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Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global led the way last month in investing in U.S.-based startups—both in total rounds participated in, as well as rounds led or co-led.
Just like April, May saw only a half dozen firms invest in 10 or more deals announced in the month—down from May 2021 when 10 firms took part in double-digit numbers of rounds, according to Crunchbase data. READ MORE
Building a product people love is a challenge in itself. Now add the need to earn enough money from Day 1 to cover all the development costs, all the experiments, and have a reliable income that will allow you to convince engineers and designers who will be building it to join you. Capable people always have better offers at hand and need to know you will be able to pay them. READ MORE
Venture capital investments in the crypto industry have almost doubled since last year, but are down 38.2% down since April.
This short-term decline in investments can be correlated to the recent market correction, which made Bitcoin (BTC) and other major cryptocurrencies lose 50% or more of their value. READ MORE
Fidelity Investments has cut its valuations for some of the largest tech unicorns in the world, Bloomberg reported, the latest sign of distress in the private markets.
Fidelity in April marked down the value of its stakes in fintech platform Stripe by 13% to $32.05 a share, the lowest value since March 2021, Bloomberg said, citing filings and the publication’s analysis of the data. READ MORE
In a typical month, a couple hundred American companies disclose sizable seed funding rounds. And every few quarters, Crunchbase News has made it a habit to peruse those rounds to see what trends we can glean.
This time around, we looked at nearly 1,000 U.S. seed and pre-seed rounds of $500,000 and up announced in 2022. And, as usual, funded companies covered an extraordinarily broad range of businesses, from virtual world fashion to pods that can grow plants in space. READ MORE
Matt Higgins, a former judge on the reality TV show “Shark Tank,” is an experienced investor whose firm, RSE Ventures, helps young companies build their businesses.
So it was no surprise that in November 2020, Mr. Higgins embraced one of Wall Street’s biggest recent obsessions by launching a SPAC. Special purpose acquisition companies — known by their acronym — are shell entities that sell shares to the public and use those funds to buy an operating business. Investors get their money back if the SPAC hasn’t found a business to buy within a two-year window. READ MORE
Everyone is an investor these days. During our current Cambrian explosion of rolling funds, syndicates, roll-up vehicles, and emerging funds, angels and VCs are often confused as the same. When founders come to me about fundraising, I like to distinguish angels from VCs so they have the mental clarity to pull each of these investing levers. READ MORE
In March, Qualcomm Ventures and its parent, Qualcomm, announced its new $100 million Snapdragon Fund to invest in immersive experiences involving augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies as they relate to the metaverse.
At first blush, the metaverse seems a long way from the wireless tech and chips the San Diego giant is known for. However, the deal is a good reminder of the deep reach Qualcomm has into varying sectors. That reach is due to its foundational technologies and the mission of its 22-year-old venture firm to continue to build out that ecosystem. READ MORE
As I was talking to one of my early-stage founders about corporate governance principles, I realized that what I was sharing with him isn't common knowledge. Early-stage founders always here "seek smart capital," but I realized that founders don't really understand the full depth of that statement or why it is so important to be strategic when raising capital, especially in the early rounds (pre-seed, seed and Series A). READ MORE
Extend your cash runway. Do more with less. And get ready for the boom times to be over.
Those are common threads embedded inside warning memos that venture capital firms are sending to their portfolio companies amid an uncertain macroeconomic environment and public market decline. READ MORE
Over the past couple of years, venture capitalists, PE firms and LPs have given the oil and gas sector a wide berth thanks to years of poor returns, chronic underperformance compared to sectors like tech and, lately, ESG concerns and the energy transition. But the ongoing oil price boom driven by high energy demand, supply bottlenecks and the Ukraine war has made the sector attractive again, and deep-pocketed investors are not immune to its charms. READ MORE
MSP Recovery, a Coral Gables, Fla.-based provider of Medicare and Medicaid payment recovery services, began trading Tuesday on the Nasdaq after completing its merger with a SPAC called Lionheart Acquisition Corp. II. Then those shares promptly lost over half their value. READ MORE
As long as VC funding continues to plow into the crypto markets, a long winter should be avoided, according to analysts at JP Morgan.
In a research report on Wednesday, the investment bank wrote that VC funding is continue to flood into the crypto markets despite the fall of crypto's most prominent algorithmic stablecoin — and as long as this continues to happen, the outlook is bright. READ MORE
As cyber threats surge, so does the funding going into the cybersecurity startups intent on stopping them. According to Crunchbase, 2021 set a record with global VC money invested in the sector surpassing $21.8bn.
While most monster rounds were in the US, Europe’s chunky deals included Swiss unicorn Acronis’s $250m raise at a $2.5bn valuation and French unicorn Shift Technology’s $220m round, which pegged it at a value of over $1bn. READ MORE
Venture capital and private equity have been growing asset classes for decades. As more investors seek returns in a low-rate environment and as more wealth managers look to invest in alternatives to public equity, we have seen an explosion in venture-backed companies. In fact, annual VC funding increased by 4.4x from 2013 to 2021—going from $22B to $96B. READ MORE
The very nature of private equity’s value proposition demands continuous evolution, innovation, and quick, nimble strategy. Historically speaking, however, private equity value creation levers have remained relatively static over time, generally shifting only in response to significant external pressures, according to a new report from Business Talent Group (BTG). READ MORE
For the stock market, the new year opened with a nosedive worthy of a base jump, with the S&P 500, NASDAQ, and Dow all in the red. The dramatic decline ended up with a nascent, and somewhat hesitant, rebound, but shivers are still running down venture capitalists’ spines. They do indeed find themselves in a tight spot, which ultimately begs the question—will startups go through 2022 empty-handed? Is that a headwind wailing outside? READ MORE
Sequoia Capital, the storied, 50-year-old venture firm, has become known over the years for using sweeping memos to warn the founders in its portfolio about market shifts after the shift has become somewhat obvious. READ MORE
Benchmark’s Bill Gurley tweeted in April 2022, “An entire generation of entrepreneurs and tech investors built their entire perspectives on valuation during the second half of a 13-year amazing bull market run.” With VCs raising larger and larger funds, startup founders had become accustomed to certain key performance indicators (KPIs) set by VCs who were simultaneously providing mammoth funding rounds. The global economic challenges, alongside a volatile stock market, has resulted in a fundamentally new VC marketplace. Business plans, go-to market strategies, and valuations that had all been tailored to certain VC criteria are being forced to rapidly change. READ MORE
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