VNTR Newsletter Dec 15, 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 to discover VNTR Community News, Upcoming Events, and the latest VC News and Reads.
VNTR COMMUNITY NEWS
Spotlight
VNTR Chapter Directors Fellowship Program: VNTR is expanding its chapter network to over 50 cities worldwide in 2025. We are onboarding Chapter Directors through a 4-week Chapter Directors Fellowship program to support this growth and equip fellows with the skills and tools to lead thriving regional VNTR communities. The ideal candidates are entrepreneurs looking to emerge into venture capital, become investors, and serve as super connectors in their local VNTR chapter community. Apply to join the January 2025 cohort
Masterclass - Bitcoin Mining vs. Bitcoin Buying: Discover the advantages and challenges of investing in Bitcoin mining compared to simply buying Bitcoin. Watch this insightful masterclass featuring Jan Rasmus from GoMining, where we delve into strategies, risks, and opportunities in the world of Bitcoin. Start your Bitcoin mining journey using the VNTR discount and get a Gift miner + 5% discount. Contact Gomining VIP support and use the VNTR code to access your discount and personalized support.
Join Our Thank-You Contribution Campaign: As we approach the close of 2024, we’re filled with gratitude and pride as we reflect on the remarkable journey we’ve shared with our global network of investors.
This year, we’ve been proud to host impactful activities and events worldwide, most offered complimentary to qualified investors. We invite you to make a Thank-You Contribution to help VNTR deliver impactful events, create meaningful connections, and provide a safe space for decision-makers to collaborate and co-invest. Regardless of size, your support is invaluable in sustaining and growing our mission. 2024 Community Results:🌍 141 offline events hosted worldwide, and 106 online events
👥 4000+ investors attended from 50+ countries
🤝 tens of thousands of new connections made through VNTR
💰hundreds of new co-investments and opportunities between community members
Christmas Speed Networking on Dec 18: Engage in dynamic one-on-one speed networking sessions, each lasting 5-7 minutes, to build meaningful connections as we wrap up 2024.
VNTR at Davos WEF 2025: Join us in Davos during the World Economic Forum for the 4th time with an exclusive series of three high-impact events designed to foster connections, insights, and opportunities among leading investors.
VNTR Bahrain Roadshow: As part of our 2025 programming, we aim to deliver exceptional value to our VNTR Club members by leveraging our global network and curated events. The roadshow helps members connect with qualified peers, meet co-investors, raise capital for new funds, and expand their portfolios.
We invite seasoned General Partners (GPs) raising their third or subsequent funds to join our VNTR GP Club membership by contacting Elise. Participants in this exclusive roadshow will connect with potential Limited Partners (LPs), capital allocators, co-investors, and partners from GCC.
Preliminary Bahrain roadshow dates:Feb 18 VNTR Investor Conference Bahrain (Sponsorship packages)
Feb 20 Curated one-on-one meetings in Manama
.vntr domains: Get your .vntr domain name (40% discount using VNTRWINTER code)
Annual Corporate Partnership: Discover our annual corporate partnership packages to connect with the VNTR global investor community in 2025. Contact Yuri to discuss.
VNTR Podcast: Stay updated with our latest episodes, and subscribe on your preferred platform to never miss insightful discussions. Contact Elise if you would like to be on the show.
Thank you to our partners:
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UPCOMING VC EVENTS
Jan 7-10 CES, Las Vegas, USA
Jan 15-17 CFC St. Moritz, Switzerland
Jan 16-18 DLD, Munich, Germany
Jan 20-24 World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland
Feb 3-6 4YFN, Barcelona, Spain
Feb 4-6 AI Everything Global, Dubai, UAE
Feb 5-7 Techchill, Riga, Latvia
Feb 9-12 LEAP, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Feb 18-20 Consensus, Hong Kong
Feb 23-26 Web Summit Qatar, Doha, Qatar
April 14-16 GITEX Africa, Marrakech, Morocco
April 23-25 GITEX Asia, Singapore
April 27-30 Web Summit Rio, Brazil
April 30 - May 1 Token2049, Dubai, UAE
May 12-13 Dubai FinTech Summit, Dubai, UAE
May 14-16 Consensus, Toronto, Canada
May 21-23 GITEX Europe, Berlin, Germany
May 27-30 Web Summit Vancouver, Canada
June 11-14 Viva Technology, Paris, France
If you would like to submit VC-related events, please get in touch with Yuri or Telegram @byuric
VC Reads and News
View curated VC news and articles on the VNTR Platform
9 VC firms collected half of all money raised by US funds in 2024
In 2024, 30 firms raised 75% of all capital raised by VC funds in the US, a powerful signal of how the tech pullback is concentrating influence among the venture industry’s heavyweights.
Just nine of them took in $35 billion—half of the total raised, according to PitchBook data.
And just one firm, Andreessen Horowitz, brought in over 11% of all capital raised.
A new disclosure shows, again, how badly Tiger’s ‘spray and pray’ fund performed
Tiger Global famously fueled the pandemic-era venture capital boom, investing heavily in a wide range of startups, setting up bidding wars for even the most unproven startup that led to sky-high valuations. In 2021 alone, the hedge fund backed 315 startups, according to PitchBook data.
And much of the VC industry was not happy about it, even at the time. Toward the end of 2021, the New York firm convinced its investors to commit $12.7 billion for its fifteenth venture fund (titled PIP 15) and then proceeded to plough the majority of that capital into more startups over the next several months. By May of 2022, most of the money in that fund had already been fully invested, TechCrunch reported.
How Long Will the Trump Crypto Boom Last?
Last week, after Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Paul Atkins, a cryptocurrency advocate, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.), the price of a Bitcoin topped a hundred thousand dollars, and crypto enthusiasts celebrated. The mood in the crypto markets reminded me of the dot-com boom, along with its inevitable bust, which I chronicled in a book more than twenty years ago. There was the same giddy excitement, the same predictions that prices could still go higher, much higher, and the same uneasy feelings among some longtime market participants and observers, me included.
The Week’s Biggest Funding Rounds: Fintech’s Big Week
This is our last weekly Top 10 of the year and we go out with some pretty big rounds — especially in the world of fintech. All in all, 2024 was filled with large-money deals, as megadeals soared — with more than 280 rounds of $100 million or more.
The kinds of VCs the €1bn NATO Innovation Fund wants to back in 2025
The NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) — the €1bn vehicle backed by 24 NATO allies to invest in defence and deeptech startups and investors — has recently seen some turmoil at the top. In the last several months, two of its five founding partners left the fund, just about a year after it launched.
Despite the departure of Thorsten Claus, NIF’s former head of fund-of-funds, the firm’s VC investment strategy “hasn’t really changed,” partner Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky tells Sifted. It’s still looking for deeptech-focused investors who are keen to fund startups in NATO countries.
Since NIF started investing about a year ago, the firm has received "hundreds" of pitches from GPs, says Amalia Kontesi, NIF’s head of communications.
Big Ideas in Tech for 2025
An external "AI brain." Big swings in biopharma. Infinite games. A nuclear resurgence. "Faceless" creators. Google search challengers. Battlefield AI. We asked 50 a16z partners to preview one big idea that will spur innovation in 2025.
GP-led secondaries to end 2024 with new record
2024 is turning out to be another bonanza year for dealmaking in the GP-led secondary market.
PE firms across the globe achieved 89 exits totaling $47.3 billion via continuation funds through October, which is the most recent data available. The overall value has already hit an all-time high this year, with projections to widen the lead with a final total between $50 billion and $60 billion, according to a PitchBook analyst note.
AI And DevOps Led For New Unicorns In November
Six companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in November 2024, with AI and developer operations leading for new unicorns. So far this year, 100 companies have joined the board, compared to 99 for all of 2023.
Five of the new unicorns are U.S.-based and one is headquartered in London.
All six are enterprise focused, and have collectively raised $1.8 billion in funding and added $10 billion in value to the board.
One of the companies raised seed through Series C funding in the span of less than a year.
Deals with US investors account for over half of UK PE value in 2024
More US capital is finding its way into UK private equity, as investor participation from across the pond rebounded this year.
US-based investors were involved in around £56.4 billion (around $71.7 billion) worth, just over half, of PE deal value across 472 transactions, according to PitchBook data—the highest share of deal value since 2019 and 56.7% increase on last year.
In total, there have been 1,627 PE deals in the UK in 2024 as of Dec. 5, with a total transaction value of £111.9 billion.
Foreign investors are showing a keen interest in private equity deals in the UK, with two-thirds of deal value featuring overseas investors.
Eye On AI: Funding To Biotech And Healthcare Startups Using AI Takes Off After Dip In 2023
Earlier this week, life sciences venture firm Dimension Capital announced it had raised a new $500 million second fund — just two years after its first — to hunt for startups that are using artificial intelligence to develop new medicines.
The new fund is just the latest example of investor excitement about healthcare- and biotech-related uses for AI.
Venture funding to AI-related biotech and healthcare startups hit only $4.8 billion in 2023, a significant decrease from 2022. But in 2024, funding to the area has bounced back — with such startups raising $6.7 billion through early December, per Crunchbase data.
The family offices doing the most deals in European healthtech
In recent years, family office deal making into European healthtech has tracked up and to the right. Since 2020, family offices have participated in 218 deals, according to Dealroom, more than the previous 10 years combined.
While an ever-elusive part of the tech ecosystem, family offices can offer more long-term capital than VC firms — which are bound by commitments to return LPs money after a certain amount of time. That patient capital can be all important for healthtechs, which can have long exit timelines because of regulatory hurdles they have to navigate before launching a product..
10 Charts That Capture How the World Is Changing
Music’s Next Act: Generative Music
Shopify’s Reacceleration
Venture Capital’s Power Law
VC Fund Cycles and Secondaries
Video Consumption Over Time
The goal here is to visually capture some key ways the world is changing.
2025 US Distressed Outlook: Market strength to boost defaults, opportunity set?
Distressed investors are excited about 2025, despite the current strength of US markets. In the past, when US equity indices were at all-time highs and high-yield option-adjusted spreads were close to all-time tights, distressed players had little to do — but it may be different this time.
“This is one of the richest distressed opportunity sets in a long time,” said Randy Raisman, portfolio manager at Marathon Asset Management. The catalyst for the robust distressed environment, according to Raisman, is interest rates, specifically short-term rates compared to rock-bottom levels in 2020 and 2021, when the US Federal Reserve’s fed funds target rate was skimming along at 0-0.25%.
Venture Dollars Pour Into The Intersection Of AI And Cybersecurity
Just last month, AI-powered data security startup Cyera closed a $300 million Series D led by Accel and Sapphire Ventures. The deal tied Cyera for the biggest raise by a startup playing at the intersection of two of venture capitalists’ favorite industries: AI and cybersecurity.
Which other deal tied with Cyera’s Series D for the largest in the space? Cyera’s Series C, also at $300 million, back in April.
While the two Cyera rounds may be the largest, the company is far from the only cybersecurity startup using AI that has raised large sums of money.
Thus far this year, VC-backed AI cybersecurity startups have raised more than $2.6 billion, per Crunchbase data. That nearly triples the slightly more than $900 million such startups raised all of last year in almost the same number of deals.
As YC retreats from Africa, alumni launch accelerators to fill the gap
The influential accelerator Y Combinator made a splash in Africa in 2020 when it shined its light on the market and began to accept startups from the region into its cohorts. The move was huge: in this nascent market, startups especially rely on programs like these to find their feet and connect with investors, and YC is the platinum standard for that process.
Fast forward to today, though, that attention has started to look a bit fickle. These days YC is going after big problems in areas like manufacturing, defense and climate, and it has quietly reduced its focus on developing markets. Yet in Africa, some are taking this as an opportunity. Local accelerators — backed by none other than African YC alumni — are emerging to fill the gap.
What is decentralized identity in blockchain?
Decentralized identity refers to a system of identity management that is not controlled by any central authority such as governments, corporations or identity providers.
Traditional identity systems often involve intermediaries that store and manage personal information, which can lead to privacy concerns, data breaches and dependency on centralized entities.
In contrast, decentralized identity is a self-sovereign model where individuals fully own and control their digital identity, free from external institutions. By leveraging blockchain technology, this approach enables individuals to securely create, manage and share their personal information, shifting the power back to users and enhancing privacy and security online.
But why is identity a significant concern?
6 charts: Japan’s VC market recovery
After two years of decline, VC dealmaking in Japan is surging, with deal value for this year expected to surpass 2023’s total.
Here are six charts from PitchBook’s 2024 Japan Private Capital Breakdown, highlighting key data points on the country’s VC recovery.
Microsoft Shareholders Vote Down Bitcoin Treasury Proposal
Microsoft (MSFT) doesn't appear to be adding its name anytime soon to the list of corporate entities holding bitcoin (BTC) after its shareholders voted against a proposal that would have directed the board of directors to study such a move.
Titled "Assessment of Investing in Bitcoin," the proposal was put forward by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The think tank group suggested that Microsoft should consider diversifying 1% of its total assets into bitcoin as a potential hedge against inflation. According to the latest data by Bloomberg, Microsoft holds $78.4 billion of cash and marketable securities on its balance sheet.
More Startups Are Working On Lowering Your Taxes
These days, a lot of Americans earn enough to qualify for the highest taxes.
Per recent estimates, roughly a fifth of households earn over $250,000 in annual income, putting most of them in a 35% federal tax bracket. State and local levies take another big chunk, especially in high-tax locales like California and New York.
Of course, making enough money to face higher taxes isn’t the worst problem. But given that the tax code also provides myriad ways to reduce outlays, it’s not surprising that as people move up the earnings ladder, they often get more vigilant about using these strategies.
Enter startups. Over the past couple years, we’ve seen a steady flow of venture investment to companies offering services aimed at reducing tax liabilities. There’s particular interest in startups using AI to automate some of the historically more complex and cumbersome tax-saving strategies.
Memecoins Are Not Easy Money
Memecoins, whether people want to accept it or not, have become big business. Without delving into statistics, anyone immersed in the crypto space this year can confirm that memecoins have dominated conversations. Critics often argue that memecoins are just a rehash of Jordan Belfort’s “Wolf of Wall Street” era — a world of unregulated securities and insider trading. This time, however, the penny stocks have been replaced by on-chain memes financialized in ways that make it seem like anyone can create and profit from them.