Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal invests $92M in OlaThe money is starting to flow from India’s largest startup exit. Ola has added a major name to its ongoing financing round after it confirmedthat Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has invested 650 crore INR (around $92 million) into the Indian ride-hailing business. The deal rumored in January when Paper.vc, an intelligence service that sifts through company filings in India, noticed that Bansal had committed to investing 150 crore. Today, eight-year-old Ola not only confirmed the pairing, but it revealed that the actual size of Bansal’s investment is significantly higher. It represents his most prominent and largest investment to date, and his first major deal since he left Flipkart following its sale to Walmart for $16 billion last year. [ Tech Crunch ] Prolific Tiger Global Management Maintains Strong Investment PostureAlthough relatively secretive in the way it navigates new opportunities and emerging markets, investment firm Tiger Global Management continues to flex its strength through quiet and purposeful fundraising, investments, and exits. It’s this intriguing posture that has prompted Crunchbase News to explore the past, present, and potential future of the venture. [ Crunchbase ] 212 holds a $34 million close to invest in Turkey and Eastern Europe’s growing technology sceneEight years after raising its first $30 million fund, 212 is back in the market with a $30 million first close for its latest fund focused on investments in Turkish and Eastern European startups. Looking to invest in business-to-business software as a service startups, financial services technologies and marketplace businesses, the firm has already launched four companies that have captured regional and global attention, says Numan Numan, one of the firm’s co-founders and managing directors. [ Tech Crunch ] Opendoor Aims To Raise $200M More At $3.7B ValuationOnline real estate company Opendoor is reportedly seeking to raise another $200 million at a valuation of about $3.7 billion, according to TechCrunch. Another mega round of funding is not such a big deal these days. But another mega round of funding when a company has already raised two such rounds in the past eight months is notable. [ Crunchbase ] EF raises $115M new fund, aiming to create another 300-plus startups in the next three yearsEntrepreneur First (EF), the London-headquartered “talent investor” that recruits and backs individuals pre-team and pre-idea to enable them to found startups, has raised a new fund of its own to continue scaling globally. The $115 million first close was led by a number of leading (mostly unnamed) institutional investors across the U.S., Europe and Asia, including new anchor LP Trusted Insight. A number of well-known European entrepreneurs also invested. They
include Taavet Hinrikus (co-founder of TransferWise), Alex Chesterman (co-founder of Zoopla) and EF alumnus Rob Bishop (who co-founded Magic Pony Technology, which was bought by Twitter for a reported $150 million in 2016). [ Tech Crunch] Should Your Startup Differentiate On Pricing?Startups are innovation machines. They identify market opportunities, develop novel products and go out to change the world. Some companies want to change the world in one dimension: a better product or a disruptive go-to-market. Others want to innovate in every dimension and re-invent every discipline from pricing to marketing to support to customer success. [ Tomasz Tunguz ] Slack off — send videos instead with $11M-funded LoomIf a picture is worth a thousand words, how many emails can you replace with a video? As offices fragment into remote teams, work becomes more visual and social media makes us more comfortable on camera, it’s time for collaboration to go beyond text. That’s the idea behind Loom, a fast-rising startup that equips enterprises with instant video messaging tools. In a click, you can film yourself or narrate a screenshare to get an idea across in a more vivid, personal way. Instead of scheduling a video call, employees can asynchronously discuss projects or give “stand-up” updates without massive disruptions to their workflow. [ Deal Room ] AI mirror to monitor Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in the homeA video camera mounted above the mirror captures images of people performing everyday tasks such as brushing their teeth as well as more structured evaluation exercises. The video is then assessed for the signs and severity of symptoms by an AI-driven computer program designed in conjunction with doctors and occupational therapists. [ Startup Daily ] Peraso raises $42 million for WiGig integrated chip solutionsIf anyone thought the problem of unaccountable tech CEOs was going to go away anytime soon, think again.In reality, it's likely to get much worse before it gets any better, especially with a new wave of tech companies preparing to hit the public markets. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the founders of one of those companies — Lyft — are working on a plan that would give them near-majority control of the app-based car ride firm after its initial public offering. [ Venture Beat ] Airtable CEO Howie Liu on the continued importance of getting a ‘unicorn’ valuationWhen in 2015, Slack raised money at a $1 billion valuation, founder Stewart Butterfield spoke candidly about why it was important to him, and why if Slack wasn’t assigned a valuation north of that number at that point in time, Slack wouldn’t raise anything. Said Butterfield, speaking to Fortune, it “means that we’re a part of that conversation about companies worth $1 billion.” [ Tech Crunch ] Time's up: Meet the startups fighting sexual harassmentIt's been more than a year since the #metoo movement swept across the globe, revealing the extent to which sexual harassment has infiltrated virtually every industry, as women and men have come forward to share their stories. To fight off unemployment, Iraqi youth plant startup seedsStuck between an endless waitlist for a government job and a frail private sector, Iraqi entrepreneurs are taking on staggering unemployment by establishing their own startups. The first murmurs of this creative spirit were felt in 2013, but the Islamic State group’s sweep across a third of the country the following year put many projects on hold. Now, with IS defeated, co-working spaces and incubators are flourishing in a country whose unemployment rate hovers around 10% but whose public sector is too bloated to hire. [ The Star ] E904 Keith Rabois (Khosla/PayPal) advice for anti-VC/anti-hustle climate, Thiel, Trump, Thatcher-PT1E904: Legendary investor & operator Keith Rabois (Khosla Ventures, PayPal, Opendoor) shares advice for entrepreneurs in the current anti-VC/anti-hustle climate, insights on Thiel, Trump, Margaret Thatcher & Masayoshi Son, & lessons from his lifelong quest to monopolize talent & fund startups that will change the world - PART 1 [ Startup Daily ] VC - Shizu Okusa on managing a juice business that sells online and through multiple channelsShizu came from venture capital and began focusing on health and wellness, starting JRINK juicery and later Apothekary. Her companies sell trhough multiple distribution channels including retail, ecommerce, and wholesale. At JuiceCon 2018 she walked us through how she manages her omni-channel businesses. Moving From Goldman Sachs To Startups and Venture CapitalMyriam Baissa - previously Associate at Goldman Sachs before becoming Founder of Akhal Beauty. When she took time off to travel during her investment banking days, Myriam saw an opportunity to disrupt the supply chain of a high-demand beauty product - argan oil. Akhal Beauty is the first platform to empower working women in the villages of Morocco. [ Forbes ] 1-29-19 Venture Capital Panel: Investment and Latest Innovations in AI StartupsErwin Hosono is a partner at Mighty Capital and active non-profit board member. Previously, he was a principal at Bradford Equities Management LLC, a middle market private equity firm in New York; before graduate school, he coded software at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. Erwin holds an MPPM from the Yale School of Management and an AB in economics from Duke University. SendBird raises $52 million so developers can add messaging and chat features to their appsSendBird, a company that’s setting out to make it easy for any developer to integrate chat and messaging features into their apps, has raised $52 million in a series B round of funding led by Iconiq Capital, a wealth management firm with big-name backers that include Mark Zuckerberg. [ Venture Beat ] Image recognition startup ViSenze raises $20M Series CViSenze, a startup that provides visual search tools for online retailers like Rakuten and ASOS, announced today that it has raised a $20 million Series C. The round was co-led by Gobi Ventures and Sonae IM, with participation from other backers including returning investors Rakuten and WI Harper. [ Tech Crunch ] Goldman-Backed Cloud Storage Firm Closes $25M in Growth Equity FundingNasuni, a provider of cloud storage and file sharing services based in the Seaport District, received $25 million in growth equity funding. The round was led by Telstra Ventures, the venture capital arm of Telstra, one of Australia’s largest telecommunications companies. The round, which was announced on Tuesday, brings the total funds raised to $145 million since the company was founded in 2009, and follows a $38 million round that Nasuni
raised in September 2017—led by Goldman Sachs, which also participated in the most recent fundraising. [ American Inno ] Two of the top five most active corporate VCs last year were ChineseTwo Chinese firms ranked in the top five corporate venture capital groups last year, in terms of number of companies in which they invested, according to a new report from CB Insights. [ CNBC ] 3 HACKS TO GET YOUR STARTUP FUNDEDTrying to raise money for your startup? I just attended Startup Grind - a conference for entrepreneurs building startups in Silicon Valley, and am here to bring you 3 top tips for getting investors to fund your startup. |