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☆ VCs need to return cash to their investors. The secondary market is coming alive as a result.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Venture capitalists need to free up cash and return money to their own investors, known as limited partners (LPs). The secondary share sales market in the US is well established. Bad timingMost VC funds agree to return their profits to their LPs within 10 years. A record 31 secondary funds headquartered in Europe were established in 2021, amid the hype period, with $29 billion in assets under management per PitchBook. It all comes down to how buoyant the VC market is: "If the market is good again, then who's going to sell secondary?

Persons: There's, Michael Smith, Regeneration's Smith, Kelly Rodriques, Hussein Kanji, Kanji, Hussein, Tom Henrikkson, OpeanOcean, it's, Henrikkson Organizations: Venture, Business, Industry Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Ventures, Albion, Forge, Financial Times, VC, Hoxton Ventures, Sequoia Locations: Silicon Valley, Europe, San Francisco, Amsterdam, London

☆ Here's what Britain's venture capital limited partners are backing: men
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-07 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The institutional investors plying Britain's venture capital sector with cash have a penchant for backing funds owned entirely by men. All-male-owned firms raised 10 times more capital than funds owned by their female counterparts between 2017 and 2023, according to a report by impact fund Ada Ventures. A similar disparity was found among mixed-gender funds, which raised almost five times less than the male-owned funds. Those firms raised around 6.6 billion pounds during that period. Venture capital's diversity issues are well documented but there has been a slew of women leaving the industry this year.

Persons: VCs, Ekaterina Alamasque, Warner, Alamasque Organizations: Ada Ventures, Diversity, Google, Venture, Partners, Women

☆ How generative AI's uncomfortable relationship with copyright law will determine the future of the industry
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-01 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | Tasmin Lockwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Rights holders argue that AI using their work without a license should be considered "unauthorized derivative work" — an infringement of copyright law. Meanwhile, AI startups insist that their models comply with fair-use doctrine, which grants them some leeway to others' works. This month, Universal Music Group sued the AI startup Athropic for circulating copyrighted lyrics. He believes that future regulations may explicitly forbid AI data scraping. "They can train models on data that's not universally available to customers, and tell them it's licensed and compliant."

Persons: Eva Toorenent, who's, that's, Simon Menashy, Menashy, Ekaterina Almasque, OpenOcean Almasque, Getty, Sunny Dhillon, Harvey, Horowitz, Andre Retterath, GDPR, CCPA, Taylor, Swift Organizations: Universal Music Group, Getty, Harvard Business, MMC Ventures, Kyber Knight Capital, Nvidia, Earlybird Venture Locations: what's, Europe

☆ Elon Musk is coming to the UK's big AI safety party. Some people actually building AI say they got frozen out.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-01 | by ( Tom Carter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The UK's AI summit is underway. Some AI experts and startups say they've been frozen out in favor of bigger tech companies. They warn that the "closed door" event risks ensuring that AI is dominated by select companies. The UK's AI summit aims to bring together AI experts, tech bosses, and world leaders to discuss the risks of AI and find ways to regulate the new technology. "It is far from certain whether the AI summit will have any lasting impact," Ekaterina Almasque, a general partner at European venture capital firm OpenOcean, which invests in AI, told Insider.

Persons: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, —, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Brad Smith, Kamala Harris, Iris Ai, Victor Botev, Yann LeCun, Rishi Sunak, Ekaterina Almasque, Almasque, Goldman Sachs Organizations: Service, OpenAI's, Microsoft, Twitter, UK, Big Tech, UK government's Department for Science, Innovation, Technology, UK's Trades Union Congress, American Federation of Labor, Industrial Organizations, Summit Locations: OpenOcean

☆ There's a big venture capital funding downturn — except for this one set of investors
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-28 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | Tasmin Lockwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Venture capital funding into startups has drastically slowed. Corporate venture capital grew in 2022 and looks to grow again in 2023, bucking the broader downturn. Continuing a pullback in funding activity in 2022, venture capital into European startups fell by 32.1% in Q1 of 2023, per Pitchbook data. Faced with the prospect of raising down rounds at slashed valuations, startups are turning to an alternative mode of funding — corporate venture capitalists. A corporate venture capital firm, or CVC, is the investing arm of a specific business.

Persons: Ekaterina Almasque, Almasque, Sabrina Maniscalco, Luis Valente, Valente, iLoF, Charlie Bullock Organizations: Corporate, GV, Google, Catalyst, Catalyst Fund, Presidio Ventures, Japan's Sumitomo Corporation, Microsoft, OSRAM Ventures

☆ 6 years ago, AI startup MindsDB was an open source project that few took seriously. Now it's worth $160 million and on a growth rocketship.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Vishal Persaud | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

MindsDB helps developers apply machine learning to their data to build AI applications. Founded in 2017, the startup began as an AI open source project that some doubted in its early days. But six years ago, MindsDB was just an abstraction and later an open source AI project that few paid attention to. "'You're going to be able to automate the work of a machine learning engineer? "After YC, we became an actual company," Torres said.

Persons: MindsDB, Jorge Torres, he's, Torres, cofound, Adam Carrigan, Aneesh Chopra, Barack Obama, Carrigan, Michael Seibel, Y, Seibel, Luck, There's, It's Organizations: Mayfield Fund, Benchmark, Forbes, Investors, CareJourney, Mayfield Locations: London

☆ Think long-term, grab land, watch your runway: Here's how European VCs are advising their founders ahead of a looming recession
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Sequoia's iconic 2008 'R.I.P Good Times' presentation still rings true for some investors. Good Times" presentation from 2008. "Because people are so programmed with the whole RIP Good Times thing, the nuance gets lost sometimes." Magda Lukaszewicz, principal at Balderton, echoed this – even if it takes companies longer to achieve said goals. Sequoia's "RIP Good Times" ends on a bleak note: Get Real or Go Home.

☆ This startup enables companies to host video content on their own platforms. Check out the 15-slide pitch deck api.video used to raise $12 million.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Bordeaux-based api.video enables developers to incorporate videos on companies' own platforms. A French startup that provides developers with the tools to embed video content on companies' native apps and websites has raised $12 million. Api.video has created a cloud-based platform that allows developers to integrate video content on companies' platforms. The startup makes its money "based on customers' usage of the platform," Montet told Insider. Tony Nysten, principal at OpenOcean, said that the rise of video as a preferred method for consumers to gain information has meant that "video infrastructure has become a critical part of modern data infrastructure."

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