How Female Founders Can Access Capital In A Tight VC Funding Market

The venture capital industry is consolidating rapidly, with the number of active VC firms in the U.S. dropping from 8,315 in 2021 to 6,175 in 2024. As capital becomes concentrated among fewer players, underrepresented founders — particularly women-led startups — are facing even greater challenges when it comes to securing funding.

Even though women-led startups consistently show lower failure rates and higher returns, startups with only female founders still consistently receive less than 2% of VC funding. This is largely due to implicit biases and pattern recognition. Investors often favor founders who resemble past successes — typically male-led companies. Larger firms, in particular, prioritize established networks and lower-risk investments. That makes it even harder for entrepreneurs of diverse backgrounds to break into these circles. READ MORE

The New Venture Playbook: The Data Every Founder Needs To Know

The venture capital landscape in 2024 showed signs of recovery from the 2023 downturn, but remained significantly below the peak levels of 2021, according to new data from Carta. Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, which serves 45,000 U.S. startups, reveals that total venture capital funding increased from $75 billion in 2023 to between $83 billion in 2024 – a modest improvement that suggests a gradual return to pre-pandemic startup funding levels. Despite the increase, funding remains well below 2021's peak levels, indicating a more measured funding environment. READ MORE

Startup founders are turning to ‘seed-strapping’ in a difficult funding environment

With the rise of the modern venture capital industry, it seemed as though the idea of creating a technology startup was inextricably tied to an expectation of raising institutional funding. But many founders today are challenging that assumption.

The practice of bootstrapping — or using one’s own resources to start, grow and scale a business — is not new. Famous companies such as Spanx, Craigslist and GoPro all started in the mid-1990s or early 2000s as ideas that were bootstrapped for years before they took off and became multi-million dollar enterprises. READ MORE

Hundreds Of Unicorns Haven’t Raised New Funding Since 2021

We are witnessing an unprecedented pile-up of unicorn startups that have not raised any money since 2021.

Currently, an estimated 517 global unicorns — or private companies valued at $1 billion or more  raised their last known round more than three years ago, per Crunchbase data. Such companies are particularly abundant in certain sectors, including enterprise software, fitness, commerce, AI and analytics. READ MORE

Far Fewer Seed-Stage Startups Are Graduating To Series A — Raising The Risk Of Failure

U.S. seed-stage funding was somewhat resilient in the venture funding downturn, due in part to the preponderance of larger seed rounds. Crunchbase data also shows that since 2023, companies have been staying longer at seed and raising more seed rounds.

That growth, however, conceals a lack of progression beyond seed funding. As companies take longer to get to Series A, there’s the potential for a much higher failure rate for seed-stage companies, which in turn could wipe out many seed-stage funds in years to come. READ MORE

Private capital's year of building momentum

2024 remained a challenging year for private equity fundraisings, investments and exits. Assets purchased in the era of cheap leverage and high multiples remained locked, with many auction processes failing to take off or being interrupted, while macro-economic factors, high borrowing costs and uncertainty in advance of UK and US elections reduced appetite for deal making. This was evident particularly in the first half of the year, with sponsors turning to alternative paths to liquidity such as continuation fund transactions (at record levels), use of NAV financings, dividend recapitalisations or secondaries transactions. 

Over the course of 2024, we saw the outlook for private markets steadily improve, giving us cause for optimism as we enter 2025. Inflation and interest rates stabilised, and banks gradually returned to the leveraged financing market alongside credit funds, reducing yields and the overall cost of capital. As momentum builds on the deal side, sponsors appear primed to return to sale processes to realise assets, potentially unlocking further investment activity. READ MORE

Private equity giants hit with SEC texting charges

A group of alternative investment firms, including most of the leading private equity managers, are the latest targets of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) efforts to combat financial industry firms’ use of private texting, which violates recordkeeping rules.

The SEC settled with 12 firms (nine investment advisors and three broker-dealers) — primarily firms in the alternative investment sector — which agreed to pay a combined US$63 million to resolve the regulator’s allegations that, since at least 2019, their employees used unapproved communications methods, such as private texting and other apps, for business communications that are required to be captured by their firms. READ MORE

Record Bankruptcies for Private Equity-Owned Companies

Private companies underwent a record number of bankruptcies last year.

Data from S&P Global Market Intelligence show that 110 U.S. companies backed by private equity and venture capital filed for bankruptcy in 2024, up more than 15 percent from the previous year — the highest annual total on record. By comparison, overall bankruptcies in the U.S — everything but companies owned by private equity and VC, reached 694, a year-over-year uptick of 9.3 percent. READ MORE

Private equity: The evolution of an industry

Since the advent of the modern private equity industry in the early 1980s, private equity houses have traditionally adopted the classic model of a buyout fund, raising capital from a club of large institutional investors to fund acquisitions and drive growth. This model has endured, notwithstanding the global expansion of the industry to accommodate a diverse range of firms and strategies.  

However, the playbook is now changing. Against the backdrop of continued geopolitical and economic turbulence – and pressure from LPs to transact – two trends which demonstrate that PE firms are searching for innovative ways to generate value have emerged.  READ MORE

Intel to spin off venture capital arm as chipmaker continues to restructure

Intel said Tuesday that it plans to spin off Intel Capital, its venture capital wing, into an independent firm, the latest in a series of structural changes announced by the chipmaker.

Turning Intel Capital, which has $5 billion in assets, into a standalone fund will allow it to raise money from outside investors, Intel said. Until now, the venture arm has been fully funded by Intel. READ MORE

Private equity’s $2 trillion pile of cash is set to fuel M&A opportunities in 2025

Private equity firms are sitting on an unprecedented war chest: roughly $2 trillion in uncalled capital. Often referred to as “dry powder,” this cash pile has been accumulating since the last big global mergers-and-acquisitions blowout, in 2021, when volume reached a whopping $5.9 trillion, according to Dealogic. The following year, activity plummeted 38.8%, and it’s been relatively quiet ever since.

“We had a general slowdown in private equity exits in 2023 and 2024,” says Alain Dermarkar, US co-head of Private Equity at global law firm A&O Shearman. High interest rates were an issue; steep borrowing costs and lower returns created valuation mismatches, ultimately reducing the size, scope, and appeal of private equity deals. READ MORE

CVC’s most active investors in 2024 – and how they invested

The landscape of corporate venture capital keeps evolving, with the telecoms companies and chipmakers of the 90’s giving way to the internet boom of the following decade and ultimately the Web3 operators of recent years.

In 2024 it was investors focused on AI — such as Alphabet’s many venture funds, as well as Microsoft and Nvidia — that were the most prolific backers of startups. Web3 investors, particularly OKX Ventures, are also still very active, while Aramco Ventures, the investment arm of the Saudi oil company, is increasingly becoming a force in the startup ecosystem.

Here are the ten leading investors of the year: READ MORE

Private Markets May See a Brighter 2025

Hopes for a more business-friendly White House to spur mergers and acquisitions activity and bring needed liquidity to private markets has several institutional asset managers looking forward to 2025.

Falling interest rates may also bring some relief to certain private markets as global central bankers, including the Federal Reserve, loosen monetary policy. Yet there is still plenty of uncertainty to leave investors cautious, such as if the U.S. economy sputters. READ MORE

Venture Capitalists Are Not The Startup Team’s Friend

To be successful in their job, by necessity, VCs are friendly and personable. So friendly that it is easy to be lulled into thinking you are forging a real friendship and that they can step outside their fiduciary selves and provide good unbiased advice to a startup founder who needs good unbiased advice a lot. But it is vital the startup founder keep in mind that the VC has a job to do and they are driven first and foremost by that job even in the advice they provide. READ MORE

Number of US venture capital firms falls as cash flows to tech’s top investors

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The number of active venture capital investors has dropped more than a quarter from a peak in 2021, as risk-averse financial institutions focus their money on the biggest firms in Silicon Valley. The tally of VCs investing in US-headquartered companies dropped to 6,175 in 2024 — meaning more than 2,000 have fallen dormant since a peak of 8,315 in 2021, according to data provider PitchBook. READ MORE