VNTR Capital News Feb 4, 2024 – News, Events, VC Reads
Venture Capital, Web3, and Private Equity – Feb 4 News, Events, and VC Reads
Hello friends,
Happy Sunday!
VNTR Capital Newsletter is delivered to 70k+ investors weekly to share the latest news, events, and articles from the global VC and startup ecosystem.
Scroll down for VNTR Capital Community News, Upcoming Events, and VC News/Reads.
VNTR CAPITAL COMMUNITY NEWS
Spotlight
VNTR Investor Roundtable Riyadh March 5 & VNTR LP Roundtable Riyadh (in partnership with When Worlds Collide (KSA edition)). We are just over a month away from the much-anticipated LEAP Conference in Riyadh. VNTR has partnered with global event series When Worlds Collide and their ecosystem to bring invited guests two days/evenings of engaging and educational programming, including panels/keynotes, a robotics showcase with Grace The Robot, brand activations, a performance by AY Young, and more. Curated sponsor packages are still available. Reach out to lukas@vntr.vc to learn more.
VNTR PRO AI Mastermind — Join us for VNTR PRO members' AI-focused Mastermind - A bi-weekly meeting to explore the realm of AI as we delve into strategies for making savvy investments and capitalizing on the surge of emerging technologies. We aim to bring together individuals with a keen interest in AI who are actively investing in this dynamic field. Secure your spot in this exclusive Mastermind by signing up through the VNTR platform.
VNTR Supercars Rally UAE — Apply to join a 3-day VNTR supercar road trip through the deserts and mountains on the UAE roads. Apply to join (limited number of spots available)
VNTR LP Roundtables — We started our work with select GPs to help them connect with LPs globally and designed a series of LP roundtables and summits to connect LPs to top-performing VC funds raising their new funds. Contact Julie if you want to join the VNTR GP membership. Limited Partners join us at our upcoming events:
Corporate Membership and Sponsorship — Corporates who want to connect and engage the VNTR investors community can now join us on Corporate Membership and choose the activation activities and events to drive growth for their business. Learn about Corporate Membership. Reach out to Lukas to join!
This week
Geneva — We hosted our second VC LP Roundtable in Geneva on Feb 1, where we hosted Ian Sosso, Managing Partner at Monte Carlo Capital, who shared his story, "Investment Banker turned Super Angel turned VC." Thank you, Decentral House, for hosting us.
London — The VNTR London Chapter is hosting investors visiting London for ICE London at the VNTR Investors Roundtable on Feb 7.
Mexico City — Our first VNTR Roundtable in Mexico City will take place on Feb 8, and unite investors will be visiting Zonamaco this week.
Thank you to our Partners:
Perfect — Book your flights, hotels, and supercars for the VNTR Rally using the Perfect Personal Lifestyle app with premium concierge services. Empower your routine with integrated GPT technology for seamless access to luxury services and an effortless lifestyle. Enjoy personalized assistance with tasks, errands, and reservations, freeing up time for what truly matters. Join Perfect using "VNTR" code to get special discounts. Use Perfect via iOS, Android, WhatsApp or Telegram.
Upcoming VNTR Events:
Feb 7 VNTR PRO AI Mastermind (online)
Feb 20 VNTR Speed Networking (online)
Feb 21 VNTR Online LP Roundtable (online)
Feb 26 VNTR Investors Roundtable Dubai (AIBC side event)
Feb 27 VNTR Investors Roundtable Barcelona (Mobile World Congress side event)
Feb 27 VNTR Investors Roundtable Doha (Web Summit Qatar side event)
Feb 28 VNTR LP Roundtable Doha (Web Summit Qatar side event)
Feb 29 - March 3 VNTR Investors Supercars Rally UAE
March 1 VNTR Investors Roundtable Denver (ETHDenver side event)
March 5 VNTR Investors Roundtable Riyadh (LEAP side event) cohosted with When Worlds Collide (KSA)
March 6 VNTR LP Roundtable Riyadh (LEAP side event) cohosted with When Worlds Collide (KSA)
March 10 VNTR Investors Roundtable Austin (SXSW side event)
March 21 VNTR Investors Roundtable Porto Alegre (South Summit Brazil side event)
March 27 VNTR Investors Roundtable Hong Kong (Wow Summit HK side event)
April 10 VNTR Investors Roundtable Paris (Paris Blockchain Week side event)
April 16 VNTR Investors Roundtable Rio De Janeiro (Web Summit Rio side event)
April 19 VNTR Investors Roundtable Dubai (Token2049 Dubai side event)
April 19 VNTR Investors Roundtable Miami (eMerge Americas side event)
April 24 VNTR Investors Roundtable Bangkok (Money 20/20 Asia side event)
April 24 VNTR Investors Roundtable Silicon Valley (Startup Grind Conference side event)
More events available on the VNTR Platform
Follow us on Social media: Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter.
UPCOMING VC EVENTS
Feb 6-8 ICE London, UK
Feb 14-15 Africa Tech Summit, Nairobi, Kenya
Feb 20-21 Crypto360, Dubai, UAE
Feb 21-22 Step Conference, Dubai, UAE
Feb 21-23 The Money Show, Las Vegas, USA
Feb 23-24 NFT Paris, France
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
Feb 29-Mar 3 VNTR Supercars Rally UAE
Mar 4-7 LEAP, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Mar 6-7 MoneyLive Summit London, UK
Mar 6-7 Cloud Expo Europe, London, UK
Mar 8-16 SXSW, Austin, USA
Mar 19-20 CEE VC Summit, Warsaw, Poland
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
April 23-24 Startup Grind Conference, Redwood City, USA
May 6-7 Dubai FinTech Summit, Dubai, UAE
May 9-10 EU Startups Summit, Malta
May 15-16 Next Block Expo
May 15-16 Echelon by E27, Singapore
May 22-25 Viva Technology, Paris, France
May 29-31 Consensus, Austin, UAE
May 29 -31 Gitex Africa, Morocco
June 5-7 South Summit, Madrid, Spain
June 17-20 Collision Conf, Toronto, Canada
July 10-11 World Business Forum, Singapore
If you would like to submit VC-related events, please respond to this email or Telegram @byuric
Check out VNTR Capital upcoming events
VC Reads and News
View curated VC news and articles on the VNTR Platform
VCs need exits — but how are they going to get them?
VCs don’t just invest, they also “de-invest”. And right now, quite a few are getting desperate to do so. M&A and IPOs have fallen off a cliff over the past few years, with the number of M&A transactions dropping by more than half in 2023 compared to 2022, according to the 2023 State of European Tech report. The IPO market is at a standstill, secondaries have just begun to pick up and VCs’ investors, the LPs, are getting antsy. For VCs who need to return capital to their investors, all that poses a problem.
The Focus Point with Igor Ryabenkiy
As a seasoned venture capitalist, Igor Ryabenkiy understands the challenges of identifying promising business ideas, not only for fellow investors and venture capitalists but also for ambitious founders looking to kickstart their startups. His wealth of experience has enabled him to spot and nurture over 6 unicorns right from their inception, including notable companies such as Miro, Deel, OpenWeb, Turing, Albert, PandaDoc, and more. If you're keen to gain insights into his effective approach to identifying startups with potential, explore his detailed explanation in a brief video.
What Did It Take To Raise A Series A Round In 2023?
The VC bubble has subsided and last year marked one of the most difficult on record to raise a Series A funding round. As interest rates climbed and global uncertainty became pervasive, the growth-at-all-cost mindset evaporated and investors pivoted rapidly to favoring startups with strong revenue, capital efficiency and strong gross margins. This left a lot of companies in the wind with 2023 seeing the highest number of startup bankruptcies in a decade.
The State Of Startups In 7 Charts
Last year saw the lowest level of startup funding in five years, witnessed valuations fall drastically, and offered little hope for IPO contenders. But is that all now in the rearview mirror? That’s certainly the hope from many of the startup investors and entrepreneurs we’ve spoken with recently, who say that even if things don’t come roaring back in 2024, they’re at least looking forward to a year of relative calm and predictability. With that in mind, let’s look at what’s happening in the startup world as seen through seven charts based on recent Crunchbase data.
Real World Asset Tokenization Is Fake News
"Tokenization," particularly of "real world assets," or RWAs, has recently been touted as the next big thing in crypto. Most people do not make the connection that this trend is just another form of security tokens, a term you may not have heard since 2018 (for good reason). The people hyping tokenization are mostly wrong. But their heart is in the right place. It's no one's fault that something becomes trendy, but if "security tokens," "tokenization" and RWAs are all part of the same technological continuum, and if the Gartner "Hype Cycle" is right, there will likely be another bust soon enough.
Founders: getting to the next venture stage may take longer than you expect
The median number of days between a priced seed and Series A round hit 679 in 2023, a new peak.
Median for Series A to B was 744 days (over 2 years). Very similar for Series B to C (739 days, also over 2 years).
Fascinating to watch the 25th percentile (green) and the 75th percentile (blue) trends as well. It looks as though the 25th pct has pulled closer to the median for the middle venture rounds - suggesting there are very few companies speed-running through venture fundraising right now.
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Generate Capital Goes Big Again, Kore.ai Nabs $150M
Lots of big rounds this week, with none bigger than the whopping $1.5 billion raised by sustainability and infrastructure investment firm Generate Capital. On top of that, there were another five rounds of $100 million or more. Who said large growth rounds were dead?
The State of the SaaS Capital Markets: A Look Back at 2023 and Look Forward to 2024
Another January, another opportunity to make (and break) your New Year’s resolutions, and a new opportunity for us in the venture industry to reflect on the state of the enterprise SaaS markets. We made a good call on the resiliency of the SaaS sector at the beginning of 2023, and remain long-term bullish on SaaS as we have been for years.
This year, we decided to raise the stakes with our outlook, unearthing new data to inform what we anticipate in 2024. We are excited to debut The State of the SaaS Capital Markets annual report. This report highlights the key enterprise software trends we observed in 2023 across both private and public markets, as well as the connection between the two: the exit environment. With this comprehensive set of data views, we share our 2024 predictions regarding the investment environment for enterprise software.
a16z’s Chris Dixon thinks it’s time to focus on blockchains’ use cases, not speculation
The crypto world is riddled with noise. Memecoins, speculation, rug pulls, scams, hype and doomers distract us from all the innovative stuff people are building with blockchains. And sometimes the noise pollutes the stream of information so much, it can get really difficult to continue to believe in the technology. Still, one venture capital veteran feels the only way to cut a clear path is to focus on blockchain technology and startups building in the industry. “Crypto and blockchains are in the news a lot, but a lot of it is around speculation and prices. I feel that there’s another side of the story,” Chris Dixon, partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), told me on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast. “It’s the side of the story that I live in, that the entrepreneurs we work with live in, which is what I would call the productive side of blockchains.”
M&A of seed-stage startups outshines mature companies
2023 was the worst year in a decade for acquisitions of VC-backed companies. And while buyers were broadly picky, they were much more likely to snap up younger startups—a byproduct of a market that now entices founders to sell early. Corporate acquirers scooped up 151 seed-stage startups last year in the US, according to the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. That count was the lowest since 2017, but M&A of more mature companies fared much worse: Acquisitions of Series A and later-stage companies have all fallen to a 10-year low.
Bitcoin halving date bet vs. Groundhog prediction: Choose your fighter
Bitcoin halving, a historic event that is set to cut the Bitcoin mining reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, is coming sometime in April 2024, but the exact date is yet to be determined, at least on this Groundhog Day. Based on various Bitcoin halving countdown trackers, including those by NiceHash and BitcoinBlockHalf.com, the fourth Bitcoin halving could occur in a period from April 8 to April 22, 2024. The estimations suggest that the fourth halving of Bitcoin might occur in 66 to 79 days from now on, depending on factors like the block height, hash rate and mining difficulty.
Are semiconductors ripe for PE investment?
Semiconductors are big business. A vital component of the chips used across modern electronics, semiconductors accounted for around $520 billion in sales last year, according to Deloitte. And some forecasts predict it could be a trillion-dollar industry by the end of the decade. Yet, although venture capital has long been active in this area and invested more than $50 billion in semiconductor-related businesses over the last five years, according to PitchBook’s recent report on semiconductor scale-ups, private equity has been slower to join the party. But could that be about to change, particularly for investment in Europe and North America?
US Tech Giants Have Scuttled Over $70B In M&A Deals Following EU, UK Pushback
Lately, it seems like a lot of large technology acquisitions have fallen apart following pushback from European and U.K. antitrust regulators. In tandem, the value of these deals that didn’t get done continues to mount. The latest scuttled transaction, Amazon’s planned purchase of robot vacuum maker iRobot for around $1.35 billion, would have been one of the largest in the consumer electronics space. On Monday, however, the retail giant announced it has terminated the acquisition, citing “undue and disproportionate regulatory hurdles.” The deal faced scrutiny from both U.S. and EU antitrust regulators. However, it was the latter that objected most forcefully and publicly, with the European Commission warning in November that the proposed tie-up could hamper rival robot vacuum brands’ ability to compete.
Biotech IPO surge sparks hope for tech offerings
A month into 2024, the tech IPO calendar remains blank. But after two years of quiet, biotech IPOs are suddenly making noise. Last week, bladder cancer drug developer CG Oncology priced its IPO above the expected range and raised $380 million. Its shares then jumped 96% on the first day of trading. That offering was followed by Arrivent Biopharma, which raised $175 million and has traded up in price since its IPO. Alto Neuroscience and Fractyl Health, two other biotech companies, are also planning imminent public debuts. This sudden swell of biopharma offerings could help pave the way for technology companies waiting in the wings.
AI Will Be Doing More Accounting If Startup Investors Have Their Way
Accounting and auditing is a perpetual growth market. Yet at the same time, businesses and households seem to find there are never enough resources to keep up with the demands of modern-day recordkeeping. Startups have been pitching tools to help for a long time. Tax prep software pioneer Intuit turned 40 last year. Over intervening decades, investors have pumped billions into startups developing software to automate bookkeeping, auditing, compliance and tax filing. Now, increasingly, they’re turning AI to the task. The latest company to raise a big round taking this route is DataSnipper, an audit automation platform that on Thursday announced a $100 million Series B financing led by Index Ventures.
Thinking about Writing Down your Investment?
A quick idea on writing down venture investments...
Preferred stock investments work differently from common stock investments. This is absolutely critical to understand when calculating holding values.
When a company gets "written up," it is common practice to take the latest (and highest) preferred share price and apply it to all holdings (common, options, seed, Series A, etc.). This is actually not accurate. Because of seniority in liquidity stacks and the wide range of possible outcomes, Series D shares are worth more than Series A shares (for example).
Exactly how to apply that discount is an entire discussion on its own and is in the realm of secondary investing experts.
State of Quantum 2024
Understanding the 2023 trends and outlook for 2024
The 2024 State of Quantum report, developed by IQM Quantum Computers, OpenOcean, and Lakestar, in partnership with The Quantum Insider (TQI), is the latest research investigating the preparedness of business leaders towards quantum technology, analyzing sentiment across major geographies and industry sectors.
The quantum computing field is advancing rapidly with important breakthroughs in quantum hardware and software rendering it an increasingly strategic asset for organizational infrastructures who consider investing in it.
Cryptocurrency thrives in China against odds, report says
Crypto enthusiasts in China are more willing to invest heavily in cryptocurrency than their counterparts in Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. This is according to a December 2023 report by Vietnamese venture capital firm Kyros Ventures, with the assistance of 10 media agencies from China, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. In the 5,268-participant survey, more than 70% of participants said cryptocurrencies accounted for more than half of their asset portfolio. However, 33.3% of Chinese investors hold a large amount of stablecoins, placing them in second place to Vietnam, with 58.6% of its investors holding stablecoins. Except for Vietnam and China, most investors in other countries have reduced their holdings in stablecoins, indicating that they are more risk-averse with investments in crypto assets.
Adams Street ‘doubling down’ on European venture
Adams Street Partners, one of the world’s largest fund of funds, plans to increase its investments in European VC as many of the sector’s other biggest LPs turn away. “We’re looking to do even more in venture,” Europe-focused partner Ross Morrison tells Sifted. “Other people are trying to move away from the asset class, but we’re trying to double down.” Adams Street Partners has invested over $1.5bn into European venture across 50 funds, although it remains tight-lipped on which ones. According to its website, Morrison sits on the advisory board of over 20 companies, including Index Ventures, Highland Capital, Keensight, Livingbridge and Vitruvian.
PE Firms Have Paid Richly For Software Startups. When Will They Resume Spending?
IPOs generate a lot of buzz. Acquisitions by private equity firms, not so much.
After all, most founders don’t start out with the vision of selling their startup to a leveraged institutional buyer looking to profitably offload it again in a few years. It arguably lacks the narrative appeal of, say, a sale to a tech giant or a smash public debut. Nonetheless, for software companies in particular, acquisitions by private equity firms are statistically one of the more common kinds of exits. Over the past five years, the most-active PE buyers have collectively spent over $36 billion to buy dozens of private companies in the space, Crunchbase figures show.
In An Uncertain Market, Survival Mode Is Not Your Only Option
Despite small glimmers of hope, the market turnaround has not yet materialized, putting startup founders in a challenging position as they decide how to optimize resources. The vast majority of the founders I talk to are focusing on slashing costs to extend their runways — they’re in survival mode. While this is certainly the default option, there are drawbacks to it, and I’m not seeing enough founders pushing to consider the viable alternatives.
Changing the Customer of Venture Capital
The reality is, $5B per year just isn’t that much money in the grand scheme of private equities—roughly .5-1% depending how you slice it.
As a former salesperson, that fact often leaves me wondering, “what if you changed the customer of venture capital?”
Could you attract more money, create more impact, and actually produce more returns?
Classically, putting your name on building was a way to not only have a fairly durable legacy, but let’s be honest, that gift is outdated.
Rough Ride: M&A Dropped 31% For VC-Backed Startups In 2023
Dealmaking involving venture-backed startups hit an eight-year low last year, as strategic and private equity buyers decided to keep their cash, likely waiting to see how far startup valuations would drop. It is not shocking that dealmaking hit a low ebb last year, but the dearth of VC-backed startups sold last year may offer a surprise. In 2023, only 1,738 venture-backed startups were acquired globally — the lowest amount since 2015, when 1,687 startups were bought — per Crunchbase data.