Fundings and Exits

That the venture capital market is incredibly exuberant at the moment is not news. Data from 2021 paints the picture of a startup fundraising game at peak velocity, with more capital, unicorns and nine-figure deals than ever. And let me tell you, some venture capitalists are tired of it. PitchBook has a post up detailing

Quick blog here to update you on some pretty important movements in the market. Today, in a nasty day for stocks generally, shares of software and cloud companies took a pounding. In numerical terms, the Nasdaq Composite lost 2.51%, per CNBC data. That’s a very bad day for a huge, critical category of publicly traded

Y Combinator’s newly announced plan to invest more capital into startups that take part in its accelerator program is more controversial than many first assumed. By raising its so-called “standard deal” to include an additional $375,000, the U.S. program and investing group with hundreds of companies in each of its accelerator classes may have materially

SeekOut, which aims to help enterprises hire from a more diverse talent pool, announced it has raised $115 million in a Series C round of funding led by Tiger Global Management. The financing values the Seattle-based startup at over $1.2 billion and brings its total raised to $189 million since its 2017 inception. It follows

Justworks, a venture-backed software startup focused on the HR market for small and medium-sized businesses, announced earlier today that it would delay its IPO. In a statement to TechCrunch, Justworks said that it “decided to delay its IPO due to market conditions at this time.” An IPO delay is just that, a public debut pushed

Venture capitalists went hard in 2021. Data collected from a number of sources indicates that last year set venture capital records around the world. From dollars invested to deal volume, sectors and geographies posted their strongest performance and excelled on essentially every continent. Today’s startup boom, from a venture capital perspective, is a wide-ranging and

It’s painful to watch SPAC deals collapse post-combination. You can viscerally feel dreams melting away to disappointment as founders, employees and investors still holding shares in the newly public entities watch their wealth dwindle. The mess is not sector-specific. Media? Not a good SPAC target. Insurtech? Nope. 3D printing? Not looking good. E-scooters? Nerp. Hardware

A year after the FTC blocked Harry’s from getting acquired by Edgewell Personal Care, the direct-to-consumer razor startup raised $155 million in Series E financing to give it a $1.7 billion valuation. Now, months later, Harry’s filed paperwork indicating that it has raised another nine-figure cash tranche. SEC filings show that Harry’s has raised $139.9

Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley’s legacy venture capital firms, is kicking off 2022 right by celebrating five decades in business and $1.8 billion in funds raised for two new funds — KP20 and Select2. KP20 is an $800 million venture fund focused on early-stage investments in enterprise, consumer, hardtech, fintech and healthcare companies, while

French startup Qonto has raised a $552 million Series D funding round (€486 million). Following this investment, the startup has reached a valuation of $5 billion (€4.4 billion). This is one of the largest rounds in the French tech ecosystem. Qonto is a challenger bank focused on business bank accounts. The startup focuses primarily on

Startup accelerator Y Combinator announced this morning that it has updated its terms, providing participating companies with more total cash. The group will now invest $500,000 in batch startups. The money comes in two different forms. The first is the well-known Y Combinator equity deal, worth $125,000 for 7% of accelerated startups. The group will

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Monday show, our short ramp into the week. Yes, it’s Monday again. No, you can’t stay in bed. Things are already happening! Welcome to the week! The Equity team is

Never before has the importance of a smooth-flowing supply chain been as clear as it has been in the COVID-19 pandemic era. For manufacturers in particular, managing intricate supply chains can be particularly challenging. Enter Assent Compliance — a Canadian company focused on supply chain sustainability management. Put more simply, Ottawa-based Assent aims to help

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We’re getting back up to full speed this week, so Mary Ann and Alex along with Grace behind the scenes took on our Friday show. Next week Natasha and Chris are back, and

Update: Tech stocks have given up all gains since this post went up, with both the Nasdaq and the basket of software stocks we track in the red. From a slightly later perspective, concern about near full-employment and resulting rising interest rates appears to have won the in-market sentiment battle. The relationship between economic news

Data privacy is top of mind for online sellers, and for good reason: Regulators in China, Europe and North America are taking an interest, and iOS 14.5 allowed many consumers to disable data tracking, with negative consequences for companies that relied on Facebook’s granular ad targeting. Bearing those factors and others in mind, Ben Parr,

This morning private-market powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz announced that it has closed $9 billion in new capital for its venture capital, growth-stage, and biotech-focused vehicles. The firm, better known by the moniker a16z, also raised a $2.2 billion crypto-focused fund last year. The collection of fundraises by the firm highlight the rising size of private-market investing

Curtis Townshend Contributor Software businesses are setting new heights for fundraising nearly every day. Transmit Security broke records last summer with their $543 million Series A, and in Q3 2021, $26.4 billion was invested in North American early stage startups, compared with $12.1 billion a year earlier. There have been warnings that these landmark fundraises

Today, Khosla Ventures said it raised over $550 million for its first Opportunity Fund. Samir Kaul, managing partner, Khosla Ventures The new oversubscribed fund brings Khosla’s total set of funds to just under $2 billion. Managing partner Samir Kaul told TechCrunch that the fund gives the firm an opportunity to retain its pro rata and

The special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) boom did not play out as some folks in the technology and business worlds hoped. Despite a wave of optimism through early 2021, private companies that pursued public debuts with the help of blank-check companies have frequently failed to cover themselves in glory in the intervening quarters.  Even more,

French startup PayFit just announced that it closed a new $289 million Series E round (€254 million) before the holidays. Following this round, the startup has reached a post-money valuation of $2.1 billion (€1.82 billion). The company has been building a payroll and HR software-as-a-service platform for small and medium companies. It is operating in

Some of the most high-flying stocks of the pandemic are struggling in the new year and it’s bad news for tech companies of all sizes. TechCrunch noted yesterday that software stocks were having a pretty poor start to the year. That was, it turned out, only the beginning of the damage. Today’s trading took yet

With capital aplenty for startups over the last few years, the balance of power between investors and founders has been tilting toward the latter. This manifests itself in several ways along a startup’s lifecycle, from more favorable early-stage term sheets to founder-friendlier public listing terms. There’s an area that remains untouched, though: The anonymity of

Brankas, an open banking startup for Southeast Asian markets, is entering the new year with a $20 million Series B. The funding was led by Insignia Ventures Partners, with participation from returning investors Beenext and Integra Partners. Other backers included Visa (Brankas was a member of its 2021 Accelerator Program), AFG Partners and Treasury International,

Justworks released an updated IPO filing today, providing fresh financial results and a look at what the company may be worth when it debuts. For those of you in search of a single number, using a simple share count, Justworks could be worth more than $2 billion at the top end of its current range.

Yonit Wiseman Contributor Yonit Wiseman, associate at YL Ventures, champions the Israeli cybersecurity community through technological due diligence and provides value-add support to the firm’s portfolio companies. Over the past decade, the Israeli cybersecurity industry has secured its place as a formidable wellspring of technological innovation. No longer famous only for its high level of

We’ve been gifted another episode of “Tech versus Tech: Crypto Edition” today. The argument among the tech elite about just who owns what in the Web 2.0 and web3 worlds continued this weekend. And once again the dustup featured former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and a16z, the investing firm best known in recent years for

In retrospect, the rise of software as a service (SaaS) is obvious. But for years, the idea that software would not only be hosted by providers instead of purchased by customers, and rented, instead of owned outright, was far from anyone’s mind. SaaS has cemented its place in the epicenter of startup and Big Tech

Germany’s Delivery Hero is set to become Glovo’s majority shareholder following a deal to acquire an additional 39.4% stake of the Spanish delivery startup, of which it already held 44%. We learned of the deal over the holidays, but you’ll be excused if you missed the news when it broke — the deal was announced

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. As is tradition on the show, we used the last episode of the year to make predictions about the next year. To continue an annual tradition, Grace and Chris joined Natasha and Mary