A New Era for Deep Collaboration
A New Era for Deep Collaboration
September 👉 Tips for Q4, welcoming Regal and Federato, promoting Yaz El-Baba, and more.
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🔦 FEATURED CONTENT
Deep Collaboration: Why Adobe Had to Buy Figma
By Jake Saper, General Partner at Emergence
With Adobe’s acquisition of Figma, Adobe is recognizing that its persona-based approach to software is the past, and Figma’s job-to-be-done-based (JTBD) approach is the future.
Adobe’s software suite was built using the paradigm that has been the standard for software design for the past 20 years: focusing on the needs of a specific persona. Adobe targeted the designer and built a robust set of tools for them; Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are all laden with extensive features to help the designer do their job.
The flip side of this narrow focus on designers is that the suite isn’t easily accessible by non-designers. The learning curve is steep. And, critically, the software wasn’t built with collaboration tooling. Since Adobe was focused on designers, there wasn’t a need to build tooling for cross-functional collaboration. As a result, “collaborating” in the Adobe suite looks largely like emailing files back and forth. This friction dissuades other personas from getting involved in the design process and isn’t a great experience for the designers collaborating amongst themselves.
Figma flipped this paradigm on its head. Instead of building for designers, Figma built for design. Many personas are involved in the job-to-be-done of design, from product managers to researchers, to developers, to marketers. By focusing on the JTBD from the beginning, Figma built a product that welcomed each of these personas, featuring easy onboarding and a heavy emphasis on collaboration. Figma embedded in-line commenting and “multi-player” functionality from the earliest days. As it grew, it added richer collaboration features like Figjam with the goal of ensuring the complete JTBD of design could be done within the app instead of scattered across myriad productivity and collaboration tools.
By dropping the “er”—focusing on design instead of designers—Figma built a tremendously valuable business. More than 65% of its users are outside of the design function. This cross-functional spread has led to phenomenal net revenue retention of over 150%, amongst the very best in software today.
We call the emerging category of products that are built JTBD-first “Deep Collaboration”. This software combines productivity and collaboration functionality in one place to get a specific, cross-functional job done. Instead of doing work in one place and then talking about that work across many scattered places, Deep Collaboration creates a single destination to build and collaborate around a specific JTBD. And it enables all the people involved in that JTBD to collaborate effectively, resulting in a job better done.
🚀 GO-TO-MARKET ADVICE
Tips as we head into Q4
From Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence
It's the end of September which means many of you are heading into Q4. There are a few very important things to consider as you slide towards the end of the year.
Focus on what's winnable now. You've got three, maybe four months to go in the fiscal year. If your ACV is more than $50k or you have a sales cycle longer than 60 days, you're done generating pipeline for this year. Focus on closing the deals in your pipeline that have the best chance of closing.
Build pipeline for Q1. Just because you might not be focused on building pipeline for Q4 doesn't mean you should sit back and rest. You should be analyzing what worked, what didn't, and what you should do more of, or less of, next year. You don't want to get off to a slow start in Q1.
Start 2023 planning NOW. Based on loose revenue expectations for next year you should be thinking about your capacity plans. Assuming basic industry standards for rep ramp time, a commercial rep takes three months and an enterprise rep takes nine to 12 months. This means right now you'll only get a commercial rep to full productivity by January/February of next year. If you need full production from all of your reps to hit your revenue targets then you might already be behind in hiring.
It's time to get a little paranoid. 60% of well-qualified deals in your pipeline will not close. You'll lose to the Status Quo/Dead No Decision. Ask yourself and your reps, which deals do you think might fall into the Status Quo? Now is the time to ask your reps "Why you might lose this deal? Are you clear about all of the risks associated with this deal?" You don't want to lose or push a deal out because the person signing the deal went on vacation and you didn't know about it.
🌟 THE LATEST
Promoting Yaz El-Baba to Principal
We’re proud and excited to announce that Yaz El-Baba has been promoted to Principal. In his three years at Emergence, Yaz has made an outsized impact, first as an Associate, then Senior Associate, and now already in his new role. Read more about Yaz’s contributions in our announcement, and join us in congratulating him on this milestone.
📰 PRESS
Our team featured in the news
Fast Company | What the Adobe-Figma deal says about the future of deep collaboration by Jake Saper
Wall Street Journal | Adobe, Figma Deal Signals New Era in Collaboration, Productivity featuring Jake Saper
💸 PORTFOLIO NEWS
Welcoming Regal.io and Federato to the Emergence portfolio
Regal.io, the outbound phone and SMS sales solution, announced their $38.5M Series A. Read about Regal’s early success in TechCrunch, and more in our announcement from Jake Saper.
Federato announced their $15M Series A funding to build upon their RiskOps platform for insurance underwriters. Read the coverage in TechCrunch, and more in our announcement from Lotti Siniscalco.
🔮 PORTFOLIO JOBS
Looking for your next role?
Check out the open opportunities at our portfolio companies.
GTM & Business Operations
Regal — Director of Demand Generation (NYC, SF, or Boston)
Textio — VP of Customer Success (Remote)
Top Hat — Director Enterprise Sales (Remote)
Xapo — VP of Growth (Remote)
Eng, Product & Design
ASAPP — Sr. Director/VP, Data & Analytics (Remote)
G2 — Sr. Director, Product (Chicago)
Ironclad — VP of Design (Remote)
Vymo — Head of Creative - Brand Design (Bangalore)
G&A/Operations
Assembled — Strategic Finance (NYC, SF, or Remote)
Bill.com — Sr. Product Counsel (San Jose)
project44 — Chief of Staff to CEO (Chicago)
Zipline — Head of People (Remote)
We have ~1,473 open roles on our portfolio jobs site. Check them out!
👀 EMCAP HAPPENINGS
Hello, Pier 5! 🦭
Earlier this month, we moved into our brand new office on Pier 5 in the Embarcadero, San Francisco. The space is right on the water with views of the Bay Bridge, Ferry Building, Treasure Island, and an occasional seal. We are so excited to be here and we’re looking forward to hosting events and gatherings in our new space soon.
