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Venture-backed startups are buying other startups at the fastest pace in at least a decade, according to Crunchbase data.
Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 530 acquisitions of venture-backed United States-based companies by other private companies. Per Crunchbase data, 268 of those acquisitions — just over half — were venture-backed companies buying other venture-backed companies. READ MORE
Private Equity (PE) owned companies are at the height of growth and expansion in the U.S. and abroad. While SPACs and de-SPACs are leading in transactions and melding private and public companies with record numbers throughout 2020 and into 2021, PE management teams are also in demand.
Public company executives are leaving their jobs to go private at an increased rate, so knowing the rules of engagement is critical for an executive and her employment attorney. READ MORE
Some weird and unexpected things have happened in the last year and a half as this country has passed through the pandemic. A lot of it, frankly, has been bad — but not all of it.
And in particular, not if you’re in the high-flying venture capital and VC-funded startup-business world. For the first half of 2021 — as of the end of the second quarter in June — $150 billion has been invested in startups from seed-stage to late-stage companies, according to new data from the National Venture Capital Association. READ MORE
According to a recent report by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), venture capital activity increased across the ecosystem during the first half of the year.
The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, produced in conjunction with Silicon Valley Bank, revealed angel, seed, and early-stage venture capital financings attained record highs and greatly exceeded expectations. READ MORE
I’m a Latina who was born in a small New England town and attended a small women’s liberal arts college in Virginia. But that’s not how I thought of myself during the early days of getting my company off the ground. When I was heads down in code building TaskRabbit, I thought of myself as an engineer. When I was in the throes of pitch decks and investor meetings, I thought of myself as a founder. My identity and background didn’t factor much into how I spent my time each day, and I wanted to believe they wouldn’t matter when it came to my chances of raising venture capital. READ MORE
Dan Levitan isn’t confident that the U.S. government can solve the country’s pressing problems, at a time when it needs help more than ever.
“Sadly, I think more and more of us have lost faith that government is going to make this country better, given the lack of bipartisanship and gridlock about governance,” said the Maveron co-founder. “The role of companies and doing the right thing is more important than ever.” READ MORE
The impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is leaving behind is still coming to light. As the long-term and short-term impacts become more evident, it’s clear that working women represent one of the demographic groups more adversely affected by the pandemic in ways that include employment, leadership, and funding. READ MORE
The U.S. securities regulator on Tuesday said it charged blank-check company Stable Road Acquisition Corp (SRAC.O), its sponsor SRC-NI, space exploration company Momentus Inc and two executives for misleading claims over their planned merger.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the companies and Stable Road Acquisition Company Chief Executive Brian Kabot agreed to pay $8 million to resolve allegations they misled investors about Momentus Inc.'s technology and national security risks associated with its former CEO Mikhail Kokorich. READ MORE
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Americans filled airports and highways nearly as much as on holidays before the pandemic. For many people, the busy travel weekend will be followed by a return to the office and other activities out of the house. This ongoing transition period raises many important questions, including: What will happen with all the pets? READ MORE
In March last year, a top venture capital firm described Covid-19 as the “black swan of 2020.”
“Private financings could soften significantly, as happened in 2001 and 2009,” Sequoia Capital told portfolio company founders and CEOs in a memo reminiscent of its “R.I.P. Good Times” presentation in the 2008 crisis. READ MORE
The popularity of special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, has exploded in the last year. While they have been around for many years, it is only in the last couple that their use has accelerated.
According to one report, globally 200 SPACs raised $64 billion in 2020, just under the $67 billion raised by 194 initial public offerings in the same year. READ MORE
The second quarter of 2021 is behind us, with a record first half of the year in terms of proceeds raised from traditional initial public offerings.
By all measures, things aren’t slowing down. The IPO market is on pace to have a record year, according to Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at IPO research firm Renaissance Capital. According to the firm, IPO proceeds have reached $80 billion so far this year, already surpassing the $78.2 billion raised in all of last year. READ MORE
A few thousand startup investors sit down to some Zoom meetings. Six months later, they’ve written checks worth $155 billion, minted 161 new unicorns, and watched five of their most valuable portfolio companies go public at a collective valuation of $190 billion.
There’s no punchline here. Those are simply the tallies for North American startup investment in the first half of this year, per Crunchbase data. They’re very large numbers and record-setting investment totals, well above the prior all-time highs set just months earlier. READ MORE
When my co-founder Bryan and I first launched Tovala— the first-ever smart oven paired with a subscription meal service—we had a lot of ideas and very little cash. Although we’d won a business plan challenge at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, we spent most of the summer and fall of 2015 with our boots on the ground, taking as many investor meetings as possible. No one wanted to be the first investor, which made raising initial capital a chicken-or-the-egg problem: we needed money to hire people and make progress, but we also needed to show progress to raise money. READ MORE
Charley Moore still remembers being the only Black startup attorney practicing on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road.
That was 25 years ago. Earlier this year, Moore raised $223 million in growth capital for Rocket Lawyer, marking one of the largest funding rounds ever to a startup founded by a Black entrepreneur. READ MORE
Now in the opening weeks of the third quarter, The Exchange is taking a look back at the Q2 2021 venture capital market. Data indicate that it was incredibly active, with global and regional records shattered during the three-month period.
Per data from CB Insights, for example, The Exchange reported that global venture capital activity shot to $156 billion in the second quarter, up 157% from the year-ago Q2 result of just under $61 billion. More unicorns were born in the second quarter than any similar period to date, and valuations ticked higher. READ MORE
If you happen to be building a company that is investable, it helps to know your options.
Venture capital has a reputation for cloistered networks and warm intros. Many are trying to change that. There’s an ever-expanding network of events and sites that list those that invest in private markets.
Some are more complicated than others. This one happens to be a crowdsourced list of nearly 700 active venture capital firms listed by the size and recency of their most active fund. READ MORE
The amount of venture funding directed toward crypto and blockchain projects and companies jumped during the second quarter of 2021, according to data collected by The Block Research.
As noted in a new by-the-numbers breakdown by The Block Research's John Dantoni, a total of 497 related venture deals occurred during the period. READ MORE
THE SPECTACLE of the SPAC, or “special-purpose acquisition company”, has preoccupied bankers on Wall Street over the past year. This is in part because the vehicles, which list a shell company on stockmarkets and raise a pot of capital before hunting for a private company to merge with, are often touted by their backers as an alternative to an initial public offering (IPO). Big banks make meaty fees from their IPO businesses. For some, the fact that SPACs have muscled in is an unwelcome development. As voracious buyers of private firms, though, SPACs are attracting as much attention among the private-equity (PE) barons on New York’s Park Avenue as on Wall Street. READ MORE
Private equity firms with a record $1.6 trillion in dry powder are leaning heavily on roll-up strategies as a way of avoiding high purchase prices for portfolio companies. Instead, they are buying smaller, cheaper companies — especially in the wealth and alternative investment management and insurance sectors — and merging them for instant growth. READ MORE