Investors rank securing talent as top corporate priority in 2024

Corporate directors and institutional investors differ when identifying the priorities for 2024, with directors focusing most on the economy, capital allocation and cybersecurity/data privacy, according to Smith, director for EY’s Americas Center for Board Matters, Investor Outreach and Corporate Governance.

The directors ranked the issues of “talent agenda” and climate change/environmental stewardship fifth and last, respectively, EY found. READ MORE

5 Areas Where Seed Investors Are Most Active

Predicting the future — once the realm of crystal balls and tea leaves — is now a full-fledged profession. Hundreds of professional futurists now work in government, academia and other sectors, analyzing demographic, technological and climatic trends to envision what life will look like years from now.

Here at Crunchbase News, we have our own future-telling tool: Seed-funding data. By looking at today’s cohort of very young funded companies, we can piece together a sense of the technologies startup investors see most impacting our lives in future years. READ MORE

The new realism in venture capital is healthy

The stampede of new Silicon Valley unicorns emerging into the world has thinned into a straggling herd.

Venture capital firm Cowboy Ventures recently reported that of 532 US start-ups with billion-dollar-plus valuations in 2023, 60 per cent were what it dubbed “Zirpicorns” — companies last priced between January 2020 and March 2022 when zero-interest rate policies propped up valuations. READ MORE

Deep Tech Investments Down, But Maybe Not As Much As You Think

The venture market was down 38% last year as investors continued to reel back their funding with money becoming more expensive and liquidity options drying up.

In such an environment, most would think the tech sector most greatly affected by the pullback would be deep tech — casually defined as cutting-edge scientific innovation that can create brand-new industries. With its cash-intensive research and long product-to-market lead time, it usually is not attractive to investors in a down market where cash is king. READ MORE

Startups Roll Out More Services For Growing Ranks Of Self-Employed And Gig Workers

Whether by choice or necessity, the share of workers who are self-employed or toiling in the gig economy continues to grow. And with it, tools to manage all the attendant accounting and job-finding burdens have been scaling up too.

Startups are taking a leading role. Over the past few quarters, venture investors have poured hundreds of millions into companies with offerings aimed at freelance and gig workers. Top focus areas include platforms for finding work, accounting tools and apps tailored for specific industries. READ MORE

AI Leads New Unicorn Creation As Ranks Of $1B Startups Swells

Fewer startups became unicorns in 2023, but The Crunchbase Unicorn Board also became more crowded, as exits became even scarcer.

That means that 10 years after the term “unicorn” was coined to denote those private startups valued at $1 billion or more, there are over 1,500 current unicorn companies globally, collectively valued at more than $5 trillion based on their most recent valuations from funding deals. READ MORE

SEC Adopts Amendments to the SPAC and de-SPAC Disclosure and Investor Protection Rules

On March 30, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed amendments to the rules governing disclosures and investor protections in initial public offerings (IPOs) by special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) and in subsequent business combination transactions between SPACs and target companies (de-SPAC transactions). On January 24, 2024, the SEC considered and adopted the proposed amendments to the enhanced SPAC and de-SPAC disclosures. READ MORE

Trump-Linked SPAC Digital World Manages To Attract Critical Funding by Offering Extremely Generous Terms

After formally losing every cent of the original $1 billion in PIPE investments, the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) Digital World - which still intends to merge with Truth Social's parent entity, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) - appears to have secured a critical financial lifeline as it continues to navigate the messy labyrinth of its still-pending business combination. READ MORE

Private Equity Highlights and 2024 Outlook

A year of rising interest rates and slower growth has proved challenging for the private equity industry. Yet, despite a decline in fundraising and dealmaking coupled with debt becoming costlier and scarcer, successful PE firms are finding a way. Learn what dealmakers need to know as they harvest their holdings and kickstart capital raising to sustain their investment cycles into 2024. READ MORE

What Boards of Public Companies Can Learn from Private Equity

Public company boards have made quite a few upgrades over the past decade. They have become far more diverse, more focused on risk management, and more attentive to the environmental impacts of the companies they oversee.

But in other ways, public company boards still look eerily similar to what they looked like 50 years ago, when modern governance rules were first enacted after the high-profile collapse of Penn Central. Directors basically still show up to board meetings once a quarter to approve the strategy, discuss risks, and once every five years or so, select the next chief executive officer. READ MORE

3 Ways to Start, Grow, and Sell a Company Without Venture Capital

It is very, very, very difficult to raise venture capital investment for your startup. Especially right now. In fact, one of my investor friends just told Axios that this is the worst startup investment environment he's seen since the Great Recession.

Woof. I'm guessing that like 90 percent of you don't remember that period. It was no fun.

Fine. That's OK. As a career entrepreneur, I wear the customer-first badge. Proudly. I strongly believe raising money through customer sales is the best option, and in a lot of cases, it should be the only option. READ MORE

We forgive? WeWork collapsed but investors are once again embracing Adam Neumann

The venture capital market loves Adam Neumann, there seems to be little doubt about that. On the other hand, among the general public he has a reputation of someone it is better to avoid doing business with. He may be a great marketer who builds excellent brands and convinces investors to attribute high value to his ventures. However, he is also a reminder for a sector of how one should beware of grandiose stories, cosmic promises and the burning cash that end in massive collapses (not his). Now Neumann wants us to learn another lesson: in fact, everything pays off. READ MORE