March 11th VC related events, news, articles for investors
Hello friends,
It has been a catastrophic and tragic period since Feb 24th when the Putin regime started the war in Ukraine. This full-scale invasion and horrible attacks on our friends, their families, and people across Ukraine are very devastating. VNTR and the global VC community are against this war and are active in supporting humanitarian efforts to help the refugees and the people who fight to defend Ukraine's sovereignty, freedom, and peace.
Please donate and support the various organizations that are actively providing help in the region:
Feel free to share your support efforts and any other organizations with us and we will feature them in next week's newsletter.
VNTR NEWS
We will be in Dubai for 2 weeks for a business trip to attend WOW Summit, Crypto Expo Dubai, AIBC, and the various side events. If you plan to be there, join the VNTR Crypto Dubai March 2022 Telegram group to connect with other attendees, get updates and plan activities together.
VNTR INVESTORS COMMUNITY
We launched our Indian Investors community and plan to have regional partners in every big hub who will grow the local investors' communities, host offline events for investors, and syndicate funds for VNTR deals.
Want to join our team as a regional partner? You can respond to this email if you are interested to grow in the Venture Capital world by working with us.
We are expanding to the South East Asia market with recruiting efforts for Singapore Regional Partner who will help us build the VNTR investors community in the region. We would appreciate referrals to super-connected individuals in the VC world.
UPCOMING EVENTS
March 12-13 - Startup Grind Global Conference 2022, Silicon Valley
March 15 - VNTR Breakfast Dubai
March 13-16 - Wow Summit Dubai, UAE
March 16-17 - Crypto Expo Dubai, UAE
March 18 - Crypto Executives Dinner, Dubai UAE (Invite Only, ask to join)
March 19 - VC Ecosystem Night, Dubai, UAE (Invite Only, ask to join)
March 20-23 - AIBC Summit Asia, Dubai, UAE (25% partner discount: Investors25AIBC, 100% investor passes available, ask for discount code)
March 20-22 Money 2.0, Dubai UAE
March 23-24 World Blockchain Summit, Dubai, UAE
April 21 - Experiential Yachting Forum
April 22 - VNTR Breakfast Monaco
April 27-29 - TechChill 2022, Riga, Latvia
June 8-10 - South Summit. Madrid, Spain (30% partner discount)
June 20-23 - Collision, Toronto, Canada
Check out VNTR upcoming events at https://www.vntr.vc/events
Want to co-host VC events or sponsor, respond to this email to discuss opportunities.
VC READS
VC funding for news media: How 2021 saw huge uptick in deals
Despite some eye-catching deals in the last year, venture capital funding for media remains well below the 2015 and 2017 peaks, according to data shared with Press Gazette by Pitchbook.
At the start of 2022, “slow news” startup Tortoise secured £10m in investor funding to expand its audio journalism, events and membership-base. Last year newsletter platform and alternative media startup Substack raised $65m in series B (second round) venture capital at a valuation of $650m.
Biden considers digital dollar—here’s how it could differ from regular money
President Joe Biden issued an executive order that could lead to the US creating a digital currency. Biden's order said a US-issued digital currency could be used to "support efficient and low-cost transactions, particularly for cross‑border funds transfers and payments, and to foster greater access to the financial system, with fewer of the risks posed by private sector-administered digital assets" such as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds
For anyone who follows the flow of venture dollars, it’s become quite obvious there has been a slowdown in the last week and a half.
Venture Firm Bessemer Creates DAO, Earmarks $250 Million for Crypto Deals
Venture capitalists’ efforts to earn the respect of sought-after cryptocurrency entrepreneurs have reached a new peak: The biggest firms are now starting decentralized autonomous organizations, communities that pool cryptocurrency tokens and vote collectively on the group’s activities.
Microsoft partners with VCs, accelerators to back 10,000 startups in Africa
Microsoft announced plans today to support 10,000 startups in Africa over the next five years through a series of initiatives including partnerships with accelerators and incubators across the continent.
Bain Capital Crypto execs explain why they're setting their sights on DAO services
The constellation of crypto-focused venture capital funds grew this week with the launch of a dedicated team within Bain Capital Ventures.
‘Tech wreck’ looks more like another dotcom bubble bursting
At what point does the slump in US technology stocks stop being dismissed as a mere “tech wreck” primarily centered on the most speculative companies and become considered a fully-fledged dot-com crash 2.0? The combination of increasingly hawkish central banks and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been toxic for equity markets this year.
Funding To EV Startups Hit A 10-Year High. Now, It’s All About Execution
Both legacy automakers and startups are focused on the electric vehicle space, which brought in record amounts of capital commitments and private investment last year.
Venture-backed startups in the EV space raised upward of $20 billion in 2021, more than double the nearly $10 billion raised by companies in the sector in 2020.
Major European stock indices plunged below their bubble highs from over two decades ago. This is not to say that they plunged that much this week, but that they had finally risen past their prior bubble highs from over two decades ago, powered by money printing, and then they plunged.
VC fund 500 Global hunts for Saudi Arabia’s next tech unicorn
Venture capital fund 500 Global has brought its prolific funding pace to Saudi Arabia and is looking for the next tech unicorn — a startup valued at over $1 billion.
Tiger Global Partners Go Hunting For Seeds
Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn New York-based Tiger Global may be best known for leading late, large growth rounds in companies like Peloton, Kajabi and ServiceTitan, but the firm’s partners apparently are looking at the earliest stages of funding as their next frontier.
More Tech Companies Are Imposing Their Own ‘Sanctions’ On Russia
A growing number of tech and financial services companies have cut off service or paused sales to Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine last month.
Ali Partovi Wants to Beat the Old YC
The storied angel investor wants to reinvent the elite startup accelerator. Partovi wants to create an elite accelerator for coders fresh out of top universities, or a few years into their first coding job. That’s who YC used to mostly attract.
Electric Capital $1 Billion Raise & Ideas They Are Looking to Fund
Fund crypto networks, Web3 protocols, and blockchain-enabled businesses.
What Current Series B Trends Say About The US Startup Scene
Like most everything else in the U.S. startup funding scene, Series B rounds have gotten bigger.
Last year, the average Series B round for a U.S. company clocked in at $45 million—up nearly 50 percent from 2020. And so far in 2022, round size has ticked up even higher.
Size isn’t the only thing that’s changing, based on our review of Series B funding. Investments also appear to be a bit more broadly dispersed across geographies.
SoftBank's internet unit plans NFT investments to expand global reach
SoftBank Group’s Z Holdings unit is betting on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and its PayPay service to drive growth as it invests aggressively to expand its global presence.
SoftBank merged Line, one of Asia’s most popular messaging apps, and Yahoo Japan last year to create an e-commerce and social media company to compete with global tech leaders.
The enlarged firm, Z Holdings, now plans to launch an NFT marketplace in 180 countries this spring and is spending large sums of money to double FinTech unit PayPay’s users to 90 million.
Accel announces new $650 million fund to back Indian startups
The Silicon Valley venture capital firm, one of the earliest investors in India, has a large portfolio of unicorn startups in the South Asian country. Some of its notable investments include backing Flipkart, which sold a majority stake to Walmart in 2018; Freshworks, which went public last year; top food delivery startup Swiggy; institutional crypto trading and management platform FalconX; used-car marketplace Spinny; online learning platform Vedantu; and business-to-business marketplaces Zetwerk, Infra.Market and Moglix.