VNTR Capital News Dec 3, 2023 – News, Events, VC Reads
Venture Capital, Web3, and Private Equity – Dec 3 News, Events, and VC Reads
Hello friends,
Happy Sunday!
VNTR Capital Newsletter is delivered to 55k+ investors weekly to share the latest news, events, and articles from the global VC and startup ecosystem.
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Scroll down for VNTR Capital Community News, Upcoming Events, and VC News/Reads.
VNTR CAPITAL COMMUNITY NEWS
Spotlight
VNTR Speed Networking — Join us tomorrow Dec 4 to connect with VNTR PRO and LITE members and get matched for 5-7 min introduction calls via Airmeet. Participants could meet 10-15 other VNTR members from around the globe.
VNTR GP LP Summits — 3 VNTR GP LP Summits will bring top General Partners (GPs) and Limited Partners (LPs) to learn, network and connect:
April 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
July 2024 in Hamptons, USA
October 2024 in Singapore
Contact us to secure your spot at the VNTR GP LP summits.
Corporate Sponsorship — We designed a new annual corporate sponsorship program to help Companies interested in leveraging VNTR events, newsletters, and the VNTR platform to forge connections with investors and premium clientele in 2024. Companies are invited to Apply or respond to schedule a call.
Sponsor slots available at flagship VNTR Events:
We are actively recruiting Chapter Directors in Riyadh, Berlin, Cape Town, and Los Angeles to expand the VNTR Capital community. As Chapter Directors, you will play a crucial role as super connectors, fostering growth and establishing strong ties with the global Venture Capital community. Apply to join
Upcoming VNTR Events
Cascais — Portugal Chapter will meet today Dec 3 at VNTR Investors Dinner, hosting VNTR PRO member from Silicon Valley, Manmeet Singh Bhasin, Managing Partner at PGV Fund.
Berlin — We will be back in Berlin on Dec 5 for VNTR Investors Roundtable Berlin, a side event to the Next Block Expo.
Bengaluru — Join us in Bengaluru at our India Chapter launch at VNTR Blockon Investors Roundtable on Dec 7, a side event to Metamorphosis Gala cohosted with Blockon.
Miami — Our annual VNTR Art Basel Investors Roundtable in Miami will gather global investors and art collectors on Dec 8. (One sponsor slot are available).
Dubai — Join our final event of the year at the UAE Chapter, VNTR Investors Roundtable Dubai on Dec 13, side event to Global Blockchain Congress.
Thank you to our Partners:
WEE.ae is the fastest and predictable B2B/B2C marketplace in the UAE market and e-commerce ecosystem (logistics, fulfillment, etc).
We offer an e-commerce platform with the fastest delivery in the region. Our application allows delivery in 1 hour or within chosen time slots in Dubai and the next day to other Emirates.
Since its launch, Wee has connected logistics partners with a supply of more than 50.000 couriers: Talabat, Careem, Yango, etc. Connected more than 200k SKUs; Developed workflow management system and logistic software.
In the next 5 years, they plan to launch a Super App on the basis of the marketplace, enter the key countries of MENA, and become a unicorn. Contact Anastasiia Kim to learn more.Zeno is an innovative platform poised to transform the education landscape. At Zeno, we blend cutting-edge technology with personalized learning to make education more accessible, engaging, and effective. We're not just teaching; we're equipping learners globally with the skills to excel in a rapidly changing world. Contact Rafael Marimón-Nivar to learn more.
Airmeet is an event experience platform for bringing people together from wherever they are, from virtual summits and webinars to meetups, workshops, and everything in between. Our Event Experience Cloud is the only unlimited virtual and hybrid event platform out there.
VNTR Capital 2024 Events:
Jan 17 Venture Capital Investors Roundtable Davos (World Economic Forum 2024 side event)
Jan 25 VNTR Investors Roundtable Melbourne (Australian Open 2024 side event)
50+ side events for 2024 will be released by the end of 2023.
RSVP to Upcoming VNTR Capital Events
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UPCOMING VC EVENTS
Dec 4-5 Next Block Expo, Berlin, Germany
Dec 4-8 West Tech Fest, Perth, Australia
Dec 6-7 FinTech Connect, London, UK
Dec 8-10 Art Basel, Miami, USA
Dec 11-12 Global Blockchain Congress, Dubai, UAE
Dec 12-13 New England Venture Summit, Boston Dedham, MA, USA
Dec 15-16 Super Angels Summit, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Dec 21-22 Web3 Beyond Borders, Tokyo, Japan
Jan 9-12 CES, Las Vegas, USA
Jan 15-19 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos, Switzerland
Feb 23-Mar 3 ETH Denver, Denver, USA
Feb 25-28 AIBC, Dubai, UAE
Feb 26-29 Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain
Feb 26-29 4YFN, Barcelona, Spain
Mar 4-7 LEAP, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Mar 8-16 SXSW, Austin, USA
Mar 26-27 Wow Summit, Hong Kong
April 8-12 Paris Blockchain Week, Paris, France
April 18-19 Token2049, Dubai, UAE
April 18-19 EmergeAmericas, Miami, USA
April 23-25 Money 20/20 Asia, Bangkok, Thailand
May 6-7 Dubai FinTech Summit, Dubai, UAE
May 15-17 Gitex Africa, Morocco
May 22-25 Viva Technology, Paris, France
May 29-31 Consensus, Austin, UAE
June 5-7 South Summit, Madrid, Spain
If you would like to submit VC-related events, please respond to this email or Telegram @byuric
Follow us on Social media: Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter.
Check out VNTR Capital upcoming events
VC Reads
View curated VC news and articles on the VNTR Platform
For Most Active Lead Investors, 2023 Has Delivered Few Exits
For the highest-spending startup backers, big exits tend to come in clusters. Investors rack up huge tallies in boom years, like 2021. In quiet years, like this one, few portfolio companies sell or go public at high valuations. Just how quiet is exit activity in 2023? To get a sense, we looked at acquisitions and IPOs for companies backed by the most active and highest-spending lead investors of the past few years. We focused on five firms: Tiger Global Management, Andreessen Horowitz, SoftBank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capita,l and Insight Partners.
How-to guide: Doing due diligence on VC funds
The due diligence process for venture capital funds is often considered challenging for LPs due to the relatively high risks and uncertainty associated with the asset class. A lack of historical financial data, longer horizons for returns and unpredictable exit strategies all contribute to the complexity of evaluating a VC fund's potential. With the significant increase in the popularity of the asset class among LPs, questions about best practices for due diligence have come to the fore. "The fund-of-fund investment scene has become very crowded over the last few years with a lot of new players emerging," Jonathan Sibilia, partner at Molten Ventures, said. "I am sometimes appalled by the lack of due diligence those guys do. It's very easy for inexperienced LPs to be convinced by (VCs) because they sell very well."
The 10 Biggest Rounds Of November: Juul And Firefly Aerospace Raise Big As Year Winds Down
Sometimes November is a slow month for startup deals, as the beginning of the holiday season can shut off the venture funding valve. However, this year the 11th month was strong, with some huge raises. In fact, several $100 million-plus rounds couldn’t even crack the list.
Why hasn't EIF announced a single investment from its €3.75bn fund of funds yet?
It’s been nearly 10 months since the European Investment Fund (EIF) launched a €3.75bn pot to back growth funds investing in European scaleups — but not a single deal has been announced yet. Dubbed the European Tech Champions Initiative (ECTI), the fund of funds — which is financed by the European Investment Bank, and the governments of Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium — was launched to invest in VCs raising funds of €1bn or more that would be able to back European “tech champions” in Series B rounds and above.
How Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Is Powering the A.I. Revolution
The company’s C.E.O. bet it all on a new kind of chip. Now that Nvidia is one of the biggest companies in the world, what will he do next?
The revelation that ChatGPT, the astonishing artificial-intelligence chatbot, had been trained on an Nvidia supercomputer spurred one of the largest single-day gains in stock-market history. When the Nasdaq opened on May 25, 2023, Nvidia’s value increased by about two hundred billion dollars. A few months earlier, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s C.E.O., had informed investors that Nvidia had sold similar supercomputers to fifty of America’s hundred largest companies. By the close of trading, Nvidia was the sixth most valuable corporation on earth, worth more than Walmart and ExxonMobil combined. Huang’s business position can be compared to that of Samuel Brannan, the celebrated vender of prospecting supplies in San Francisco in the late eighteen-forties. “There’s a war going on out there in A.I., and Nvidia is the only arms dealer,” one Wall Street analyst said.
A Secretive $10 Billion Firm Backed By WhatsApp Billionaire Jan Koum Is Quietly Building A Startup Portfolio
In the early months of the pandemic, Michael Abramson returned home to Texas to plot his next career move. A former partner at storied venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, he'd kept a low public profile despite investments in flashy startups like beauty retailer Glossier and delivery app Rappi. Hoping to maintain that quiet approach in his next endeavor, he pinged a friend with a similar penchant for privacy, and billions of dollars to invest: WhatsApp billionaire Jan Koum.
Today, with Koum’s support, Abramson quietly leads Newlands, a firm that has rapidly grown into one of the largest new funds in tech. Abramson and Koum haven’t spoken publicly about Newlands, and the firm does not appear in recent funding announcements. Its corporate website is little more than a shell. But regulatory filings reveal a firm that holds nearly $10 billion in public equities, mostly tech stocks, and is beginning to make investments in the early-stage startup ecosystem.
European startup funding halved to $45B in 2023, says Atomico
The downturn in the technology sector — dragged by inflation, higher interest rates and geopolitical events — continues to persist, and one of the most acutely impacted areas has been VC funding for startups, particularly those outside the U.S. According to VC firm Atomico, companies in Europe are on track to raise just $45 billion this year — around half the $85 billion that startups in the region raised in 2022. The figures come from Atomico’s big report on the state of European tech, which it publishes annually.
Elon Musk says “digital god” will make AI copyright lawsuits irrelevant
Elon Musk made some of his boldest claims yet concerning the future of artificial intelligence (AI) during an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. During a wide-ranging interview, Musk responded to questions concerning recent lawsuits levied against some of the billionaire’s competitors in the AI space related to alleged copyright infringement. “So, you think it’s a lie,” Sorkin asked Musk during the interview, “when OpenAI says that… none of these guys say that they’re training on copyrighted data.” Musk’s response, “Yeah, that’s a lie.”
3 Reasons Why VCs Should Embrace Executive Coaching
The term venture capitalist is often associated with wealth, innovation and success. But despite perceived prestige, VCs face immense pressure. Venture capital is a high-stakes juggling act with VCs responsible for running their businesses while ensuring portfolio companies and executives are productive and fulfilled. Daily, VCs confront challenges that go beyond the boardroom, delving into the world of human relationships and well-being. Coupling these challenges with today’s turbulent investment climate, characterized by economic uncertainty, global unrest and unpredictable workplace shifts, pressures on VCs have only increased. Against this backdrop we ask: How can VCs not only endure but thrive? The answer may lie in an outside ally — the executive coach.
Drama At OpenAI Poses Questions For Venture Capital Industry
The recent on-off sacking of Sam Altman from OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, is yet another example of how there appears to be nowhere quite like Silicon Valley for getting itself in a mess over corporate governance. Since we still have only limited knowledge of the matter, it is hard to decide on the reasons for the breakdown in relations between the board and the company’s co-founder. But there does seem to have been some tension — probably not helped by a corporate structure based around OpenAI being a non-profit company whose board oversees a commercial subsidiary in which Microsoft is the biggest investor — between the company’s “mission” to benefit humanity and the desire to exploit the rapidly developing technology.
Bitcoin ETFs, user experience will drive adoption — eToro CEO
While grassroots cryptocurrency adoption went stale after last year’s implosions in the industry, trading platform eToro’s chief executive believes that the appeal of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for institutions and ease of investing through various platforms for non-professionals could further drive Bitcoin adoption. EToro CEO Yoni Assia told Cointelegraph at the recent Abu Dhabi Finance Week that institutions typically have rigid systems and prefer not to build new infrastructure for each asset class. However, for him, products like Bitcoin ETFs align with their existing modes of operation, making it easier for them to enter the market without developing new frameworks.
VC funding To Indian Startups Hit Six Year low In November
Venture capital (VC) funding to Indian startups hit a six-year low in November, according to a report by Venture Intelligence. As per the report, the Indian startups recorded only USD 223 million in 35 deals in November, a fall of about 66 percent fr0m USD 655 million in 52 deals in the previous month, reported Moneycontrol citing data shared by Venture Intelligence. Mitesh Shah, founder of VC firm IPV, told Moneycontrol that November and December generally receive lower funding with the year coming to an end and the festive season. VCs are not doing newer rounds and mostly looking at closing pending ones. This along with caution among investors is pulling the numbers down.
Reporter's notebook: VCs at Slush gathering predict '24 recovery
In contrast to last year's subdued atmosphere, attendees at the Slush conference this week in Helsinki were markedly more upbeat as the startup ecosystem has gotten used to the new normal. Around 13,000 people gathered for the two-day global tech conference, including some 3,000 investors and 5,000 startup operators and founders. This year's theme of "building to last" reflects the challenging year that startups have faced because of lower levels of venture investments and the need to prioritize long-term sustainability over short-term hypergrowth.
Private equity talent isn't going anywhere—for now
Despite fundraising woes, private equity is managing to hold on to its talent—for the time being. While recruiters don't expect an impending flight from the industry, persistence of fundraising headwinds could lead to a migration of talent away from underperforming firms. Faced with a challenging year in dealmaking, fundraising and exits, PE executive search firms have identified a slowdown in hiring in 2023, leaving a large pool of qualified candidates.
OpenAI tumult, FTX blowup help bring VC governance back in vogue
Venture capitalists are once again insisting on board seats at their portfolio companies after years of relaxing standards. FTX's implosion and OpenAI's recent saga—which caught investors by surprise when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was suddenly ousted without them being notified—reminded VCs and their limited partners why governance matters. "Every major investor is now asking for a board seat, versus 2021 when you had maybe 50% [requesting a seat]," said Yash Patel, a general partner at Telstra Ventures, which had a small stake in FTX. "That change is partly driven by LPs who are not happy with what happened in 2021 and its ramifications." Many investors, driven by fear of missing out during the last boom cycle, relaxed various aspects of investment criteria, from the thoroughness of their due diligence to governance, even relinquishing certain information rights, including access to detailed financials and business plans.
The Benefits of Building Apps On-Chain
It sometimes feels like there’s an aversion to embedding elements of crypto into otherwise more traditional types of consumer applications. After all, why should something like a movie ticket live on-chain when millions of people already buy movie tickets as is? Or so the logic goes. This is short-term thinking. The real unlock lies in the long-term capabilities created from the buildups of data that aggregate on-chain. Traditional-looking apps with select elements of data or resources on-chain create the ability to see patterns of user across both time and applications. These are new information networks that not only don’t but can’t exist in Web2.
2023 European Deep Tech Report
Great excitement has been generated by quantum computing, the first glimpse of an artificial general intelligence, or new protein design solutions. Artificial Intelligence alone could add another $13 trillion to the global economy over the next decade, according to McKinsey & Company.
Meanwhile, there’s also scepticism, not about these innovations, but about the term ‘Deep Tech’. Firstly, it’s rather vague. Secondly, it implies a too narrow focus on cool technologies for their own sake, while losing sight of commercialisation & competitiveness.
The EU is heavily investing in strengthening Europe’s Deep Tech ecosystem. But there is a worry that this effort is insufficiently supported by efforts to make Europe more competitive and entrepreneurial.
Inside the portfolios of Germany’s tech billionaires
When thinking of the origin of Germany’s tech scene, it’s common to point at the successful companies of the 2000s, such as Zalando and Delivery Hero — whose founders are now investing back into the ecosystem as angels. But Germany’s tech success started long before these companies showed up. The country is home to six tech billionaires who, after making their riches by founding or inheriting big companies in the software, telecommunications, and engineering fields, have poured millions into startups in Germany and beyond.
Eye On AI: With Altman Saga Over, What’s The Next AI Drama?
Unless you have been living under a rock — or somehow still in a tryptophan-induced sleep from Thanksgiving — we all know Sam Altman is back at OpenAI and all is right with the world again. Except it may not be when it comes to investing in the space. The breakdown in communication between Altman and the company’s old board of directors — which did not include investors — seemed to highlight a few issues with investing in AI that might be hard to stomach for many would-be investors. Now, it’s important to remember OpenAI has a unique — possibly unsustainable — structure in that it’s a nonprofit organization whose board also controls its for-profit businesses.
For female founders, even a Ph.D. doesn't close the gender funding gap
Female startup founders are less likely than their male peers to have a master's or doctoral degree. That's despite decades of progress in which women have lapped men in academic achievement: Among American citizens and permanent residents, women earned 65% of master's degrees and 58% of doctoral degrees in 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But when it comes to starting tech companies, 36% of North American female founders have an advanced degree, compared to 41% of male founders, PitchBook data shows.
Why these investors think saving the trees isn’t just for protesters anymore
For more than 25 years, ecologists have been desperately trying to prove the economic worth of the world’s ecosystems, hoping that a markets-based approach would slow the destruction of the natural world. Forests, the world’s largest terrestrial ecosystem, have played a central role in that. People have long valued them for their lumber and the animals they harbor. Now scientists are asking the world to value them for more than that. The approach has had mixed results. Forests have been protected or restored to varying degrees to prevent flooding, capture and store carbon, halt the spread of deserts, and preserve biodiversity. And yet, every year, people continue to cut down an area the size of Kentucky.
The market is exuberant about AI, and rightly so, but that exuberance has caused many VCs to lose their minds, chasing any deal with a dot-ai domain name. Some of the investment rationales are based on conventional wisdom that’s just wrong — I call these the “myths” of AI investing. Here are three of the most common. Myth No. 1: First-mover matters
2024 Will Be the Year Tokenization Truly (Finally) Begins
Everyone from TradFi leaders to the crypto cognoscenti predicts that the tokenization opportunity runs to the tens of trillions. While we’ve already seen some compelling use cases, these are a drop in the ocean compared to the flood of digitized assets that could move on-chain in the next few years. This October, Forbes published a deep dive into the issue under the provocative headline “Why Tokenization is Failing.” The author, director of digital assets research, Steven Ehrlich, provides a litany of failed or underwhelming digitization projects and concludes that the issue hindering adoption isn’t technology, but trust.
The top takeaways from Atomico’s State of European Tech report
Atomico’s 2023 State of European Tech report paints a topsy-turvy picture of European tech. Investors and founders alike are struggling to raise cash, investment has dropped on levels seen across 2021 and 2022 and funding for underrepresented founders is still embarrassingly poor. But it’s not all bleak in Europe. VCs are sitting on record amounts of dry powder, early-stage funding has stayed relatively stable across 2023 and Europe is producing more new founders than the US.
What Are The Long-Term Implications Of The OpenAI Chaos On The Tech Ecosystem?
The tech ecosystem was in a frenzy the past few weeks, as Sam Altman was unexpectedly fired from his role as CEO of OpenAI. However, within just a few days, Altman was reinstated as CEO and a seemingly happy ending concluded the drama. Despite Altman’s swift return, is all really back to normal in the ecosystem? Or will the ripple effect of the recent events only come to light down the line, hurting future development of new AI technologies and innovations? To provide some visibility into this question, at Startup Snapshot we collected data from more than 160 global tech stakeholders, including startup founders, investors and corporate innovation players.
Tech Layoffs May Have Peaked, But They’re Still Accumulating
Tech layoffs are stubbornly continuing to pile up.
True, we’ve seen some slowdown in mass job cuts from large-cap technology companies in recent months. However, layoff disclosures from startups and small to mid-sized companies continue to roll in at a steady pace.
Per The Crunchbase Tech Layoffs Tracker, more than 270,000 tech workers in the U.S. alone have lost their jobs since the start of 2022 — likely many more, as we often don’t have reliable layoffs figures for smaller startups. Cuts come as companies contend with rising interest rates, a tougher fund-raising climate, and tightened customer budgets.
Venture Capital funding in India plunges over by 67% during Jan-Oct this year.
India witnessed a decrease in venture capital (VC) funding deals, with a total of 920 deals announced during January-October 2023. This marked a 38.6% decline compared to the 1499 VC deals reported in the same period of 2022, revealed a report by GlobalData. Additionally, the corresponding VC funding value experienced a significant drop of 67.1%, falling from $19.2 billion in January-October 2022 to $6.3 billion in January-October 2023, as reported by the data and analytics company.