Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Mark Cranney
Boss Talk with Ben and Ali: Enterprise Selling for Technical Founders
This first appeared in the monthly a16z enterprise newsletter. Subscribe to stay on top of the latest in enterprise and B2B. For technical founders, building out a successful enterprise sales motion and team can be one of the most daunting tasks. After all, the skills and culture of enterprise selling are typically very different from the engineering and product culture that these founders come from.
Celebrating the FAA’s Tactical BVLOS Announcement for Public Safety Agencies
Today we are celebrating the FAA’s announcement that every public safety agency can apply to conduct the game-changing Tactical Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations that Skydio pioneered in partnership with the Chula Vista Police Department (CVPD). This news means that appropriately authorized public safety agencies nationwide can send drones into areas that are too dangerous to send people.
U.S. Autonomous Drone Maker Skydio Raises $100 Million, Accelerates Growth in Consumer, Enterprise, and Public Sector
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.- Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight technology, today announced it has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Next47 with participation from Levitate Capital, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, and Playground, bringing the company’s total funding to $170 million.
Why I Joined Skydio Team, Tech, Timing By Mark Cranney
Team, Tech, Timing By Mark Cranney Team: MIT founders + go-to-market team = acceleration I first met Skydio founders Adam, Abe and Matt in 2014 when I was an operating partner at a16z. The secrets they had learned and earned via their research work in Robotics and Autonomy at M.I.T. had crystalized their product vision and fueled their passion to become the world leader in autonomous drones.
Skydio Introduces The New X2 Family of Drones and Breakthrough Autonomy Software For Situational Awareness and Inspection
Redwood City, Calif., July 13, 2020 — Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight technology, today announced the upcoming availability of a new autonomous drone platform for enterprise and public sector, the Skydio X2. Skydio also announced several new software solutions that simplify inspections and situational awareness workflows: Skydio Autonomy Enterprise Foundation, Skydio 3D Scan, and Skydio House Scan.
U.S. Autonomous Drone Maker Skydio Raises $100 Million, Accelerates Growth in Consumer, Enterprise, and Public Sector
Redwood City, Calif., July 13, 2020 — Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight technology, today announced it has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Next47 with participation from Levitate Capital, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, and Playground, bringing the company’s total funding to $170 million.
All Things Sales! 16 Mini-Lessons for Startup Founders
As a former CEO and software engineer (Citrix, XenSource, VERITAS, etc.), board member of GitHub (recently acquired by Microsoft), and lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Busines, a16z general partner Peter Levine is constantly asked “Why sales?” by entrepreneurs and technical founders. He himself used to hold the “engineer-centric” view that if you build a great product, customers will come. But the fact is, all world-class companies must have a strong sales force.
Why Must You Pay Sales People Commissions?
“I’d be a billionaire if I could get a dollar for all the bullshit I hear today” –Big Sean, The One I felt a little odd writing that title. It’s a little like asking “Why should you give engineers big monitors?” If you have to ask the question, then you probably won’t understand the answer. The short answer is: don’t, if you don’t want good engineers to work for you; and if they still do, they’ll be less productive. The same is true for sales people and commissions.
Why I Joined SignalFx - SignalFx
I never planned to stay that long. When I joined a16z as an EIR in 2010, I did so in order to quickly expand my view of startups to join as an operator to get another at bat to do something special like we had done at Opsware. I had absolutely no intention to be a VC or work for one.
Distribution | Andreessen Horowitz
When I ask new entrepreneurs what their distribution model will be, I often get answers like: “I don’t want to hire any of those Rolex-wearing, BMW-driving, overly aggressive enterprise sales slimeballs, so we are going to distribute our product like Dropbox did.” In addition to taking stereotyping to a whole new level, this answer demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of how sales channels should be designed. What is a sales channel? It’s a route to market for a product or set of products.
a16z Podcast: Messages and Movements in Politics AND Business
In business, as in politics, “the movement is the message” — whether that “movement” is a product that’s taking off grassroots-style in an enterprise, or is a political candidate.
a16z Podcast: Pricing Free
Now that we know to price and plan early, price high — especially for category-creating or “pre-chasm” businesses — how do we handle freemium models? While free to premium is a great way to get bottoms-up, often viral traction in an enterprise, the challenge is figuring out just where and how to “draw the line” between where free ends and paid begins. Especially for open source, which while not necessarily free/mium, is also affected by these questions.
a16z Podcast: Pricing, Pricing, Pricing
“Raise prices.” Regular listeners of our podcast have heard this advice more than once. But why is this so key and yet so hard for many technical founders? And how should startups go about raising prices — or more specifically, creating value — for their products?
a16z Podcast: The Why, How, and When of Sales
The hallmark of many great technical founder/CEOs is that they envision a better way of doing things, and that’s why they’re building a company that delivers on that better way, often disrupting the way things have always been done before. But this very mindset can backfire when it comes to sales. Why shouldn’t they reinvent the sales process?
If SaaS Products Sell Themselves, Why Do We Need Sales?
BY MARK CRANNEY One of the myths of SaaS is that the products are so good, so easy to use, so quick to deploy … that the product sells itself. Given the popularity of try-before-you-buy and freemium-to-premium models for software as a service, it’s easy to see where that myth comes from. But as many startups discover to their horror — after they “land” users and try to “expand” to more departments in a large company or government agency — this is far from the truth.
If SaaS Products Sell Themselves, Why Do We Need Sales?
BY MARK CRANNEY One of the myths of SaaS is that the products are so good, so easy to use, so quick to deploy … that the product sells itself. Given the popularity of try-before-you-buy and freemium-to-premium models for software as a service, it’s easy to see where that myth comes from. But as many startups discover to their horror — after they “land” users and try to “expand” to more departments in a large company or government agency — this is far from the truth.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Mark
Contact Mark, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack