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Times are reportedly tough for the world of venture capital (VC) and tech startups.
As the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Wednesday (Nov. 13), investors are seeking returns from VC companies and startups despite a weakened initial public offering (IPO) market. The WSJ points to a report by law firm Ropes & Gray showing that IPOs this year climbed compared to last year, though is still sub-normal. READ MORE
President-elect Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is joining venture capital firm 1789 Capital, which focuses on investing in conservative companies, according to three sources familiar with his plans.
1789 Capital is a roughly $150 million venture capital firm based in Palm Beach, Florida, and owned by entrepreneur Chris Buskirk, financier and Trump donor Omeed Malik and hedge fund heiress Rebekah Mercer, Reuters previously reported. READ MORE
"We believe we can save you $10 million. If we do, pay us 50% of those savings. If we don’t, pay us nothing."
This simple offer—and others like it—is fueling the rise of a new industry, and private equity (PE) firms are playing a major role in pushing it forward. READ MORE
Can private equity produce excess returns above what is available in the public markets? It’s a question we’re getting from many individual investors as private equity investing opportunities have become more accessible through evergreen products.
In answering this question, we start by looking at historical returns and some of the factors that have driven private equity’s outperformance relative to the public markets over time. We then address why we think private equity is positioned to continue outperforming in the future. READ MORE
In today's world of swift technological progress and rapidly changing market dynamics, businesses are under increasing pressure to grow and stay competitive. Traditional innovation approaches, such as building internal R&D capability, are sometimes not enough to maintain a competitive edge, and many companies are adding in-house venture capital (VC) capability. This means establishing a corporate venture capital (CVC) arm or dedicating resources to invest in startups with potentially far-reaching ideas and innovative technology. READ MORE
Fundraising in 2025 will continue to be a “tale of two cities,” VC Renata Quintini, co-founder of early-stage VC Renegade Partners, said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt last week.
“Some companies, really having the promise of going after big markets growing fast, [will be] receiving a lot of funding and momentum.” But on the other side, the “companies that need to build real businesses and efficient businesses” will struggle to raise cash, Quintini warned. READ MORE
By many measures, the current fundraising environment looks challenging for smaller startup investors. That’s reflected in the tally of new funds.
So far in 2024, just 118 small and midsized U.S. startup investors have raised new funds of $500 million or less, per Crunchbase data. That puts this year on pace to deliver by far the fewest new funds in the category in years. READ MORE
The US Small Business Administration (SBA) recently issued a proposed rule impacting the ability of small business government contractors to continue performance of set-aside awards following a merger or acquisition. The changes to 13 CFR § 121.404 are of significance to companies such as private equity firms seeking to acquire small business contractors. READ MORE
One of the lessons that the wild Silicon Valley venture funding environment of the past few years has clearly taught is this: Bigger valuations are not always better.
“I think we’ve all kind of seen the negative impact of having a valuation too high from the last, call it, three years,” Elizabeth Yin, co-founder of Hustle Fund said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt last week. When a VC bull market hits and startups are able to easily raise a lot of money before they have real, provable businesses, they’ve set themselves up for difficult times. READ MORE
What’s the difference between success and failure for the founders of early-stage businesses? The founder of unicorn fintech company Revolut believes one vital ingredient often gets overlooked: too often, warns Nik Storonsky, companies in scale-up mode struggle with a process that gets the best possible performance out of their growing workforces. His new book therefore seeks to deal with exactly that challenge.
The Revolut CEO is also a co-founder of venture capital investor QuantumLight, with whom he has teamed up to publish Driving High Performance: A Founder's Guide to Cultivating Top Talent at Scale. The idea, Storonsky explains was to publish a playbook for the firms in which QuantumLight invests – as well as for other scale-ups wondering how to build and maintain high-performance teams. READ MORE
Rulemaking at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which hit a record pace early in President Joe Biden's administration, has slowed significantly as the agency navigates a hostile new legal climate.
Adverse court decisions over the past two years have blocked the SEC from overseeing the $27 trillion private funds industry; criticized its economic justification for new share buyback disclosures; and curtailed its powers to punish bad actors. READ MORE
Tim Hoerr is a good-natured man from farm country, and grew up in a family-run garden centre/landscape nursery business. He has a practical bent, with about 15 years in venture investing and about 40 years in business in general. He was also board member of a business accelerator program for more than a decade at the major American university, Baylor.
At the start of our conversation, Tim told us that for 2024, Serra Ventures invested exclusively in ag and food tech. He said that Serra's definition of “ag tech” was broad, and included parts of the ag tech supply chain. "If there's a company solving a big problem anywhere along the supply chain," Tim said, "we're going to take a look." READ MORE
Just like most of America, those in the venture and startup realm will watch the returns of the U.S. presidential election pour in next week with a keen eye on who wins — and what it could mean for big issues in the industry such as M&A, taxes and even crypto.
While the next American president will not solely decide those issues, who is elected likely will have a large say in regulations and tax changes that could have significance on industries ranging from AI to biopharma and from the biggest of Big Tech to a pre-seed startup. READ MORE
A massive jobs miss doesn’t paint a positive picture for the backbone of America’s economy, according to the CEO of the top "non-woke" job board.
"Is that wrong?" RedBalloon’s Andrew Crapuchettes said in reaction to the Labor Department's October jobs report, which revealed only 12,000 positions were added to the economy, well under economists' expectations of 113,000. READ MORE
When Dr. Khan Nedd, founder of Infusion Associates, met representatives of Boyne Capital in 2018, he already knew he had tapped into a tremendous opportunity. The infusion treatment center’s first location in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was growing fast, and Nedd was focused on finding a partner to help take its services to more communities. It was a critical inflection point for the business. READ MORE
Money attracts money, as the saying goes. This week seemed to confirm it, with a couple startups announcing new rounds of funding only months after their previous ones, and familiar names launching new ventures. READ MORE
In the eyes of many, Europe lacks the entrepreneurial spirit and innovation drive that has come to define Silicon Valley and the broader US start-up ecosystem. The common narrative suggests that European founders are less driven, that venture capital in Europe lags far behind, and that the continent’s fragmented markets and complicated regulatory environments stifle creativity and innovation. Add to this the economic downturns of recent years, and you would be forgiven for assuming Europe is a less-than-favourable environment for start-ups and venture capital.
But that view ignores a deeper truth. While Europe may indeed have some hurdles to overcome, it also possesses several unique advantages that make it a formidable region for entrepreneurial and venture capital success. As Jyri Engeström, a Finnish venture capitalist with more than a decade of experience from Silicon Valley and now a partner at Lifeline Ventures in Helsinki, puts it, Europe has some "unfair advantages." It’s time we take a closer look at these advantages that could foster a rethink of the European start-up narrative. READ MORE
Ask any VC if we’re still in a venture capital bear market and that investor will almost certainly tell you no, that funding is still flowing for good companies.
That might sound like spin, because anecdotes abound about how rough it still is for those raising now. And for good reason. Down rounds — that is, raising at a lower valuation than a previous round, which founders want to avoid unless they have no choice — were still at near record highs through the first half of 2024, according to Aumni’s Venture Beacon report. Around 39% of late-stage deals were a down round, according to Aumni’s report. That covers Series B and beyond, with the biggest percentage of down rounds at Series C and beyond. READ MORE
In the not-that-distant future, robots and AI assistants will be taking on a much larger share of our work. Humans will consume growing quantities of increasingly elaborate digital content. And we’ll find more creative ways to store the carbon generated by all our activity. READ MORE