1.
Diversity-focused VC fund Harlem Capital debuts with $40M
Harlem Capital has upgraded from angel syndicate to full-fledged venture capital fund, closing its debut effort on an oversubscribed $40.3 million. The firm was launched by managing partners Henri Pierre-Jacques and Jarrid Tingle in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood in 2015. The pair have since graduated from Harvard Business School and hired two venture partners, Brandon Bryant and John Henry, and two senior associates to help expand their portfolio.
The over-arching goal: invest in 1,000 diverse founders over the next 20 years. [ Tech Crunch ]
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2.
Accel closes new $550M fund for India
Accel, one of the world’s most influential venture capitalist firms, is getting more bullish on India.The Silicon Valley-headquartered firm, which largely focuses on early-stage investments, said today it has closed $550 million for its sixth venture fund in India. This is a significant amount of capital for Accel’s efforts in the country, where it began investing 15 years ago and has infused roughly $1 billion through all its previous funds. Anand Daniel, a
partner for Accel in India, told TechCrunch in an interview that the VC fund will continue to focus on identifying and investing in seed and early-stage startups. [ Tech Crunch ]
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3.
London-based Fintech Startup Hastee Snaps Up $270M In Debt & Equity For Fast Pay
Hastee, a London-based on-demand wages app, announced this morning it has secured about $270 million in equity and debt financing. Umbra Capital (a one-year-old self-described modern merchant bank that invests in UK-based small-to-medium enterprises) led the equity portion of the funding, which amounted to about $20 million. The startup also secured a $250 million credit line. IDC Ventures – the venture capital arm of Grupo IDC, a Latin American investment bank –
and other unnamed investors also participated in the funding, which marks Hastee’s second round of external capital since it was founded in 2017. It raised a private $5.7 million seed round in May 2018, according to the company. [ Crunchbase ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
4.
Startups Weekly: Chinese investors double down on African startups
Three African fintech startups; OPay, PalmPay and East African trucking logistics company Lori Systems, closed large fundraises this year. On their own, the deals aren’t particularly notable, but together, they expose a new trend within the African startup ecosystem. This year, those three companies brought in a total of $240 million in venture capital funding from 15 different Chinese investors, who’ve become increasingly active in
Africa’s tech scene. TechCrunch reporter Jake Bright, who covers African tech, writes that 2019 marks “the year Chinese investors went all in on the continent’s startup scene” — particularly its fintech projects. Why? [ Tech Crunch]
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5.
From Helsinki: Spot and #MovingForward on Harassment Reporting in the #MeToo Era
I caught up with Jessica Collier, CEO of Spot, and Ginny Fahs, co-founder of #MovingForward, at Slush. #MovingForward is a non-profit where VCs post their policies on harassment reporting. Spot started out as a chatbot technology to document harassment incidents. We cover what constitutes good anti-harassment workplace practices, changes in the law, and how technology is aiming to address under-reporting in the #MeToo era. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity. Jessica: We are a comprehensive solution for preventing and reacting to workplace harassment and discrimination. Our main product is an anonymous reporting tool. We use an anonymous AI bot to help people walk through recounting the incident that happened to them, and then to decide whether to submit to HR or not. [ Crunchbase ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
6.
Manchester City owner nets record soccer valuation with Silver Lake deal
Manchester City Football Club may be in second place right now when it comes to the Premier League standings, but the British team's parent has scored a different title—the world's most valuable soccer enterprise.
The coveted position comes thanks to a $500 million investment from Silicon Valley-based private equity firm Silver Lake in Abu Dhabi-controlled City Football Group; the deal gives the organization a valuation of $4.8 billion. City Football Group owns or has partial stakes in seven soccer teams around the world, including New York City FC, Melbourne City FC and Girona FC, with two-time defending Premier League champion Manchester City as its prized trophy. Altogether, the organization oversees more than 1,500 players and 2,500 games annually. [ Pitchbook ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
Chewy Backer Invests in Arts-Supply Startup Arteza
It’s become the norm for some private tech companies to raise in a single round what VC firms raise for an entire new fund. For a certain class of large, rapidly-growing companies flying in the rarified air of startup finance, raising $100 million or more in a venture round is, if you’ll forgive the pun, just not that big of a deal anymore. [ Crunchbase ]
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8.
Against expectations, private debt fundraising saw a decline in 2019
Late last year, we published PitchBook's 2019 Private Equity Outlook, our crystal ball analyst note where we took a crack at predicting trends in the year ahead. With 2019 wrapping up, it's time to review our predictions. When it comes to private debt fundraising, were were a bit off in anticipating levels to rebound off of a slower 2018. Relatively slow, that is, since 2018 still represents one of the highest years on record, just not as high as record-breaking 2017 was. [ Pitchbook ]
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9.
Chinese tech start-ups pursue growth in Indian market
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Every couple of months, Aaron Li makes a trip to Gurugram, northern India, where roughly 100 employees man the front lines of Club Factory, the ecommerce start-up he co-founded. Back in China’s tech hotbed Hangzhou, where the five-year-old business is headquartered, another 400 engineers and operators have built India’s fastest-growing ecommerce start-up, a fashion and lifestyle marketplace that is gaining market share by undercutting domestic rivals on price. [ FT ] Checkout 15K+
Venture Capital Data on our platform.
10.
SoFi founder Mike Cagney’s already well-funded new startup is raising another $100 million
Figure Technologies, a nearly two-year-old, San Francisco-based fintech cofounded by Mike Cagney, the founder of the more established fintech company SoFi, is raising a whole lot of money — again. By February of this year, Figure had already raised $120 million in equity funding from a gaggle of investors, including RPM Ventures, partners at DST Global, Ribbit Capital, DCM, DCG, Nimble Ventures, and Morgan Creek. In May, it announced that it had closed
an up to $1 billion uncommitted asset-based financing facility on its own custom blockchain from Jefferies and WSFS Institutional Services. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
11.
PRODUCT LAUNCHES BECOME THE OPERATING CADENCE OF A STARTUP
Two spectacles occurred. The first is Dreamforce, Salesforce's annual event and the largest software conference in the world. The second is Elon Musk announcing the Tesla Cybertruck. Benioff and Musk use these events strategically. They engender an operational cadence to Salesforce and Tesla. [ TOMASZ TUNGUZ ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
12.
Top Israeli VC talks cybersecurity, diversity and ‘no go’ investments
It’s no secret that Israel is second only to the U.S. for its leading cybersecurity acumen, talent, startups and successful exits. Israel is a powerhouse in both offensive and defensive cyber operations, with cybersecurity giants CyberArk, Check Point, Radware, and Illusive Networks all founded in the country in recent years. For more than two decades behind the scenes and powering some of the country’s largest cybersecurity startups was Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), a major venture capital firm in the region with more than $1.4 billion raised to date. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
13.
Big Tech backlash could spur the next generation of startups
The 2020 bull case for tech startups, and the investors who love them, is that federal regulators will intensify their antitrust investigations into incumbents like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. The catch: This isn't about successfully breaking up the goliaths, which could only come after years of legal challenges. It's about distraction — and disincentives to move into new categories, thus creating more space for startups to
grow. - That's the same sort of environment that Google enjoyed in its early days, when Microsoft was otherwise engaged.
- U.S. tech startups may have an added advantage as other federal authorities take a tougher tact toward Chinese upstarts (pay close attention to how the TikTok situation gets resolved).
- The caveat, as perhaps evidenced by Google's recent deal for Fitbit, is that today's incumbents learned from the Microsoft example, and won't stop buying and building unless forced. [ Axios ]
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14.
No One in Silicon Valley Is Batting 1000
It’s the end of the fall girls’ softball season. One of our daughters has been playing softball for a few years, so I’ve had lots of time around softball fields, coaching and watching, and thinking about softball statistics. Like many players, our daughter isn’t always happy with her hitting game. We sometimes discuss the concept of batting average* — aka the percentage of base hits a player gets out of total at bats
— to help her remember that swinging and missing is just part of the game. I also sometimes think about batting average when reading tech news, going to meetings, or attending industry events. The tech ecosystem can sometimes feel like an echo chamber in which founders and investors throw around phrases like “the numbers are insane,” “we’re f*ing crushing it,” “our round was crazy oversubscribed,” or “they are killing it.” [ Medium ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
15.
OYO Board Approves Ritesh Agarwal’s $693 Mn Share Buy Back Plan
Amid hoteliers’ protests and international expansion spree, Ritesh Agarwal has got OYO’s board approval to buy back shares in a secondary transaction to increase his stake in the company. OYO parent company, Oravel Stays, in an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of shareholders has approved a $1.5 Bn primary capital infusion into the company by SoftBank Vision Fund and Ritesh Agarwal’s RA Hospitality. [ inc42 ]
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16.
E1005 ScaleAI CEO Alexandr Wang: future of self-driving, China’s ML advantages, next major AI trends
Scale AI CEO & Co-founder Alexandr Wang creates training data for all AI applications to improve machine learning, shares insights on the future of autonomous vehicles, China's AI advantages over US, importance of humans focusing on higher-value work & next major trends in AI
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17.
What is the difference between STOs - IPOs - IEOs? AIBC Summit
18.
Selling Venture Growth
Venture debt deals are on the rise in Canada in lockstep with it’s booming tech startup sector. Hear from Canada’s largest tech lenders on what they look for in a deal, what keeps them up at night, and where the market is heading in 2020.
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19.
Are You Adapting Your Leadership Strategy as Your Startup Grows?
Pivoting from an initial product design or business model has become a given in the startup playbook. But even as startup leaders shift their businesses to meet a newly discovered need, they often fail to apply the same logic to themselves — and there they get into trouble. Startup leaders must be willing to pivot their leadership approach, or their board and investors will end up doing it for them; indeed, data shows that venture capitalists replace 20% to 40% of their founders with more seasoned and “professional” managers at critical transition points in a startup’s growth. And well they might: a chief revenue officer who successfully helps the company win
an initial group of customers might not have the right skills to actually run a scaled-up sales organization. [ Harvard Business Review ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
20.
ZoomInfo Confidentially Files For IPO
ZoomInfo, a sales and marketing tech company that sells access to its business database, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, according to a statement from the company. The company submitted a draft registration statement (an S-1) to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late last month. Filing a draft confidentially doesn’t make the S-1 public, and it allows the SEC to review the document before investors and the public can see it. [ Crunchbase ]
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