As many readers know, Bowery Capital’s thesis focuses on the notion that internet natives will drive over $350B+ of IT spend shifts by 2020. We focus our thesis a lot around the next generation of CMO, CTO and CIO tools but as most people know there are countless other decision-makers that are beginning to emerge and control spending within their companies. One of those areas near and dear to me is the intersection of product management and finance. Have you ever wondered how top companies prioritize product development? What happens when a CFO doesn’t agree with a PMs pipeline and their priorities? Every company faces the challenge of prioritization and budgets, and as a veteran product manager, I’ve seen and experienced the difficulties with the product prioritization struggle. “At the end of the day prioritization is more art than science” they say. Startups generally have the luxury of working on one idea but as companies grow, so do their need to be able to define and build all sorts of interesting products. This becomes really challenging as you get big and for some time we at Bowery have been toying with the thesis of layering in the quantitative and the science to what is generally viewed as art. Our view is that the internet native PM and CFO care now more than ever about prioritization and ROI.
When our friend Bismarck Lepe told us about his idea for a product and platform that fit this mold we were immediately receptive and naturally wanted to be a part. We knew the challenges first hand and felt his ways of solving this problem were focused and realistic. As a result we’re proud to announce this week Bowery’s investment in Wizeline. Wizeline is a powerful tool that tracks customer engagement, forecasts product success, and serves the divide between product and finance. Its product analytics and insights allow companies to determine a product’s most popular feature and dictate the ability to determine how customers utilize products. From experience, the best type of products are those identified by the input of all levels of employees at a company and in our belief one can’t fit an entire company in a single conference room and the voices of all your quiet geniuses cannot be heard. Wizeline makes it possible to get feedback company-wide and to find out who can predict what products move the needle. We’re excited to have Bismarck and the entire Wizeline family as part of the Bowery family and you can read more about their product launch here.
