McKinsey on Start-ups

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Finding faith in apps: Glorify co-founder Ed Beccle May 05, 2022

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 26:21) > Apps that aim to provide on-demand emotional, mental or spiritual support have soared in popularity in the last few years, some explicitly religious, others tied to meditation, psychotherapy or mindfulness. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the stressful world we live in, especially more than two years into the pandemic, when many people haven’t been able to regularly seek out their normal refuges in person. One startup helping fill this need is Glorify, a freemium, subscription Christian daily worship and affirmation app that offers biblical passages, devotionals, prayers, guided meditation and Christian music. So far, the app has amassed more than 2 million loyal users, and in just the last six months, it has raised $85 million in Series A & B funding. In this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, we speak with Glorify co-founder and co-CEO Ed Beccle.

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Making sense of the Metaverse Apr 21, 2022

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 20:14) > For all the often-breathless talk in the tech sector these days about the metaverse, no one quite agrees on how to precisely define it. But there seems to be a growing consensus that whatever it is exactly – virtual and augmented reality on steroids, the convergence of our physical and digital identities -- it is poised to become a major factor in both our personal and professional lives. In this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, we begin to explore the metaverse with a guest episode from At the Edge, the new podcast from McKinsey’s Tech Council, which recently launched with a three-part series on the topic. In this inaugural pod, tech futurist, author and corporate advisor Cathy Hackl shares her informed perspective on what the metaverse is, how it’s currently manifesting, and what it might evolve into in the future.

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What’s Fueling Pakistan’s Emerging Startup Ecosystem Apr 07, 2022

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 39:00) > Based on demographics alone, Pakistan is a country whose start-up ecosystem should have been thriving for quite a while. It has, for starters, the fifth largest population in the world, approaching 230 million. And that population is both overwhelmingly young, with a median age of 22, and bi-lingual, with the fourth largest number of English speakers in the world. Add to that one of the fastest-growing middle classes, more than 100 million mobile broadband subscribers, and hundreds of thousands of tech professionals, and you have all the makings of a fertile market for new enterprises and digital services. Yet until recently, venture or growth funding in Pakistan was barely a trickle compared to similar countries in the Middle East/North Africa region or in other parts of Asia. In the last couple of years, however, Pakistan has begun to live up to its entrepreneurial potential. To gain a valuable understanding of the changing dynamics of this emerging start-up market, including continuing challenges and growing opportunities, we spoke to two experts based in the region: Aatif Awan is the founder and managing partner of Indus Valley Capital, a Pakistan-focused early stage venture fund, and Abdur-Rahim Syed is a McKinsey partner based in Dubai who co-leads the firm’s start-up work in the region.

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Building a “digital operating rhythm” with OKR software Mar 10, 2022

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 40:24) > Deidre Paknad, co-founder and CEO of Workboard, is the guest on this episode of the podcast. Workboard is a leading platform provider in the fast-growing space of OKR software, a sub-category of enterprise planning software that helps customers manage and track their progress on Objectives and Key Results, the increasingly ubiquitous corporate planning method invented by Intel and popularized by Google. Paknad is a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose prior start-up had been acquired in 2011 by IBM, where she then oversaw a high-growth information governance business for 3 years. It was during that period that she realized how many organizations had no digital tools to provide what she describes as a “single source of truth” around a company’s strategy, alignment, execution, and outcomes. Instead, they have tended to rely on an unwieldy, largely manual and labor-intensive process full of meetings and slide decks. Since 2014, when Paknad and her husband Daryoush Paknad, a technologist and engineering veteran of Adobe and Netscape, co-founded Workboard, the demand for what the company calls a Digital Operating Rhythm has steadily grown. The pandemic-fueled growth of remote work and more frequent strategic planning has made corporations even more interested in using and tracking OKRs. The company tripled its head count last year, and also raised $75 million in an oversubscribed Series D round, bringing the its valuation to north of $800 million.

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What makes the difference for Europe’s top start-ups Feb 24, 2022

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 30:46) > In the past two decades, as technology and startups have radically reshaped our daily lives and the global economy, Europe could be forgiven for wondering if this new moment might pass it by. While still a global economic power, Europe’s relative lack of innovation and entrepreneurial success has become a major source of concern as it contemplates its future economic and technological competitiveness. In just the last few years, however, there have been encouraging signs that the tide is starting to turn. Greater amounts of foreign and domestic venture capital have flowed into both early and later stage startups to help close the funding gaps, and the pace and number of unicorns being created has accelerated. For both aspiring entrepreneurs and investors, the recent momentum raises the question of what exactly it takes to become a European Tech Champion. A team at McKinsey recently examined that issue in a report titled Winning Formula: How Europe’s Top Tech Start-Ups Get it Right. Two co-authors of this groundbreaking report, McKinsey Senior Partner Kim Baroudy and Associate Partner Jaap Vriesendorp, join the podcast to discuss the findings, including the four main archetypes of European start-ups and the key success factors that drive each one, and what they portend for the future of start-up ecosystem.

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Quick commerce pushes the limits on grocery delivery Feb 11, 2022

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 29:37) > It is no secret that the pandemic has fueled a boom in food delivery, but it isn’t just the sheer volume of orders that is soaring. The speed with which groceries or other household products can arrive at your door has really taken off, as a number of well-funded start-ups in the quick- or q-commerce space promise to deliver within just 10 or 15 minutes. One such leading player is Getir, which started in Turkey back in 2015 but now offers more than 2,000 everyday items to users in parts of Europe and the US. Joining us to discuss the company’s journey and the challenges and opportunities in the dynamic sector is Berker Yagci, the company’s regional general manager in Europe.

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Giving developers a leading role in cybersecurity Jan 27, 2022

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 37:19) > Cybersecurity has become so challenging and complex that the work of protecting against vulnerabilities is increasingly starting earlier, when developers are first building software and applications. This move to developer-first security is an extension of the broader shift known as DevOps, now practically the industry standard, in which the once siloed worlds of development and operations work together to build and iterate at a much faster and productive pace. Snyk, a leading platform provider of developer-first security tools, is one of the companies driving this approach, and Guy Podjarny , co-founder, chairman, and president, joins us. Guy previously served as the CTO of Akamai after selling his first startup, a web performance venture called Blaze.io, to the company. Earlier in his career, he built web application security products at startups as well as at IBM. He co-founded Snyk back in 2015, and it has been growing at a torrid clip, going from less than 100 employees a few years ago to just under 1000 nowadays. Last year, it raised more than $800 million, bringing its valuation to $8.5 billion. In his spare time, Guy hosts his own podcast, The Secure Developer.

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Next on the menu for food delivery Jan 13, 2022

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 35:25) > Any number of companies and industries have been upended by the pandemic of the past two years, but few consumer sectors have been more radically reshaped than food delivery. At the outset of COVID, lockdowns and physical-distancing requirements gave the category an enormous boost, as delivery became a lifeline for the ailing restaurant industry. Two years later, food delivery has gone from a steadily-growing but still small piece of the restaurant (and grocery) business to a major growth driver, worth more than $150 billion globally and having doubled in the US. Whereas restaurants largely used to handle the limited delivery options that existed, these days a complex ecosystem of players is involved, led by delivery platforms such as DoorDash, GrubHub, PostMates, and Uber Eats, just to name the dominant ones in the US. The fact that the sector has largely remained unprofitable hasn’t diminished the appetites of investors, especially as a new group of global quick-delivery or q-commerce players are raising the stakes, promising the arrival of groceries, restaurant food or virtually anything else in only 10 or 15 minutes. In this episode, McKinsey partners Vishwa Chandra and Victoria Lord, co-authors of a recent report on the food delivery sector, join us to discuss the rapidly evolving economics, the emerging battlegrounds, and new opportunities and challenges on the horizon.

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Turning India into a SaaS Power Dec 16, 2021

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 26:25) > Over the last decade, the rise of software-as-a-service (or SaaS) has dramatically transformed the software industry and the myriad enterprises it serves. As the pace of digital transformation and growth of cloud computing has accelerated, SaaS has rapidly become the software-delivery model of choice and preferred alternative to legacy, on-premise products. This paradigm shift to an on-demand, subscription-based model opens up a number of opportunities for new entrants and start-ups to make their mark in the sector, and India is one market particularly well positioned to do so. Earlier this year, SaaSBOOMi, a community of founders of Indian SaaS companies, released a report, Shaping India’s SaaS Landscape, that sought to quantify the country’s opportunities in SaaS and identify specific measures for how the industry could reach its full potential. Today, two guests who were involved with the report join us to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the burgeoning SaaS sector in India. Manav Garg is the founder of SaaSBOOMi and the Founder and CEO of Eka Software Solutions, a cloud-based enterprise solutions provider. Sid Tandon is a partner in McKinsey’s Silicon Valley office, where he serves executives and boards of technology, media and telecom (TMT) companies on strategic and value creation efforts.

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Fintech off the shelf: Making an all-in-one approach pay off Dec 03, 2021

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Listen to the podcast (duration: 37:48) > When it comes to start-up fundraising these days, new records seem to be broken practically every quarter. But few digital sectors are booming as much as the business of money known as fintech. Globally, the industry raised more than $90 billion in funding in the first three quarters of this year, almost double the pace in 2020, with 42 new fintech unicorns minted in the third quarter alone. Helping fuel this massive growth is the desire of so many different kinds of companies to be a fintech player, to one degree or another. As Arik Shtilman, the co-founder and CEO of Israeli fintech unicorn Rapyd, explains on today’s episode, companies “understand that the way to monetize on the relationships that they have with their customers is through payments.” Shtilman, a serial entrepreneur, founded the global fintech-as-a-service platform provider to make it relatively easy and simple for any digital business to do embed a wide array of financial services into their offerings.

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