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Have you heard of Reg A? Neither had Austin Allison — until he used it to fund Pacaso, a real estate startup for luxury vacation homes.
Allison, Pacaso's cofounder and CEO, started the company with Spencer Rascoff. They were both veterans of the real estate and consumer technology industries when they launched Pacaso in 2020. READ MORE
Kevin Hartz tends to be first through the door. In 2001, he co-founded Xoom, back when sending money across borders meant standing in line at Western Union. In 2013, it went public, and in 2015, PayPal paid $1.1 billion for it. Four years after launching Xoom, he co-founded Eventbrite, which went public in 2018 and turned buying event tickets into something you could do without wanting to throw your laptop in the ocean.
After a stint at Founders Fund, Hartz co-founded his own venture firm, A* Capital (a nod to a computer science algorithm), then in 2020, he spotted another trend before the masses: the SPAC boom. His blank-check company, “one,” swallowed up 3D printing outfit Markforged in a $2.1 billion reverse merger in 2021, right as every other financier in Silicon Valley suddenly decided SPACs were the future. READ MORE
“We have incurred operating losses in the past, may incur operating losses in the future, and may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future.”
Yes, that’s singling out boilerplate corporate language in the “Risk Factors” section of docs filed by The Los Angeles Times as it seeks investors ahead of an initial public offering that may take place in 2027 on the New York Stock Exchange under the LAT symbol. But, with a net loss before income taxes of $48 million on the books for 2024, the line also speaks to the urgency of billionaire owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong‘s bid to transform the business of the 144-year-old paper, which now employs 615 full-time staffers and says it has about 500,000 paying customers combined across its print and digital offerings. READ MORE
In the world of private equity, the mood is decidedly more upbeat. Despite tariff uncertainty and rising equity valuations, sponsors have managed to reel in some big fish, with the whale being the $55bn buyout of Electronic Arts. And with the listings window cracking open, even in stagnant Europe, there is hope that the sector may finally sell down part of the $3tn asset pile it has amassed. The latest data suggests an uptick is already under way. In Europe, sponsors sold some €90bn of assets in the third quarter says PitchBook. Globally, industry exits have grown to $871bn so far this year, which is already higher than the total achieved in 2022 and 2023, and, at the current rate, on track to beat 2024. READ MORE
As investors scramble to find the next big AI startup to fund, one VC firm got rid of its analysts and is instead using AI to help run deals.
Four-year-old Davidovs Venture Collective (DVC) — cofounded by married duo and general partners Marina Davidova and Nick Davidov — has launched a $75 million fund for Series A and B AI startups. READ MORE
Annual GP-led VC secondaries have reached around $14.6 billion and are projected to grow by $1.5 billion in the next two years, according to a new PitchBook analyst note. Direct secondaries, meanwhile, are hovering around $60 billion in annual transactions, up from $50 billion last year.
“The biggest takeaway is that the GP-led secondaries market has grown in recent years because of the exits stalemate—but because the market has inherent limitations, both on the buyer side and the seller side, its growth is limited to a small universe of potential venture firms that can spin out continuation funds and strip sales,” said Emily Zheng, a senior VC research analyst at PitchBook. READ MORE
Bringing private markets to the masses is the talk of the investment world these days. As more capital formation takes place beyond public exchanges, efforts are underway to give retail investors access to private equity and private credit. Semiliquid funds offer one route. Private assets may even be coming to 401(k) plans.
Skeptics suspect a cash grab. As much as phrases like “democratizing access” sound altruistic, private market investment managers see retail assets as a means of growing their businesses. Private market funds are known for high fees, illiquidity, and opacity. Their diversification and performance benefits can be oversold. READ MORE
LPs like to think that selecting top fund managers means a greater likelihood of blockbuster returns. And that conventional wisdom is especially prevalent in venture capital, where a few well-timed bets can yield truly incredible returns.
But new research from PitchBook suggests that in most cases, the ability to pick superior GPs may not generate any more alpha in venture capital than in buyouts, an asset class where the gap between the best and worst managers is narrower. READ MORE
In my previous post, I explained why investments in private equity firms that buy and manage companies with the intent of changing them so they can be sold for a profit are especially risky. Those risks are ultimately being borne by a large segment of the population because public pension management institutions that hold the pension funds of public schoolteachers and other state workers are often large investors in private equity.
Yet, as I also pointed out, those high risks might be justified if the returns from investments in private equity were especially large. But are they? READ MORE
Every entrepreneur has a defining moment. For Canadian businessman and investor Kevin O’Leary, it occurred in the 11th grade.
O’Leary, nicknamed “Mr. Wonderful,” shared with AFROTECH™ that he was fired from an ice cream shop after working only a few hours as a scooper. The shop’s owner instructed him to scrape the tile floors, which he refused to do since it was not in his job description. READ MORE
In venture capital, they call it “pattern matching” — identifying similarities in successful investments — but Claire Bristow and Adele Moynihan spotted a different pattern: the escape route their female colleagues were taking.
Both women recently left roles in Australian venture capital for chief of staff positions at high-growth startups. READ MORE
It’s getting tough out there for the little guys.
Small-cap stocks have started to lose some of their performance zing compared with large caps. The reason: Private equity and venture capital firms have been snapping up many promising small companies that otherwise would likely have gone public, wresting those potentially lucrative opportunities away from public investors. Over the past two years there has been a widening gap in quality between large-cap and small-cap stocks, according to a recent Morningstar analysis. That includes returns on assets, returns on equity, net margin and debt-to-capital ratios showing that overall, small-cap stocks have increasingly weaker fundamentals compared with large caps, Morningstar passive strategies analyst Zachary Evens said. READ MORE
You’ve likely heard the grim statistic that women receive less than two percent of venture capital (VC) funding. Within that low number, women over 50 are nearly invisible in the funding landscape. Silicon Valley touts the skills of the youth and eagerly invests in these founders, but I’d like to challenge the myth that innovation only belongs to the young talent out there.
Women over 50 are a group of innovators who largely get ignored and passed over, but this is a missed opportunity. If investors are looking for the next successful business, they might not want to overlook the women who don’t fit the Silicon Valley mold. It’s a well-known fact that the best portfolios thrive off diversity and investing in founders is no different. READ MORE
Getting off the ground is less about ideas and more about capital for many small business owners and startup founders. Great ideas, dedicated teams and solutions that herald breakthroughs are most often left unattended due to the one resource needed to propel any stage of growth: money.
While the media spotlights billion-dollar valuations and massive fundraising rounds, the truth is that most founders are navigating a financial system that wasn’t built for them. Access to venture capital is often reserved for the well-networked or already established, leaving early-stage entrepreneurs on the outside looking in. READ MORE
Last week, two Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) LP decks leaked to Newcomer. As far as I (and Google and ChatGPT) can tell, this is only the second time ever that internal Andreessen Horowitz documents have leaked. The firm is notoriously secretive.
I am much too humble and my fund is much too insignificant to seriously believe that my Substack from September 3—“Andreessen Horowitz is not a Venture Capital Fund”—and its subsequent republishing on Fast Company could possibly have annoyed the Sand Hill Road behemoth so much that it decided to leak its own LP deck for the first time in history. READ MORE
What underlying fundamental trends can indicate that a company might be in decline? More often than not, we'll see a declining return on capital employed (ROCE) and a declining amount of capital employed. Trends like this ultimately mean the business is reducing its investments and also earning less on what it has invested. In light of that, from a first glance at Venture (SGX:V03), we've spotted some signs that it could be struggling, so let's investigate. READ MORE
Major players like Anthropic and xAI have secured multi-billion dollar rounds, while smaller startups outside the AI sector are finding it harder to raise money. Kyle Sanford at PitchBook describes the result as a split market - it's either AI or not.
In the US, 62.7 percent of VC funding went to AI companies, compared to 53.2 percent worldwide. In total, global VC investment for 2025 stands at $366.8 billion, with $250.2 billion coming from the US. READ MORE
Global venture funding gained significantly in Q3 2025, closing up 38% year over year, Crunchbase data shows, as massive funding deals, particularly for giants in the AI sector, continued to lead.
All told, Q3 venture investment reached $97 billion, up from $70 billion in Q3 2024, per Crunchbase data. Quarter-over-quarter funding was up slightly from $92 billion in Q2. READ MORE
In recent years, Venture Capital-as-a-Service (VCaaS) has become more predominant since it offers more flexibility than the traditional VC model. It is designed perfectly for corporations, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds that want to engage in startup investment without managing a full-fledged VC team. Let’s understand the mechanics behind VCaaS and why corporations are embracing it. READ MORE
As the rush towards AI-related companies continues on Wall Street, data from Crunchbase showed on Monday that the sector enjoyed a bulk of venture funding in the third quarter, with names including Anthropic raking in billions.
BY THE NUMBERS
Global venture funding in the third quarter increased 38% year-over-year to $97 billion, increasing slightly from $92 billion in the second quarter. READ MORE
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