I’ve been a drone hobbyist for a few years. My first drone, a Parrot AR, was lost in a gust of wind just a couple of days after I bought it. That resulted in my distributing flyers around my neighborhood in an effort to get it back. No such luck, though. I’m guessing it’s still caught in a tree somewhere in Palo Alto.

Despite the fact that this wasn’t a great first experience with a drone, I had caught the drone bug. Last summer, I built a TBS Discovery Pro with my kids. I’m glad to say that despite a few bouts with strong winds, it’s still in my possession. My drone hobby has since been a source of a lot of weekend fun.

My hobby began to merge with the investing world as I started to explore the commercial opportunities associated with drones. To my surprise, as I spoke with people in a broad range of industries, it became clear that drone use was quickly ramping up. Quadcopters and fixed-wings were being used to identify parts of farms in need of water or fertilizer. They were being deployed by mining companies to measure the volume of material being extracted from the ground. And they were being used on construction sites for tracking building progress.

That said, everyone I talked to who was using drones in business had a common complaint: drones were too hard to use. Flying them at the right height and in the right pattern was a challenging manual exercise. Transferring the masses of data from a drone to data processing software was tedious. Further, there was the multi-hour wait required as said software worked its magic and delivered a complete image of a field or a 3D model of a building.

This struck me as a problem aching to be solved by software and the cloud. Enter DroneDeploy. Their offering is a mobile and cloud-based app that enables any business to quickly get value from a drone with a push of a button — and in a matter of minutes instead of hours. We’ve seen at Emergence how important ease-of-use and time-to-value are when it comes to business applications. We believe that these principles will apply equally in the drone market.

DroneDeploy’s vision for an easy-to-use commercial drone app is truly resonating with the market. Major companies are using DroneDeploy-powered drones across a range of industries. Today, they are announcing a partnership with DJI, the world’s largest drone manufacturer. And over the coming months, DroneDeploy will announce several other key partnerships and customers.

I’m excited to partner with Jono, Mike, Nick, Gretchen, and the rest of the DroneDeploy team as they continue to build out the leading cloud solution for the fast-growing commercial drone industry. I’m confident that their amazing technical and drone know-how, combined with Emergence’s proven ability to help accelerate cloud companies’ growth, will be an incredible combination. DroneDeploy, you are cleared for takeoff!

On-demand mobile services enable individuals to request things from the physical world from their mobile devices. Those “things” might be a car from Uber or grocery order from Instacart. Or in the case of our guests on the show, a parcel pickup from Shyp or delivery from a store from Postmates.

On demand mobile services have, for the most part, been a consumer phenomenon to date. However, the opportunity to serve businesses in this space is just around the corner. In this podcast, Kevin Gibbon from Shyp and Sara Mauskopf from Postmates share their views on the market for on demand mobile services in the business world.

Thanks to our good friend, Semil Shah, for leading this discussion with Kevin and Sara.

If you're interested in checking out more episodes of Emergence Capital's podcast, click here to download them on iTunes or search for us in your favorite podcast app.

Slack is one of the fastest-growing enterprise collaboration products of all time. The company's product is a great example of a fantastic mobile experience combined with a compelling web experience.

In this conversation, Stewart touches on Slack's meteoric growth, how communication norms are changing as a result of the real-time conversations Slack enables, and why mobile is an important element of the Slack experience.

If you're interested in checking out more episodes of Emergence Capital's podcast, click here to download them on iTunes or search for us in your favorite podcast app.

Expensify was one of the very first mobile-first enterprise apps to hit the App Store. And it also happens to be one of the most successful. As such, David has seen and done more in the mobile enterprise space than just about any entrepreneur I know.

Embedded below is the audio of our conversation with David. Some key things he touches on:

• How to build a thriving mobile enterprise buisness without spending on sales and marketing
• How sensors in smartphones (even cameras) can change the game for mobile enterprise app developers.
• Why relentless, and I mean relentless, focus should matter to any founder.

If you're interested in checking out future episodes of Emergence Capital's podcast, click here to add us to iTunes or search for us in your favorite podcast client.

The day was full of amazing interviews with leading CEOs in the enterprise space including Stewart Butterfield from Slack, Aaron Levie from Box, and David Obrand from Yammer. We also had fireside chats with several up-and-coming companies in the mobile enterprise market including Augmedix, Expensify, PlanGrid, and Shyp.

Here's my opening presentation from the Forum which outlines why I'm so excited about the opportunity mobile creates in the enterprise:

And here's Emergence's first podcast which includes the audio from my presentation:

Handshake develops mobile-first sales order management apps. Ever walk into a store and wonder how the products on the shelf got there? Have you pondered how the ingredients in a restaurant make their way to the kitchen? Or have you contemplated how building materials get to a construction site? Usually, these processes start with a business speaking in person or on the phone with a product manufacturer or wholesaler to place an order. And they typically involve a lot of paper catalogs, order forms, Excel spreadsheets, and faxes.

Nearly a trillion dollars per year moves through these types of B2B order processes in the U.S. This is more than 5% of U.S. GDP.

Handshake turns the paper-based workflows that are behind billions of dollars of B2B orders into elegant mobile-first workflows. Mobile is a critical element here because a high percentage of B2B orders are still done in person. It turns out that being able to look someone in the eye when placing a big order is still important even in the digital age.

Glen, Mike, and the rest of the Handshake team have done a remarkable job of building a great business in a short amount of time. The concept for Handshake came to Glen just a couple of years ago during the time he ran a wholesale distribution business. Glen experienced the pain of paper order processes first hand and decided to use the coding skills he acquired as a CS major to build an app to solve his own B2B order management problem. He solved it so well that he decided to turn his product into a company, and Handshake was born. Now, 800+ customers later, he’s showing the B2B commerce world how transformative mobile-first business apps can be.

It’s also worth noting that Handshake is Emergence’s first investment in a business cloud company in NYC. We’re seeing more and more interesting business cloud companies coming out of New York – and are excited to start becoming more deeply involved in the NYC tech community.

Congratulations Handshake!

Augmedix is one of the first companies to build a Google Glass app focused on the healthcare industry. The company is helping to ease the massive data entry workload that electronic health records (EHRs) have created for physicians.

When I speak with doctors about their pain points, I repeatedly hear that the EHR data entry burden has decreased the amount of time they can spend with patients. And as a result it has decreased the satisfaction they have with their jobs. Likewise, hospital administrators see EHR data entry as a huge efficiency hit that has massive cost implications. As a result of what I've heard from healthcare industry insiders, I've come to believe that solving the EHR data entry problem is an absolute must.

When I first got to know Ian and Pelu, and when I learned more about what they were building at Augmedix, I knew I had to get involved. Their solution, which runs on Google Glass, is proving to significantly reduce the time doctors spend typing data into EHRs. And unsurprisingly, Augmedix' users are ecstatic.

I believe that Glass (and similar platforms) are extremely promising for industries where having technology passively inserted into workflow adds a lot of value. Augmedix is one of the first compelling examples of what wearable platforms can do in business. I expect we will see many more over the coming years.

The reason is simple. There is almost no intent today on mobile app stores when it comes to business applications. And it's rare that mobile users pay much attention to business-centric mobile display ads.

Today, the most-successful mobile business app entrepreneurs are leveraging traditional SaaS lead-gen techniques. At the right point in the funnel (which varies by company), they direct prospects to download their app.

I'm optimistic that this will change at some point. As more mobile-first business apps emerge, I believe more business users will search for them via app stores. But, until then, stick to the desktop.

Note: If you're looking for a fantastic primer on inbound and oubound lead-gen, the best book on the topic is Predictable Revenue by early Salesforce employee Aaron Ross.

If I've missed a company here, let me know.