VNTR Newsletter August 25, 2024 – Venture Capital News, Events, VC Reads
Venture Capital, Web3, and Private Equity – News, Events, and VC Reads
Hello friends,
Happy Sunday!
VNTR Newsletter is delivered to 100k+ investors and subscribers weekly to share the latest news, events, and articles from the global VC and startup ecosystem.
Scroll down for VNTR Community News, Upcoming Events, and VC News/Reads.
VNTR COMMUNITY NEWS
Spotlight
Banking Partner: Mercury is our trusted banking partner dedicated to startups and VC funds. Mercury gives you access to secure banking, credit cards, and a network of exclusive partner perks. Open your Mercury account.
VNTR Summit: Join us at the VNTR Summit in Lisbon on November 13, 2024, where the leading global investors gather: VCs, angels, family offices, CVCs, and institutional investors. Create your free account on VNTR and reserve your spot. You can also apply to sponsor or contact Lukas to discuss sponsorship opportunities.
VNTR Podcast: This week, we hosted William Bao Bean, General Partner at Orbit Startups, a top-performing VC and accelerator in emerging markets. We explore William’s career journey, his approach to identifying and scaling promising startups, and his role at Orbit Startups, where he focuses on tech-driven social and impact.
You can now watch it on YouTube, Spotify and Apple. Don’t miss out—catch up on all our latest episodes and subscribe on your favorite platform.Token2049 Week: We are hosting multiple events in Singapore to connect investors during Token2049 (15% Discount using VNTR15):
Sep 17 VNTR LP Roundtable Singapore (capital allocators and family offices)
Sep 18 XRPL Accelerator Scale Investors Mixer by VNTR in partnership with XRPL Accelerator.
Sep 19 VNTR Investors Roundtable Singapore, in partnership with Stellar and Ripple Accelerator. We have the last sponsor slot available.
Coming 4 Weeks:
Online: Aug 27 VNTR Speed Networking powered by Airmeet
Tokyo: Aug 29 VNTR Investors Roundtable Tokyo side event to WebX Asia (20% Discount using discount_vntr).
Miami: Aug 29 VNTR Investors Roundtable Miami side event to Miami International Auto Show.
Gurgaon: Aug 31 VNTR Investors Roundtable Gurgaon India (New Delhi Chapter gathering). Thank you StartupNews.fyi.
Seoul: Sep 4 VNTR Investors Roundtable Seoul side event to Korean Blockchain Week.
Online: Sep 5 VNTR Expert Session with VNTR Club Member Christian Sauer, CEO at soonami
Bangkok: Sep 6 VNTR Investors Brunch Bangkok during Wiki Finance Expo
Online: Sep 10 VNTR Club AI Mastermind
London: Sep 10 VNTR LP Roundtable in partnership with CV VC.
Copenhagen: Sep 12 VNTR Investors Roundtable Copenhagen during Tech BBQ.
Miami: Sep 12 VNTR Investors Roundtable Miami during WebCongress
Dubai: Sep 12 VNTR Investors Roundtable Dubai during Dubai AI & Web3 Festival
Thank you to our Partners:
Paypolitan stands at the cutting edge of payment technology, operating as an innovative application that effortlessly merges conventional fiat currency and contemporary cryptocurrency transactions. As a fintech pioneer, Paypolitan is a first mover in Open Banking with over 2,000 connected banks in over 40 countries. Contact Nils to explore partnership or integration.
Perfect is a Personal Lifestyle app that helps you Book your flights and hotels and manage your lifestyle. Enjoy personalized assistance with tasks, errands, and reservations, freeing time for what truly matters. Join Perfect using "VNTR" code to get special discounts and VNTR experiences.
Upcoming VNTR Events:
Sep 26 VNTR Investors Roundtable Barcelona (European Blockchain Convention)
Oct 9 VNTR Investors Roundtable San Francisco (San Francisco Tech Week)
Oct 16 VNTR Investors Roundtable Los Angeles (Los Angeles Tech Week)
More events available on the VNTR Platform
Reach out to Lukas to sponsor VNTR events or join VNTR Corporate Partnership.
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UPCOMING VC EVENTS
Aug 28-29 WebX, Tokyo, Japan (20% Discount using discount_vntr)
Sep 9-11 IPEM Paris, France
Sep 11-12 Dubai AI & Web3 Festival, Dubai, UAE
Sep 11-12 TechBBQ, Copenhagen, Denmark
Sep 17-18 Asia PE-VC Summit, Singapore
Sep 17-19 Dreamforce, San Francisco, USA
Sep 18-19 Token2049, Singapore (15% Discount using VNTR15)
Sep 18-19 Principled Business New York Summit, NY, USA (30% Discount)
Sep 24-27 Super Return Asia, Singapore
Sep 25-27 South Summit, Seoul, Korea
Sep 29 - Oct 1 Bitz & Pretzels, Munich, Germany
Oct 1-3 CV Summit, Zug, Switzerland
Oct 2-3 Sifted Summit, London, UK
Oct 2-3 How to Web, Bucharest, Romania
Oct 4-5 Dext Force Festival, Barcelona, Spain (30% Discount)
Oct 7-13 San Francisco Tech Week, USA
Oct 8-12 Merge Madrid, Spain
Oct 13-16 Expand North Star, Dubai, UAE (Complimentary investor passes)
Oct 14-18 GITEX Global, Dubai, UAE (Complimentary investor passes)
Oct 14-20 Los Angeles Tech Week, USA
Oct 15-17 Meridian by Stellar, London, UK
Oct 21-27 Mexico Tech Week, Mexico City, Mexico
Oct 22-23 Blockchain Life, Dubai, UAE (10% Discount using VNTR)
Oct 28-29 SWITCH, Singapore
Oct 28-Nov 1 Hong Kong FinTech Week, Hong Kong
Nov 11-14 Web Summit, Lisbon, Portugal
Nov 20-21 Slush, Helsinki, Finland
Dec 9-12 Abu Dhabi Finance Week, UAE
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
LPs harbor valuation concerns, survey shows
A new PitchBook survey revealed some lingering mistrust between LPs and their private market managers. Sixty-six percent of LP respondents said they believe their VC portfolios are overvalued, and 36% said the same about their PE investments. The skepticism is, in part, a hangover from 2021’s sky-high private market valuations and the low interest rate environment in the US, but it also highlights a fundamental difference in the way PE and VC managers value their investments.
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Grafana Labs Raises $270M To Lead Slow Week
Another slow week with only three companies raising rounds of more than $100 million. In fact, you didn’t even need to raise $50 million to make the list this week. Investors certainly put their money everywhere, from biotech to productivity tools, but they didn’t shell out a lot.
Venture capital has an exit problem
The rocket-ship story of cyber security company Wiz is the kind of thing that the venture capital industry has long relied on to draw in investors.
Four young engineers sell their first start-up to a giant tech company (Microsoft) and go off to found another. This one finds an unmet need and hits the big time: it quickly raises $1.9bn from some of the best-known names in venture investing. After just four years, a different giant tech company (Google) comes along and offers to buy it for $23bn.
If the sale goes through, it will be the kind of payday that enters VC mythology. But of late, big hits such as this have been few and far between.
A16z And Founders Fund Lead The Way In Defense Venture Capital
Anduril Industries made headlines earlier this month when it raised another $1.5 billion — matching its own record for the largest defense tech round ever and catapulting total funding numbers to likely new highs. The massive round — co-led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital Ventures — showed the growing interest in the space by investors. That was not always the case in the venture world for reasons ranging from cultural to political. However, in the past several years a handful of big-named firms like Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst have placed a significant amount of bets in the space as the venture capital world has grown and some norms have changed.
Podcast: Tokenizing Everything with AI: Mintbase Becomes Bitte with Nate Geier
Nate Geier, CEO & Co-founder of Mintbase and Bitte Protocol, reveals how Bitte's AI-powered ecosystem, with user-friendly tools like the Bitte Wallet, developer suite, and sponsored relayer, simplifies blockchain interactions for everyone.
Early-stage VC valuations are more reasonable than they appear
Investors hoping for a steep drop in early-stage startup valuations have so far been disappointed, but prices for these companies are cheaper than they first appear—signaling an era for better returns may be on the horizon. Early-stage startup valuations have remained sticky despite a steep downturn in venture capital investment. The median US VC early-stage pre-money valuation was $45 million in the first half of 2024, about the same as in 2022.
VCs weigh in on fund sizing in 2024
Last week, London-based Balderton Capital announced $1.3bn in fresh funds ($615m for early stage and $685m for growth) — the largest haul dedicated to investing purely in European startups, and the most Balderton has raised in one go. It’s not the only firm raking in huge amounts of cash; Index Ventures and Accel have also raised big funds in 2024.
Meet the 10 AI chipmakers pulling in the most VC cash
As AI leads the way in VC investment, the expense of training and running large language models is pushing a new crop of startups to build better semiconductors. These startups could one day challenge traditional chipmakers like Nvidia, whose GPUs have become a coveted commodity due to their ability to process intensive AI workloads. Startups like Hailo, which makes specialized chips for running AI tasks locally, raised a $120 million Series C extension in April. Halo Industries, another semiconductor manufacturer, raised an $80 million Series B in July.
Startups Take Longer To Close Rounds, As Funding Cliff Looms
The time lapse between funding rounds for early-stage startups has reached the highest point in more than a decade.
That was the finding from a Crunchbase survey of U.S. companies that raised Series A funding and went on to close a Series B. The median time lapse between rounds in 2024 was 28 months — by far the longest span since 2012.
The average time between these rounds also hit a high of 31 months this year, which is tied with 2023. For a sense of how fundraising timelines compare, below we charted out both averages and medians for the past 12 years.
Eye On AI: AMD’s Big Deal Is Just Their Latest In AI
While we often focus on the machinations of the likes of Microsoft, Google and Nvidia in the ever-increasing world of AI, other large tech players sometimes escape our thoughts. Such is the case with AMD — which caught everyone’s attention this week when it announced it would buy server maker ZT Systems in a cash and stock transaction valued at $4.9 billion as it looks to challenge chip giant Nvidia for data center tech in the AI space.
PE fundraising on the rebound in Asia
Fundraising among Asia-focused funds is picking up pace again after two years of decline, as LPs’ appetite for the region grows. Asian funds have raised $30.4 billion this year through Aug. 19,, equivalent to 77% of the total capital raised in the region in all of 2023, according to Pitchbook data. At that pace, the year’s total would top $48 billion. Asia-focused funds have accounted for around 6% of global fundraising both in 2023 and 2024, according to Pitchbook’s Q1 2024 Global Private Market Fundraising Report.
AI sales rep startups are booming. So why are VCs wary?
When you really probe venture capitalists about investing in AI startups, they’ll tell you that businesses are experimenting wildly but are very slow to add AI solutions into their ongoing business processes. But there are some exceptions. And one of them appears to be an area known as AI sales development representatives, or AI SDRs. These use LLMs and voice technology to craft personalized outreach emails and place automated calls to potential customers.
Venture Funding To Israeli Startups Bounces Back
Venture funding to Israel-based startups has bounced back significantly after nosediving less than a year ago after the Hamas attacks and the Israeli response. Funding to Israeli startups sank in Q4 last year as uncertainty swirled with the rise of tensions and violence. However, less than a year later and with tensions in the region still at a fever pitch, venture funding to VC-backed companies has picked back up — and even shows some signs of getting strong.
Investors Still Pouring Cash Into Clean Concrete
Startup investors keep pouring capital into clean concrete. Over the past few years, companies in the space have raised more than $750 million in venture funding. And investment continues to flow, with Silicon Valley-based Fortera, a developer of low-carbon cement technology, closing this week on the year’s biggest round. Five-year-old Fortera announced Wednesday that it secured an $85 million Series C with backing from repeat investors Khosla Ventures and Temasek. It will use the money to incorporate its technology into existing cement manufacturing plants, with the goal of producing a green cement with 70% less carbon dioxide than ordinary varieties.
Decentralized naming could bring ‘next billion’ users to Bitcoin
As centralized domain incidents highlight security flaws, an executive argued that decentralized naming on the Bitcoin network would be a better alternative for domain names. Mike Carson, the founder of the Bitcoin-based naming project Spaces Protocol, said everyone currently relies on trusted third parties for their usernames and domain names. However, an incident involving decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols relying on Squarespace’s registry system highlighted problems in the current setup.
Consumer Electronics Is A Bust That Never Boomed
We usually think of a bust as something that comes after a boom. But that’s not always how it works. Take the consumer electronics industry. This year, funding to startups in the space continued to slump, even after several years of relatively flat investment. So far in 2024, American consumer electronics companies have secured less than $300 million in seed through late-stage investment.
PE buyers reassert leadership on IT deals
PE managers have seen their share of IT deals rebound relative to that of corporate buyers, and Turn/River‘s potential sale of Redwood Software is adding fuel to the fire. According to Reuters, the deal is expected to attract PE suitors as software investment firm Turn/River seeks a $2.5 billion valuation, including debt, for the automation solutions provider. The manager could reportedly fetch 25 times the company’s EBITDA, with an amortization of approximately $100 million. Goldman Sachs has been recruited to assist with the sale.
Faster Computers and Better Algorithms Will Fully Decentralize Blockchains
Computers are getting much faster and our mathematics skills are getting better too. This combination is starting to reshape blockchains like Ethereum. This will fuel additional scalability as well as leading to much more genuinely decentralized blockchain ecosystems and more powerful smart contracts. Blockchains today already consume enormous compute resources, but they are still much more centralized and fragile than many of us would like.