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☆ Venture-Fund Returns Suffer Amid Lower Startup Values
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Berber Jin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Venture-capital-fund performance is languishing amid the broader downturn for tech startups, denting returns for university endowments, pensions and other investors that increased their exposure to the sector during the bull market. For the first time in more than a decade, returns for venture funds were negative for three consecutive quarters last year, according to research firm PitchBook Data, as investors finally began to mark down startups that had ballooned in value. Initial data for the fourth quarter also show a negative quarterly return.

Andreessen Horowitz is preparing to launch a fund of funds to invest in other startup backers. A16z has already been courting up-and-coming fund managers at events in San Francisco and LA. The venture-capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz has in recent months been in discussions to form a fund of funds focused on early-stage investing, according to multiple people familiar with the project. In recent months, the firm has started to court up-and-coming fund managers with events in San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to three sources familiar with the firm's plans. Partners at crossover fund Tiger Global tried a similar strategy in recent years, committing $1 billion to back an array of early-stage venture funds.

☆ Singapore's sovereign wealth fund is looking to invest more in the secondary market, as other VC funds look to sell
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund is keen on doing more in the secondary market, where private stakes in startups and VC funds change hands. That means there's pressure on distributions, which is the cash returned to VC and startup investors. GIC has a private-equity team that specializes in the secondary market. There's been a growing number of secondary funds and exchanges that help founders, employees, and even investors and VC funds sell their startup shares. So as some VC funds look to sell in the secondary market now, GIC has more freedom to be a buyer.

☆ Researchers found a surefire predictor of success — and what separates those who find it from those who keep failing
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Susie Allen | Kellogg Insight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Using this insight, the researchers are able to successfully predict an individual's long-term success with just a small amount of information about that person's initial attempts. Indeed, in another recent study, Wang himself found that an early career setback often set up scientists for later success. In all three datasets, an individual's second-to-last attempt did tend have a higher probability of success than their very first effort. Rather, there's a singular learning threshold that separates eventual successes from the rest. "Thomas Edison said, 'people give up because they don't know how close they are to success,'" Wang explains.

☆ BeeHero: 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Cnbc.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Enter agtech startup BeeHero with a solution. Last December, BeeHero snared $42 million in a Series B round led by impact growth fund Covent Capital in Amsterdam. But BeeHero is not the only startup providing honeybee pollution services, a market estimated by the USDA at $320 million annually. Last year, Limor Farchy, who previously worked at two acquired Israeli tech startups, was recruited as CFO. The agtech startup supplies several top almond growers in California and expects to expand to other crops that rely on pollination.

☆ See the pitch deck a startup trying to rival Airbnb used to raise $14 million to turn entire buildings in Miami and Nashville into short-term-rental apartments for bachelor parties and big groups
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

CEO Andreas King-Geovanis walked Insider through the pitch deck he used to raise the funds. Guests can book units in more than 15 Roami buildings across Miami, New Orleans, Nashville, and Austin on Airbnb or Booking.com. King-Geovanis said that the end of 2022 was a challenging time to raise funds as a short-term-rental business. That's why the pitch deck King-Geovanis used during the recent fundraise focused so heavily on Roami's profitability, partly due to labor- and cost-saving technologies. King-Geovanis walked Insider through the pitch deck he used to raise Roami's latest round.

☆ The former president of Tesla and COO of Lyft just raised a new $40 million fund and wants to fix venture capital's "addiction to fees"
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Jon McNeill served as president of Tesla, COO of Lyft, and has started and sold six companies. Over the same period the number of new funds closed has fallen by more than 75%, meaning capital is concentrating in fewer and larger funds. "That's all about addiction to fees," said McNeill, "it's not like they've got twenty times the amount of opportunities to fund, they don't." It's a venture fund, but it also bears resemblance to a private equity fund, an incubator, and a sort of "private Berkshire Hathaway" as McNeill puts it. The fund takes 100% of the company up front, as opposed to the 20% stake a VC fund would typically take.

☆ Here are the 5 key takeaways from this year's Milken Global conference
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Dakin Campbell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

The pullback by banks is raising the hopes of those in the private credit industry. Some panelists and others who spoke in the hallways of the event suggested that there was a large-scale handoff from private equity to private credit. Many private-equity firms are scrambling to raise private credit funds to take advantage. "I don't think this is the end of private equity, but the environment certainly favors private credit," he said. And that will show up in lower returns for private credit funds, she said.

☆ Exclusive: Google's VC firm just led a $12 million Series A investment in Range, a startup that's training AI to give financial advice
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The company is training an AI model to give financial advice and hopes to make human advisors obsolete within a decade. Enter Range, a startup that's looking to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to make human financial planners obsolete. The company is building out a suite of financial planning tools aimed at aging millennials and designed to help streamline investing, saving, and estate planning. 'We're looking to replace you'These recommendations are reviewed and "massaged" by human advisors before being passed on to clients. She said she's excited about the prospect of making her own job obsolete if it means more people having access to financial planning.

☆ Some startups are selling at 80% discounts as investors finally come to terms with the collapse in valuations across the tech industry
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

As valuations drop, investors are increasingly looking to the secondary market to sell their startup shares. This scramble to cash out has led to a steep drop in prices for secondary transactions. With secondary transactions, investors can sell all or part of their stake in a VC fund in order to realize gains earlier than they otherwise would. In some cases, he says, StepStone has even acquired startup shares on the secondary market at prices 80% below their most recent funding rounds. Secondary investors came into 2023 sitting on $131 billion in dry powder, according to a survey from investment advisory firm Evercore.

☆ Tech groupthink could hinder AI competition
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, May 1 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Everyone wants a piece of OpenAI, the startup behind artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ChatGPT. Now that OpenAI has the support of venture capital’s biggest names, that norm will make life harder for smaller challengers - especially given the steep costs of training AI models and how stretched venture funding is now. Rivals could look to the other tech goliaths; competitor Anthropic, backed by Microsoft nemesis Google, recently completed a similarly sized fundraise. By planting its flag in Silicon Valley early, OpenAI may have won a lasting edge in the AI race. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ AI startup founders from Y Combinator's latest class reveal the top 3 things they learned from the accelerator
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Several AI startup founders who participated said the program had many more in person events. And they also said it was a huge benefit and made a difference being in San Francisco. For its winter 2023 cohort, Y Combinator accepted founders from 282 startups for its coveted startup accelerator program. Insider spoke with the founders of four AI startups that went through this latest batch and asked them to share what they learned most from the experience. "It feels like the next platform shift, and San Francisco is definitely the heart of it."

☆ He's played chess with Peter Thiel, sparred with Elon Musk and once, supposedly, stopped a plane crash: Inside Sam Altman's world, where truth is stranger than fiction
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Melia Russell | Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +41 min

But, "you do at some point need to start having contact with reality," he told Insider. The plan was still only a rough sketch, Blania told Insider, but that didn't seem to matter to his host. "He always wanted to understand everything at a very deep level," Thrun told Insider in an email. (When asked about guns, Altman told Insider he'd been "happy to have one both times my home was broken into while I was there.") When asked about this, Altman told Insider in an email: "i can guess what that's about; these stories grow crazily inflated over the years of getting re-told!

☆ Sam Altman is building his utopia, whether you want it or not
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Melia Russell | Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +41 min

Altman told Insider, "We debate our approach frequently and carefully." "I don't think anyone can lose your dad young and wish he didn't have more time with him," Altman told Insider. Altman told Insider that his thinking had evolved since those posts. (When asked about guns, Altman told Insider he'd been "happy to have one both times my home was broken into while I was there.") When asked about this, Altman told Insider in an email: "i can guess what that's about; these stories grow crazily inflated over the years of getting re-told!

☆ How 2 Silicon Valley vets are upending traditional venture capital with an investing model the industry hasn't seen before
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Vishal Persaud | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The pair then decided to launch a venture firm, Fiat Ventures, with fintech vet Marcos Fernandez. After stints at buzzy startups in Silicon Valley, the two college buds are now making a name for themselves as the cofounders of the growth consultancy firm, Fiat Growth, and its sister venture firm, Fiat Ventures. In the case of Fiat Growth and Fiat Ventures, they have "reverse engineered" this model, where Fiat Growth acts in some ways like a platform team for its sister venture fund. Using this firsthand knowledge about industry trends and insight in startups with investing potential, Fiat Growth often passes this intel on to Fiat Ventures. How it all beganBefore cofounding Fiat Growth and Fiat Ventures, Glover and Harris became friends while on the football team at the University of California, Berkeley.

☆ Why Michael Bloomberg is the keeper of the keys on Wall Street
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Bloomberg deals in data — via its ubiquitous terminal — which serves as the lifeblood of Wall Street. (A funny nugget from the FT story: Bloomberg is not part of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In many ways, the Bloomberg terminal is the cockroach of Wall Street. Tiger Global's down bad. Here's more on Tiger Global's unique approach to investing in startups and why it backfired.

☆ Developer tool startups in Y Combinator's latest class are grabbing the attention of investors like Elad Gil and Google's Gradient Ventures. Here are 4 that have already landed funding.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Developer tool startups that were part of Y Combinator's latest class are drawing strong interest from several high-profile venture capitalists. Sequoia partner Lauren Reeder personally participated in the code review startup's recent funding round, according to a Sequoia spokesperson. That fundraising was at a $30 million post-money valuation, one person familiar with the deal said. Developer tool startups accounted for 26% of the companies in YC's winter 2023 batch, up from 16% of the summer 2022 class, according to the accelerator's startup directory. Have a tip on a startup funding round?

April 20 (Reuters) - Cybersecurity company Group-IB has finalised its exit from Russia, the group said on Thursday, cutting ties with its original market in an effort to spur its global expansion ambitions. Already harbouring global ambitions, Group-IB moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2019. Volkov has sold his 10% stake in the Russian company, Group-IB said in a statement. The stand-alone Russian business has been sold to local management and will be operating under the new brand F.A.C.C.T. Group-IB said Sachkov had sold his 37.5% stake in the Singapore entity to members of top management there.

☆ Everyone was wrong about how the pandemic would change shopping — here's how experts are betting on e-commerce now
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The idea that e-commerce will keep growing forever, and betting on it will lead to an almost inevitable rising tide, didn't survive the pandemic. Public flame-outs of entire categories of startups, like ultra-fast deliveries and Amazon seller aggregators, have further demonstrated the boom-and-bust nature of pandemic e-commerce investing. Apple's recent moves to give consumers more online privacy has had ripples through the e-commerce ecosystem, leading investors to take a beat. E-commerce logistics — fulfillment and last-mile delivery — said Sloane is fairly well-saturated at this point, he said. For many retailers, the pandemic offered a harsh lesson in how integrated their stores and their websites weren't, she said.

☆ Torch Capital's founder has some advice for startup founders: Down rounds aren't such a bad thing right now. Here's why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Jonathan Keidan founded VC firm Torch Capital, which backed Ro and recently raised $200 million. Good founders will opt for down rounds over deal terms that could come back to bite, he says. As venture capital funding plummets and investors tighten their purse strings, Jonathan Keidan has a word of advice to startup founders: It's OK to take a down round. Most of the founders Torch has backed, Keidan said, are still steering clear of the relatively sluggish market. "You can roll up your sleeves and really help them, which has been critical in this environment," Keidan told Insider.

A bank run took down Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, as depositors withdrew $42 billion in a single day. And that’s why we’ve gone to community banks and regional banks such as SVB,” Bradley said. SVB’s collapse could spark future change, entrepreneur saysBecause of these disparities, entrepreneurs also seek funding from venture capitalists. In the early 2010s, Hamilton intended to start her own tech company — but as she searched for investors, she saw that White men control nearly all venture capital dollars. That experience led her to establish Backstage Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in new companies led by underrepresented founders.

☆ Startup aims to help climate companies unlock billions in Inflation Reduction Act tax credits
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Catherine Clifford | In Catclifford | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

There's a problem with tax credits, though. A September report from Credit Suisse estimates approximately $500 billion of tax credits will be monetized over the next decade. "There are a few institutional players in the market that purchase tax credits at discount to market value in exchange for buying at volume. Sellers can list their tax credits on option, get bids on those credits, and compare offers. Tax credits have a wide base of support politically because a lot of very diverse stakeholders benefit from them.

☆ Softbank-backed adtech firm Permutive announces further layoffs, which could affect up to 40% of staff
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Permutive told staffers this week it's preparing a round of layoffs that may affect up to 40% of staff. It follows an earlier round of layoffs in August last year, which reduced its then-headcount by 12%. Permutive said it wants to focus on profitability amid a challenging economic environment and drop in venture funding. UK-based adtech company Permutive this week announced a layoff that is expected to affect just under 80 staffers, or about 40% of its headcount, Insider has learned. UK employment laws stipulate employers laying off more than 20 staff must consult with employee representatives over redundancy plans.

☆ Exclusive: The University of California has invested billions in venture capital firms since 2000 and it has lost hundreds of millions so far. Here's why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Ben Bergman | Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Insider obtained UC Investments' returns through a Public Records Act request. Unlike many other financial institutions, VC funds are not required to show their return on investment in startups. UC Investments, which has been managed by Jagdeep Singh Bachher since 2014, declined to comment. Though selling early produced an initial windfall, UC Investments could have ultimately missed out on substantial gains from these VC funds. By comparison, UC Investments earned a 8.3% return for its investment in public markets.

☆ Edtech venture capital firm Reach Capital raises $215 million for its largest fund ever and has its sights set on backing more generative AI startups
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Reach Capital has closed its fourth fund with $215 million to invest in education startups. The team is also looking to back more companies using generative AI in education, Reach Capital founding partner Esteban Sosnik told Insider. Near the end of 2022, edtech investing had just reached $8.89 billion in 2022, according to PitchBook. While generalist investors still have some interest in edtech deals, some of the hype has worn off. Reach has also backed several edtech startups that went on to become unicorns, or reach a valuation of over $1 billion, including Outschool, ClassDojo, and Handshake.

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