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The market for new stocks continues to sizzle — with no signs of a slowdown for initial public offerings or special purpose acquisition company mergers.
Dating app Bumble enjoyed a strong debut, gaining nearly 65% in its IPO last week. Online commerce companies Affirm and Poshmark also did well after their IPOs in January. READ MORE
Last year, I called 2020 “the year of the SPAC.” Well, SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are still on a tear in 2021, and now the question is whether initial public offerings of these blank-check companies will outpace traditional IPOs this year.
Patrick Healey, founder and president of Caliber Financial Partners, thinks so, at least when it comes to the number of SPACs going public. READ MORE
When tracking venture funding, a common lament is that Black and female founders raise a disproportionately tiny share of investment.
Out of $150 billion in U.S. venture investment last year, only $1 billion went to Black startup founders, which comes out to less than 1 percent of total funding, per Crunchbase data. Teams with at least one female founder, meanwhile, captured roughly 11 percent of venture funding. READ MORE
It's been more than 10 years since then-President Barack Obama first proposed ending the carried interest tax break, a provision that allows top earners from private equity and hedge funds to pay a smaller percentage in federal income tax than other Americans.
With Democrats now in control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency, legislation to close the loophole and increase the tax burden for investment managers is back on the agenda. READ MORE
Investments into the startup ecosystem by micro venture capital funds (investments under 30 million) have jumped manifold to USD 341 million in the past three years. READ MORE
Over the past decade, venture capital has undergone a remarkable transformation. What started as a boutique industry dominated by former founders has blossomed into an institutional asset class brimming with aspiring professionals. Consequently, venture investing is no longer just a craft, but a career. For those just starting out, generating good returns can feel like an art, but building a platform that extends beyond a single fund is more of a science. In search of the formula for building a long-lasting, industry-leading venture capital fund, I sat down with Winter Mead, a former institutional LP and co-founder of venture fund accelerator Oper8r. READ MORE
Last year, I called 2020 “the year of the SPAC.” Well, SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are still on a tear in 2021, and now the question is whether initial public offerings of these blank-check companies will outpace traditional IPOs this year.
Patrick Healey, founder and president of Caliber Financial Partners, thinks so, at least when it comes to the number of SPACs going public. READ MORE
Although a nascent industry, particularly in Europe, venture capital has become an integral part of innovation and the technology sector. Since 2012 there has been a continuous increase in fundraising by European venture capital funds, and VC has been instrumental to the growth of some of the most successful and advanced European companies, ranging from Klarna to Kahoot, DeepMind to Spotify. READ MORE
Throughout the last decade, wealthy families have gravitated away from hedge funds to private investments, including private equity and venture capital.
A big reason is that entrepreneurs who are comfortable with risk, and evaluating management teams and the potential success or failure of a business idea, are usually the reason a family became wealthy. And these families are drawn to the potential private investments offer for high returns. READ MORE
When Accelerate Diagnostics last week filed a $150 million shelf registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to signal a possible future share offering, it was one of almost 60 companies to do so in just the first month of the year — the highest in a decade. READ MORE
Venture funding in January 2021 hit at an all-time monthly high of $39.9 billion, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows.
January’s funding total topped the previous monthly high of the last two years; July 2020 at $38.5 billion. A larger proportion of dollars in these funding spikes was also invested in late-stage venture capital — around 69 percent — with the lion’s share of capital going to Series C+ and private-equity rounds in venture-backed companies. READ MORE
any startups have been conditioned to think venture capital is the best source of funding. While venture capital has its benefits, it may not be the right method of fundraising for your business.
In a recent webinar, Josh Amster, StartEngine’s VP of sales, dove into the differences between venture capital and equity crowdfunding (ECF), comparing each method’s strengths and weaknesses to help clarify which funding pathway is right for you. READ MORE
The question of valuation is intimidating for many early-stage startup founders. As a young company with a short history and little to no revenue, there simply isn’t a formula capable of producing a neat round number that objectively represents the value of your business. Valuation, then, becomes the art of making a deal, not the science of building a spreadsheet.
Many factors play into a valuation negotiation with a VC—your business fundamentals, while important, are among the many. The market landscape, the VC’s incentives, and the strength of your network can all factor into the discussion as much, if not more so, than business economics. READ MORE
Here are some things to consider if you’re eyeing shares of a hot tech company that recently went public. Today’s buzziest offerings are much more highly valued than cohorts that went public a couple years ago. But not only that—they’re often losing more money relative to revenue, too. READ MORE
Let’s talk about how startup founders get funded—and why they don’t. I get about a dozen questions each week via my website from first-time entrepreneurs asking for help getting their company funded. I don’t do that. But I do know a ton of venture capitalist (VC) and angel investors, so I asked a bunch of them what works, what hurts, and what they look for from the very first contact with an entrepreneur. READ MORE
The Super Bowl is the pinnacle of NFL promotion—a sprawling event that commands so much attention even the commercials are must-sees. But not everything the league does is meant to grab headlines and eyeballs.
Take, for instance, 32 Equity.
Few people have heard the name, much less know that it’s the NFL’s venture capital arm. Despite its low profile, the fund has scored some significant investment gains in its few years of operation, focusing on supporting and growing efforts that promote football and the league while providing owners a strong return on investment. READ MORE
Relationships can be messy, including between startup founders and their venture investors. But in a case that takes messy to an extreme, an insurtech company in Santa Monica, Calif. called Sure is alleging that its Series A investor used privileged information to launch a very similar, New York-based startup called Boost. READ MORE
Tech watchers have been itching to write Silicon Valley’s epitaph for years (indeed, many already have). While America’s preeminent tech hub is not dead yet, the data shows it is beginning to give up ground to smaller startup hubs across the country.
The Bay Area has for decades claimed the lion’s share of venture capital deals in the US. That hasn’t changed. But lately, its share of deals has been gradually declining. This year, predict analysts at the private equity research firm PitchBook, it will drop below 20% for the first time in their dataset, which stretches back to 2006. READ MORE
The venture capital market has skewed later and larger in recent quarters, something you might have felt in the rapid recent pace of new unicorn formation. December was a hot month for new unicorns, for example. So was January. February likely will be more of the same.
Powering those unicorn births are huge rounds led by large funds. In 2020, for example, there were at least 97 global fintech rounds worth $100 million or more. That number was up from 92 in 2019 and 66 in 2018. Each preceding year was a prior record. READ MORE
Pensions and other institutions that want to hire private equity firms that consider the environmental impact or the diversity of a company’s employees in its investment decisions may have to wait a while. Only 24 percent of private equity firms took environmental, social, and governance matters seriously and at the same time had a mature process in place to evaluate these factors before acquiring a company, according to a survey by Ernst & Young. READ MORE