Dawn Capital Spreadsheets

1. New spreadsheet tools

2. © 2020 Dawn Capital LLP
● Versatility: Spreadsheets can be tuned to fit use cases in virtually any business setting, niche and
industry. Excel is the world’s most successful no-code platform.
● Ease of use: Spreadsheets have no dependencies, can be run anywhere and have a gentle learning
curve starting with entering data into a cell all the way up to e.g., complex VBA programs.
● Support community: Any problem you can have in Excel – someone else has had before you
● UI: Spreadsheet users get instant feedback - they see the effect of changes they introduce to their
model in real time, rather than e.g., iterating on a database with SQL queries
● Relevance: One third of job descriptions list Excel, it is a marketable skill and many want to learn it
With 1bn+ users and 30+ years on the market, spreadsheets
are the world’s most successful piece of software
“Think about a world without Excel. That’s just impossible for me.” - Satya Nadella, CEO MSFT
What makes spreadsheets so successful?

3. © 2020 Dawn Capital LLP
The spreadsheet value chain
Data manipulation
Data entryData import
Sharing
Purpose-fit sheet layout
Collaboration/Iteration
Building the sheet
Architecture
Insight generation
Data retrieval
Interaction with
sheet/application layer
Data export
Visualization/Presentation
Data storage
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
9
Source: Dawn
Application build
Stream (to other applications) 7

4. © 2020 Dawn Capital LLP
Integration
● Spreadsheets are decoupled from other software systems, which
makes e.g. data imports a burdensome manual prerequisite for
data analysis
Workflows
● Results and insights cannot natively be pushed into other
applications and systems (e.g., to trigger action), integrations are
prerequisite for this; there is no interface to encode and
automate repeatable tasks
How to improve on perfection 1/2
Collaboration
& privacy
Category Painpoint
Integration/
workflows
Architecture
Consolidating inputs from different parties requires manual copy-pasting
Limited privacy and protection if cloud collaboration tools such as GSheet
are used: manually protecting cells with passwords, hiding/unhiding
sheets is tedious process
Spreadsheet architecture restricts depth and relational structure
of data and data types that can be handled (e.g., images)
Spreadsheets are not built to handle big data applications
Collaboration tools with features for granular
access control (on cell/tab level) and versioning
Connect Excel sheets to other applications (e.g.,
Salesforce, Mailchimp, Stripe)
Interface/logic to encode tasks and workflows
(e.g, updates) between Excel and connected
applications
Solutions that unify flexible architecture with the
familiar UI of spreadsheets
Solution (potential)
Affected value
chain step
6
8
1
3
7
1
93

5. © 2020 Dawn Capital LLP
Applications:
UI and
robustness
How to improve on perfection 2/2
Category Painpoint Solution (potential)
Visualization/
Presentation
Output is static, viewing is not user-friendly (what can I touch and
play with without breaking the model?)
Results are not natively separated from model, e.g., colour coding
is used to distinguish input from output
Solution that can turn spreadsheets into
purpose-built (web) applications that are easy to use
Solution that, like Jupyter Notebooks for code, can
display Excel models/simulations in interactive user
interface sharable on mobile/web
Affected value
chain step
21
3
5 6
UI is not purpose-built, i.e. user sees an entire sheet even though
he may only need to update 1 cell
For applications (e.g., lightweight CRM, delivery tracking)
robustness and ease of use are important factors, excel sheets
can break

6. © 2020 Dawn Capital LLP
Market map - new spreadsheet tools
6
UI = spreadsheet
UI spreadsheet
Privacy &
collaboration
Visualization/
Presentation
Applications Architecture SaaS unbundling of
Excel use cases
“Augment spreadsheet”
“Replace spreadsheet”
Integration/Workflows

7. © 2020 Dawn Capital LLP
The spreadsheet
value chain
Data manipulation
Data entryData import
Sharing
Purpose-fit sheet layout
Collaboration/Iteration
Building the sheet
Architecture
Insight generation
Data retrieval
Interaction with
sheet/application layer
Data export
Visualization/Presentation
Data storage
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
9
Source: Dawn
Application build
Stream (to other applications)
7

8. © 2020 Dawn Capital LLP
How new spreadsheet tools solve pain points
8
Pain point
Collaboration
Description
Tools that simplify sharing and simultaneous
editing of spreadsheets
Presentation
Integration
Workflows
Architecture
SaaS unbundling
of Excel use cases
Use case example Player
Finance department needs input from country managers for huge Excel Mastersheet,
instead of carving out sections and sending multiple files, Finance head uses tool to
share ”subset” of cells in Masterfile with request for input, that update and link to
Masterfile
Tools that make sharing the output of spreadsheet
calculations visually appealing
Sales head has built simple model with some assumptions, to provide his colleagues
with better intuition of results, he shares it as interactive “notebook”, his colleagues
can play around with bars and see charts changing on screen
Tools that simplify data ingestion from alternative
data sources into spreadsheets
You have a business and want to see which of your products are bestsellers, instead of
going to stripe, exporting CSV of sales and copying to Excel you directly read Stripe data
(or other sources) into spreadsheet tool (e.g., Actiondesk) through API
Tools that integrate with other SaaS solutions and
can trigger interactions between them
E.g., build spreadsheet that can read-in Mailchimp subscribers, then uses function to enrich
email data with background info sourced from Crunchbase, filters by lead segments and
pushes into CRM
Tools that could be built as lightweight solutions
with spreadsheet, but where use case is
large/repetitive enough to carve out SaaS niche
Practitioners in the financial services industry rely heavily on Excel for financial modelling,
tools like Causal capture common elements of financial models (e.g., sensitivity analysis,
naming variables, uncertainty models) and make them easier to use
Databases with visual UI that are flexible and can
address many spreadsheet use cases more
flexibly and with more technical depth
For project management, you might want to build to-do lists with status trackers and
assignees. Tool would allow to increase “depth” of list because it is in fact a relational
database. If you “click” on assignee, another layer pops up that displays e.g., info on this
employee, his linkedin profile and e.g., contact details
Applications Tools that can be used to publish spreadsheets as
websites/apps
You have an Excel list of all your deliveries need to be made (courier), tool can be used to build
app for pending orders, when driver presses “order completed” button in App, row in excel is
marked as “completed”