeks have seen B2B software companies move fast to adapt to …

The future of digital publishing Last decade saw the emergence of publishing brands targeting new audiences with innovative content. Traditional newspapers and magazines also went digital, and either scaled back or discontinued their physical print-runs. But it appears that online publishing is now in crisis, with publishers struggling to make ends meet. Several have gone bust …

Our investment in Dataiku The modern data toolkit Organisations of every size and type are becoming more sophisticated in their use of data, and as investors we continue to see tremendous opportunity for startups in this space. In 2015 we invested in Collibra, which has since grown to become the world’s leading data governance platform, and …

The old paradigm Walls, barbed wire, intruder alarms. Just like domestic security, cybersecurity is built around two fundamental principles: try to keep the bad things out, and try to detect them if they do slip through your defences. Ultimately, however, you know your perimeter wall can’t keep everything at bay: the most determined attacks will …

Today we’re excited to announce that, with participation from Albion and HSBC, Dawn has led a $20m Series B round into Quantexa. Here’s why. Making data useful In recent years there have been important advances in data analytics. It has become increasingly easy to get data out of silos and into centralised repositories where it has …