Insurance For SPACs Just Got a Lot Better

With all the current doom and gloom in SPACland, a ray of sunshine from an unlikely corner—D&O insurance carriers—is making our day a lot brighter.

For over two years, we have been making the case that representations and warranties insurance (RWI) would reduce the risk of busted deals, egregious flops, and consequent costly litigation for SPACs. Advocating for our SPAC clients, we have also argued that directors and officers (D&O) insurers should consider that risk reduction and offer pricing breaks on the high cost of SPAC D&O insurance. READ MORE

Forbes, SeatGeek scrap SPAC plans as investors cool on blank-check mergers

A flurry of would-be SPAC deals have recently turned south, dealing a further blow to the already beaten-down market for blank-check companies.

Financial media giant Forbes and online ticketing platform SeatGeek were the latest casualties of a cooling SPAC market, with both companies revealing within a 24-hour period that they would abandon deals to go public via combinations with blank-check sponsors. READ MORE

Building Successful Startups Beyond Venture Capital Funding is Totally Possible

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

Fidelity Prunes Valuations For Stripe, Reddit, Instacart Amid Market Turmoil

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

5 Areas Where US Seed Funding Is Strong In 2022

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

SPACs Were All the Rage. Now, Not So Much.

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

Qualcomm Ventures Looks To 5G, IoT And Metaverse To Grow Ecosystem

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

The Importance of Synergistic Capital for Early-Stage Companies

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

Private Equity Is Back With A Bang In Oil & Gas

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

VC funding to help crypto avoid a long winter post-Terra's collapse

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

Six cybersecurity startups to watch, according to VCs

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