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Nearly a decade ago, venture capital funds with a gender-diversity strategy were hard to find in the vast heartland of the U.S. between the coasts.
Austin-based True Wealth Ventures set out to remedy that. It searches for financially outperforming startups led by women that aim to improve environmental or human health. READ MORE
As more high-flyer private companies find their shine tarnished, investors (or adjacent VC-explainers) remind us that it’s unfortunate but actually a non-issue, so please, let’s move on and not rubberneck the pileup. Wait, what? Losing tens of millions of dollars (or more) is no big deal? Don’t people get fired for that? READ MORE
The best VCs identify and support the world’s best founders. This is at the core of what they do.
Creating and growing a startup to scale is an extremely difficult task that can be derailed by a myriad of circumstances outside of a founder’s control. So even when great founders fail, the best VCs are waiting in the wings to support their next idea. READ MORE
The reports keep rolling in, highlighting a slowing environment for private firms. Venture capital, along with private equity activity, has been in decline for some time now – a fact that should come as no surprise to anyone. Giga high inflation and the inevitable reaction by central banks attempting to crush rising prices means money has become much more expensive. Economies around the world have slowed with geopolitical strife, like the war in Ukraine not helping the situation. READ MORE
For company founders and the venture capitalists who back their businesses, long-term alignment is crucial, a panel of VCs and entrepreneurs stressed at a Fortune conference on Tuesday. The group also shared what they’ve learned from the recent spate of layoffs at startups. READ MORE
A third-quarter downturn in venture capital (VC) dollars raised in the United States, particularly in later-stage deals and from nontraditional investors like asset managers, is the first evidence of distress in the VC ecosystem. READ MORE
The venture capital (VC) funding model is often portrayed as the new version of the American Dream — a plucky start-up founder invents a disruptive new technology, catches the eye of venture capitalists, sells the company for hundreds of millions, and spends the rest of their days sailing the Mediterranean. It's a nice story for the .01% of business owners who can — or want to — achieve that outcome. READ MORE
The yearslong era of venture capital outperforming other private market asset classes is likely coming to an end.
An abundance of near-free capital and a robust IPO market allowed venture capital funds to post double-digit percentage returns in nearly every quarter from Q4 2017 through Q1 2022, according to PitchBook's 2022 Global Fund Performance Report. But by this year's second quarter, the venture funds' internal rate of return turned negative. READ MORE
Tech-startup investors expect a big 'reset' that creates 'a two-year period of both pain and opportunity,' with money still flowing to early-stage startups while older ventures face an uneasy road. READ MORE
Even as the valuations of late-stage, venture-backed companies continue to tumble amid rising interest rates and fears of recession, seed and early-stage start-ups appear to be holding their own. READ MORE
This year’s bear market trajectory should be looked upon as a favorable opportunity for Web3 founders to raise capital and build cutting-edge products. Some of the most robust businesses today were built during market downturns, and founders now have a real opportunity to ensure they’re building products and services that meet genuine, real-world needs and look beyond oversized checks to find the most suitable business partnership. READ MORE
Global venture funding reached $27 billion in October 2022, remaining flat month over month and down more than 50% year over year.
Each funding stage declined at different rates year over year for this past month. Late-stage funding dipped the most, by more than 60% year over year. Early stage declined by around 40% and seed by 20%. READ MORE
Marcus New, CEO and Founder of InvestX, shares how the bear market is impacting private equity, and why he sees the next six to 12 months as a “compelling time” to make money in private equity. Marcus also talks about the biggest trends he is seeing in the space. READ MORE
The Surprise: While recession risks have led VCs to press pause on many pandemic favorites, the Human Capital Management (HCM) niche has proven to be the exception.
It is a crowded space - over 400 HCM companies set up shop at the 2022 HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas. There's a reason for all the competition. The need for a scientific approach to managing a company's workforce gained steam during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading HR Tech to receive a record amount of VC attention in 2021. Despite all the hype over the past two years, this trend shows signs of staying power. The global HR Tech space is projected to expand at a CAGR of 9.1% through 2029 to $46.85B, which dwarfs the current size of $25.53B. READ MORE
If you have ever thought about founding a company, odds are that you have also thought about having a co-founder.
It could be because some of the most well-known companies had co-founders (e.g., Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple). In fact, one report found that 80% of billion-dollar startups had multiple founders. READ MORE
Artificial intelligence has once again become a hot buzzword in tech, even somewhat knocking off the malaise the venture capital markets have been under in the last several quarters.
However, this time around it may have real staying power as advancements in generative AI seem to be riding a wave of excitement some have compared to what cloud computing saw nearly two decades ago. READ MORE
So, I don’t hate Elon Musk. In myriad ways, he’s a genius engineer, entrepreneur and marketer. Tesla is a legit EV leader. SpaceX is a transformative company. And Elon himself, for better or worse, is certainly a colorful public figure.
But nonetheless, I am sick of hearing about and from Elon Musk. READ MORE
The carried interest has managed to survive another round of attempted reform. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was passed by the Senate on Aug. 7, 2022, without its proposed modifications to carried interest rules. The last minute removal came down to a decision by Senator Krysten Sinema, whose vote was necessary to pass the bill in a divided Senate. READ MORE
Private equity is on track for sluggish growth over the next five years as inflation and macroeconomic uncertainty take their toll on investments and investors shift capital to lower-risk asset classes, a new report from Preqin Inc. predicts.
Preqin forecasts continued but slower expansion of assets under management for the global private equity industry, totaling $7.6 trillion by 2027. That would represent an 80% increase from the industry's collective AUM today, which the report estimates at $4.2 trillion. READ MORE
Given the current economic conditions, it’s gotten a lot harder for startups to raise the kind of funding rounds that were once the norm a few years ago.
Either by choice or because they haven’t been able to close a round, this has led many startups to consider whether the VC path is actually the right one for them or whether they are better off trying to bootstrap their business. READ MORE
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