In starting country, it’s easy to get distracted by the brightest lights. Some companies excel, earning the business equivalent of a halo and casting their own brightness. And then, of course, there are the implosions and crashes that trigger waves of photons that inevitably cover our pages.
During the pandemic, companies such as Zoom and Peloton earned a (temporary) reputation. More recently, we’ve been fascinated by the flashing warning lights from companies like Better.com, Fast, and Bolt. Sometimes we fail to balance our coverage of the dazzling with the less sexy but still remarkable startup triumphs and tragedies.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.
Read it every morning on Marketingwithanoy+ or get The Exchange’s newsletter every Saturday.
Today we try a correction. At the other end of the news spectrum are companies that are constantly growing, don’t burn too much money – and therefore don’t collect too often – and stay busy with things that don’t demand headlines.
Last year, these companies fell into obscurity as fledgling startups with even a weak product-market fit were able to raise staggering sums of capital, while interest rates were near zero in their last quarters.
Things have changed. We’ve seen former darlings go through the wringer, the demise of much of the SPAC class, and some startup deaths.
But some private technology companies in less flashy markets did not fall prey to the hype cycle of 2021. Those companies in some cases trudge along to an IPO as the window opens again. And they haven’t gotten too much credit for their work.
Call it the revenge of the silent companies.
Give us an example, yes?
But of course. In the days of Box vs Dropbox, Egnyte competed in the same way. Since then, like Box and Dropbox, Egnyte has worked to expand its product offerings from the cloud storage market to the point where it’s actually a little hard to remember what it did to begin with.