Remarks by Peter Wagner:
"Thank you NASDAQ for your support of Wing and the Enterprise Tech 30 project. This is Wing’s tenth anniversary, so it’s especially meaningful for us to be here today.
We started Wing a decade ago with the goal of building a unique type of venture firm, completely dedicated to early-stage investing and long-term company-building, with a sharp focus on how data and AI would change the world of work. From the beginning, our mission has been to help people do their best work, first and foremost the founders we partner with, and also their customers, who are empowered with breakthrough technology products.
Last week we began the next phase of this mission, announcing the close of our newest fund, the $600 million Wing Four, which will be devoted to supporting exceptional founders driving the AI-first transformation of business.
And we certainly have an exceptional group of founders and startup leaders with us here today! I’d like to offer a big welcome to all the Enterprise Tech 30 companies here this morning. Original research has been part of the Wing model since our founding, and about six years ago Wing’s Head of Research, my partner Rajeev Chand, and I decided to try to highlight the most exciting private companies in B2B technology. Our goal was to shine a light on the pioneering work being done in some under-the-radar sectors that were shaping the future, but didn’t always get the broader recognition they deserve.
We combined a data-driven analytical process with carefully curated voting by over 100 of the venture industry’s top enterprise technology investors. The result is the Enterprise Tech 30, which is now in its 5th year. The project identifies the most promising emerging companies in early, middle and late stage cohorts. It should come as no surprise that a large proportion of this year’s Enterprise Tech 30 are already leading the way in the use of AI to deliver business impact.
Several prior Enterprise Tech 30 honorees, such as Confluent, GitLab, HashiCorp, DataDog, UIPath and of course our own Wing portfolio company Snowflake, have already gone on to become household names, execute landmark IPO’s and even ring this very bell! I’m confident a similar future awaits quite a few of the incredibly promising companies being recognized in this year’s select group. Please join me, Wing, our media partner Axios who is here with us too, and of course our friends at NASDAQ and in congratulating the 2023 Enterprise Tech 30!"
