‘Product won’t win. Distribution will.’ Tips for startup founders raising cash right now

If you’re building an early-stage startup and trying to raise venture capital dollars to fuel your big ideas — focus on solving a specific problem, make sure you have strong conviction, and think hard about distribution in the age of AI.

Those were some tips shared during a recent Seattle AI Week panel discussion I moderated with Kellan Carter, founding general partner at Bellevue, Wash.-based firm Fuse, and Rohan D’Souza, CEO and co-founder at Seattle-based healthcare benefits startup Avante. READ MORE

How PE And VC Collapsed Into One Battlefield

With IPO markets effectively frozen and AI-driven mega-rounds absorbing virtually all high-quality deal flow, private equity and venture capital have collapsed into the same battlefield, fighting over the same late-stage technology deals once clearly owned by VC. Even family offices are muscling in, writing checks once reserved for growth funds. The result is a barbell-shaped market where top-tier players crowd into a handful of oversubscribed AI and Big Tech opportunities, while second- and third-tier funds face an existential question: in a world where capital is abundant but true opportunities are scarce, what, if anything, do they actually have left to do? READ MORE

Private Equity Turns To Leadership Diligence To Gain A Sharper Edge

Private equity is entering a new phase where success hinges less on capital structure and more on who sits at the table. As firms deploy record dry powder and compete for differentiated value creation, leadership diligence is becoming the ultimate edge. Evan Berta, an associate at Hunt Scanlon Ventures, explores how investors are rethinking the pre-close process, what practical frameworks are emerging to assess leadership risk, and why KKR’s recent investment in ghSMART demonstrates the market’s conviction that talent intelligence is now core to private equity strategy. READ MORE

Just 4 deals made up nearly half of AI VC funding in Q3

Just four of the 1,086 VC deals recorded for AI startups in Q3—funding rounds for xAI, Anthropic, Nscale and Mistral—accounted for nearly half of the quarter’s total deal value, according to new research from PitchBook.

As fears over a potential AI bubble fester, VCs are backing fewer companies—but investing heavily into that select group. READ MORE

Here’s What 3 VC Heavyweights Suggest Founders Do to Get Funded Now

Capturing the attention of investors, particularly in the venture capital community, may be harder than ever. Closing a funding round is even more challenging. So how can founders raise VC funding in the current environment? Reid Hoffman, Stacy Brown-Philpot, and Aileen Lee have a few suggestions.

Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn and chairman of venture capital firm Village Global. Philpot is the former CEO of TaskRabbit and founder of Cherryrock Capital. And Lee is founder of seed investment firm Cowboy Ventures — and the person who coined the term “unicorn” for startups. The trio gathered recently at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit to discuss the current funding environment and how companies can stand out when they’re trying to fundraise. READ MORE

Venture Capital LPs Navigate Liquidity Crisis with Secondary Markets and Longer Fund Cycles

In the current reality, limited partners (LPs) in venture capital funds are facing a liquidity crisis: funds are lasting longer than expected, young managers are raising money with greater difficulty, and billions of dollars are stuck in startups that may not live up to the peak valuations of 2021.

A recent StrictlyVC panel in San Francisco brought together five leading LPs representing endowments, fund-of-funds, and secondary-market firms with total assets under management of more than $100 billion, and they painted an unusual picture of the current state of the venture ecosystem while pointing to opportunities amid the chaos. READ MORE

How to Know If Venture Capital Is Right For Your Business

Venture capital is a powerful tool to scale startups, but is it the right tool for your startup? According to major VC investor Kevin Carter, not necessarily. Throughout his career, Carter has invested in more than 1,000 early stage companies, dozens of which have gone on to billion-dollar valuations. He entered early into disruptive companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and Snap — and now his firm Night Capital backs high-potential founders in massive markets. Here, he shares how to decide whether venture capital can take your business to the next level, and if so, which investors are worth partnering with. READ MORE

In An Agentic Era, VC Is Buying A-Player C-Suite Execs At Any Cost — Not ‘Staffing Up’

Venture capital has become a mechanism for extracting executives from trillion-dollar companies and paying them whatever it takes to build in an AI-native world.

We’re not funding companies anymore — we’re buying access to the few hundred people who’ve built AI systems inside Google, OpenAI and Meta. READ MORE

52 Emerging Investors Who Want You to Pitch Them Now

It’s the first big question in anyone’s fundraising journey: “Who should I pitch?”

The answer might be: Pitch an emerging investor. READ MORE

How Generative AI Is Reshaping Venture Capital

The venture capital world has witnessed countless technological disruptions over the decades, but few have arrived with the speed and scope of generative artificial intelligence. In the three years since ChatGPT’s launch, gen AI has fundamentally altered how startups are conceived, pitched, built, and funded. According to a report from Stanford, global private AI investment reached a record high of $252.3 billion in 2024, with generative AI funding soaring to $33.9 billion—more than eight times higher than 2022 levels. READ MORE

‘Our funds are 20 years old’: Limited partners confront VCs’ liquidity crisis

These days, it’s not easy to be a limited partner who invests in venture capital firms. The “LPs” who fund VCs are confronting an asset class in flux: Funds have nearly twice the lifespan they used to, emerging managers face life-or-death fundraising challenges, and billions of dollars sit trapped in startups that may never justify their 2021 valuations.

Indeed, at a recent StrictlyVC panel in San Francisco, above the din of the boisterous crowd gathered to watch it, five prominent LPs, representing endowments, fund-of-funds, and secondaries firms managing over $100 billion combined, painted a surprising picture of venture capital’s current state, even as they see areas of opportunity emerging from the upheaval. READ MORE

Tech execs admit AI is a bubble—and they’re pretty happy about it: ‘We can’t deny there’s a ridiculous amount of investment going on’

If the AI boom had a physical form, it was alive and kicking at Web Summit this week as 71,000 startup founders, venture capital investors, tech CEOs, and the media who follow them gathered under literal storm clouds in Lisbon, Portugal, to discuss the future of the industry.

Tech stocks sold off dramatically as the conference wore on, after ‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry pointed out that some AI hyperscaler tech companies—including Meta and Oracle—were elongating the depreciation schedules of their AI capital expenditure (capex) to make their short-term profitability look more favourable. The Nasdaq Composite lost 2.3% yesterday. In addition, Oracle shares declined by 30% over the last month as investors rejected the company’s plan to increase its debt in large part to spend more on AI chips. READ MORE

The Problem With VC: It's All Going to AI

Venture capital is always chasing some hot theme. Five years ago, it was software-as-a-service. A couple years later, it was Web3. Now, it’s artificial intelligence.

But while VC investors chase trends, they still typically diversify. Currently, they are monomaniacally chasing AI above all others in a way the investment and tech industries have not seen before. READ MORE

VCs abandon old rules for a ‘funky time’ of investing in AI startups

If there’s one thing that VCs agree on when backing AI startups, it’s that AI requires a different investment approach than prior technological shifts.

“It’s a funky time,” said Aileen Lee, founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. The longtime VC noted that the rules of investing have significantly shifted now that some AI companies are leaping from “zero to $100 million in revenue in a single year.” READ MORE

Fueled by private equity, Volo Sports wants to take over your social life

Private equity's latest dating play has nothing to do with the apps. In November 2024, PE firm Bluestone Equity Partners made a $21 million growth investment to expand Volo Sports, an operator of a network of adult sports leagues, through acquisitions. This capital injection drove Volo's purchase of the country's second-largest social sports company, ZogSports.

Over the past decade and a half, Volo has grown from a 16-person bocce ball league in Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood to a sprawling, cross-country collection of youth leagues and co-ed sports teams, largely targeting young professionals in their 20s and 30s in urban areas. READ MORE

When Private Equity Bets On Emerging CEOs

Many private equity funds, search funds and family offices are betting on emerging CEOs—leaders who are often younger, are outsiders to the industry and are new to their teams—as the centerpiece of their value-creation plans. This model can inject fresh perspective and close alignment with investor strategy, but it also carries more risk than appointing a veteran executive or promoting from within.

I’m a private-equity operator and CEO of a portfolio company within a firm known for pioneering an investment model that champions emerging leaders. In my own journey stepping into the CEO seat of a decades-old business, I’ve learned that the first 100 days rarely look like the spreadsheet you walk in with. If you're an emerging CEO or expecting to become one, here's a look at what you can expect, as well as best practices that can help you start off on the right foot. READ MORE

Restoring the balance between public and private markets

Two decades ago, the remit of private markets was largely restricted to financing early-stage venture capital at one end of the spectrum and shaking up bloated and out of touch listed corporates at the other. Credit was either provided by banks, or public securities.

That situation has now changed entirely. The private credit industry has skyrocketed and, per industry estimates, the number of US businesses backed by private markets is now more than double the number of public companies, as traditional IPO candidates choose to stay private for longer. READ MORE

Corporate Venture Capital And The 16% Problem

Depending on how you define success, Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) is either a brilliant technique for funding innovation from the balance sheet or an expensive distraction from the hard work of building new ventures. My answer is that it is both an enabler to innovation and a potential distraction that keeps firms trapped in the safe space of ideas and concepts. READ MORE

What’s new in venture capital? Update on Q3 2025 Venture Capital Trends

After three challenging years, Venture Capital (VC) funding is finally on the upswing according to data from Q3 of this year. KPMG’s Q3’25 Venture Pulse Report data shows global VC investment in Q3 totaling $120.7 billion across 7,579, deals making it the fourth consecutive quarter of “robust global growth.” With investor sentiment improving and exit windows opening again, VC investment is making a comeback. READ MORE

Venture capital is not an asset class, says Sequoia’s Roelof Botha

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Sequoia managing partner Roelof Botha argued that the venture industry isn’t an asset class and that throwing more money into Silicon Valley doesn’t lead to better companies.

“Investing in venture is a return-free risk,” Botha said during an interview on TechCrunch Disrupt’s main stage on Monday. “Anybody who’s studied the capital asset pricing model understands the joke of that. The reason I came up with this is, if you look at the history of venture capital, it’s an asset that’s uncorrelated with other asset classes.” READ MORE