Community-Led 💬 What's on the Minds of Early Adopters #16
The Fastest Growing Github Repository, Responsible AI, and Running Your Own Rules
Welcome to Community-Led. Each week we connect founders to dozens of early adopters and technology executives in fast growing startups and Fortune 500 companies. This newsletter surfaces the most interesting insights and conversations across the >1,200 members of the Decibel community every month. Let’s dive in!
One Big Trend Worth Your Time: Penpot: A New Era of Design Freedom
Penpot is a rapidly growing open-source design and prototyping platform loved by designers and developers in more than 10,000 companies around the world. Design tools have historically been controlled by proprietary vendors, using closed standards that create silos between designers, developers, and product teams. Penpot is a fundamental change in approach - an open-source and community-owned platform that breaks down traditional silos, enabling designers and engineers to seamlessly collaborate and create great user experiences.
Talk about traction! Already a wildly popular solution with over 10,000 GitHub stars, Adobe’s acquisition of Figma propelled Penpot to the #1 Fastest growing GitHub repository. The Penpot team is reaching new users by spreading the word about cross-functional (no more silos!) collaboration, Open Standards and taking an operating system-agnostic approach. Sign up to try it for free here!
The Watercooler: What we’re hearing in the Community
Decibel Community Events:
Decibel’s Early Adopter Summit
Next week, the Decibel team is in NYC to host our Inaugural Early Adopter Summit! Our portfolio company founders will come together with Fortune 500, early adopter executives to discuss how founders of B2B software companies can successfully introduce new products to market from the earliest stage of development. The connections made between the people in this community - between early adopter customers and technical founders - shape the future of enterprise infrastructure software and we are so excited to bring these connections to life.
3 THINGS EARLY ADOPTERS ALWAYS PROVIDE
Practical honest feedback to technical founders (…at the end of the day, isn’t this really what we want? )
Perspective on the actual and real world complexity of enterprise environments
Opportunities to use and test early stage technology
At Decibel, we work with operators who with track records of action and implementation, a desire to innovate fast, make calculated bets and prioritize the integration of new technology into their organizations in order to meet business objectives and drive a competitive edge. If I am describing you, please contact me at Stacey@Decibel.vc for opportunities to engage in our dynamic community.
Credo AI’s Global Responsible AI Summit
Now more than ever, global leaders recognize that building responsible AI can be a massive competitive advantage, build trust with the stakeholders and help companies proactively manage AI risks. I want to personally invite you to the 2022 Global Responsible AI Summit on October 27th, hosted by one of our portfolio companies, Credo AI.
You’ll hear from top experts in AI, data ethics, civil society, academia and government including:
Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock Partners, Co-Founder of LinkedIn & Inflection AI
Raj Seshadri, President, Mastercard
Dr. Alondra Nelson, Deputy Assistant to the President, The White House
Paula Goldman, Chief Ethical and Humane Use Officer, Salesforce
Register for the Responsible AI Summit here.
Decibel’s AWS Re:Invent Happy Hour…Vegas here we come 🚀
Please join us on Wednesday, November 30th at 5pm, during the 2022 AWS Re:Invent Conference in Las Vegas, where we are hosting a happy hour for founders, early adopters and investors to come together for an evening of networking and conversation. Everyone in the Decibel family is invited! Please RSVP here!
Decibel Friends and Family Update
🎉 Congratulations…
Anuj Kapur appointed as the CEO of Cloudbees
Craig Brabec joins Best Buy as a SVP, Chief Data Analytics Officer
Linda Tong moves to Webflow as Chief Operating Officer
Jim Gochee to Blameless as Chief Executive Officer
Luiz Gondim joins J&J as VP & CIO, Head of Technology LATAM
Dheeraj Khanna moves to VP of Cloud Automation, SRE and Product Security at NetApp
Srini Veerapaneni shifts to VP of Product at Upgrade
JJ Zhuang promoted to Chief Architect at Instacart
Steve Grossman new co-chair of Evanta’s New York CISO Governing board
Nancy Wang signs on as Venture Partner at Felicis
🚀🚀
CRN Names Slim.ai one of the 10 Hottest DevOps Startups of 2022
See you next time.
Thanks for reading. This is a community that you’re always welcome to add to. If you have any feedback or know a story that’s perfect for this newsletter, please reach out. Email me at Stacey@Decibel.vc.
Stacey