1.
Their Venture Fund Was ‘A Sign Of A Bubble.’ Then They Turned $1.9 Million In DoorDash Into $440 Million
Pear VC founders Mar Hershenson and Pejman Nozad backed DoorDash as one of their first five deals in 2013. Mar Hershenson remembers when her partner, Pejman Nozad, burst into the office in September 2013. A former rug dealer turned investor, Nozad had only convinced Hershenson, a startup veteran teaching at Stanford, to team up on a new venture capital firm months before. He’d spent hours scouting and meeting the new class of companies at accelerator Y Combinator and found a favorite.
“He’s, like, ‘Mar, I found the company we have to invest in!’” Hershenson says. “And I’m, like, ‘Okay, which one? ‘This guy Tony!’ And I’m, like, ‘What does he do?’ And he says, ‘Oh, they’re delivering food.’ And I was, like, ‘Oh my god, no way. This is crazy, Pejman. This is not tech.’” Worn down by Nozad’s enthusiasm, Hershenson agreed to test out the fledgling service, DoorDash. Many of its restaurant customers were within walking distance of their office, on Palo Alto’s University Avenue. Managers gushed to the investors about Tony Xu, the startup’s CEO. “This is like FedEx for me,” one said. The
duo visited Xu and his three cofounders in their home, where Xu pulled out a whiteboard. “‘This is going to be a $100 billion company,’” she remembers him saying. “‘Let me tell you how.’” [ tech.eu ]
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2.
A legendary venture-capital firm bought Airbnb shares for $0.01 each in 2009
Airbnb's stock price more than doubled to reach about $145 on Thursday, valuing the home-rental platform at north of $85 billion on its first day of trading. One of the company's earliest backers paid just $0.01 a share when it invested in April 2009. Sequoia Capital - a storied venture-capital fund that counts Apple, Google, and Instagram among its past investments - handed Airbnb a seed investment of $585,000 for about 58 million shares, according to The Information. It participated in several later funding rounds, ultimately spending about $280 million for nearly 82 million shares, which were worth close to $12 billion on Thursday. [ Business Insider ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Special:
PayPal-backed fintech start-up Tink valued at more than $800 million after fresh funding
A new movement in finance that calls on big banks to share their coveted customer data with younger technology rivals has gained significant momentum in 2020. Called open banking, a number of start-ups developing tech around the trend have raised significant sums from investors, with U.S. provider Plaid even looking to be acquired by Visa. Now, a major European player in the space has hit a new milestone. Swedish fintech start-up Tink has seen its valuation rise to 680 million euros ($824 million) in a new investment round, according to people familiar with the matter. Tink, whose software lets banks and fintech firms access banking data to create new financial products, raised 85 million euros in fresh funding co-led by French private equity firm Eurazeo and U.K.-based venture capital firm Dawn Capital. [ CNBC ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
3.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 leads $80m series D in healthtech startup Pear
SoftBank’s second megafund, Vision Fund 2, has led the US$80 million series D funding round of US-based healthtech startup Pear Therapeutics. The round was joined by existing investors including Temasek, 5AM Ventures, Arboretum Ventures, Jazz Venture Partners, Novartis, CrimsoNox, and EDBI. New backers Forth Management, Pilot House, Sarissa Capital, Shanda Group, and Quad Investment Management also followed on, according to a statement. Founded in 2013, Pear Therapeutics offers a software-based
digital therapeutics platform that combines digital interventions with drugs to enhance efficacy. It has a pipeline of products and product candidates across therapeutic areas, including three prescription digital therapeutics (PDTs) which it claims is effective in disease treatment. [ Tech In Asia ]
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4.
Lidar Startup Innoviz to Go Public in $1.4 Billion SPAC Deal
Innoviz Technologies Ltd., an Israeli lidar startup backed by two of the world’s largest automotive suppliers, is going public in a $1.4 billion reverse merger with Collective Growth Corp. The SPAC provided $150 million in cash and raised $200 million from investors in the deal
that gives the combined company a $1.4 billion equity value. They expect the transaction to close in the first quarter of next year. Merging with a SPAC -- shorthand for special purpose acquisition company -- has become an increasingly popular method for closely held businesses to raise capital for growth. Innoviz is the fourth lidar-focused firm to go public through a blank-check company this year. [ Bloomberg ]
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5.
MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin-Driven Offering Boosted to $650M After Notes Buyer Bought $100M More
MicroStrategy announced Friday it raised $650 million, up from a recently boosted $550 million, in a convertible senior note sale designed to allow the business intelligence company to buy more bitcoin. The company estimates $634.9 million of that sum – the net proceeds – will be available for bitcoin (BTC, +1.94%) allocations in accordance with its treasury reserve policy. The amount of the offering was boosted to $650 million from the $550 million announced on Wednesday after
the purchaser of the notes exercised in full an option to buy up to an added $100 million of the convertible senior notes. [ coindesk ]
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6.
Gorillas, the on-demand grocery delivery startup taking Berlin by storm, has raised $44M Series A
Gorillas, a grocery delivery startup that operates its own hyper local fulfillment centers and has already been a hit in Berlin, has raised $44 million in Series A funding. Probably one of European tech’s worst kept secrets this year, the round is led by hedge fund Coatue, with participation from other unnamed European investors. Coatue’s Daniel Senft and Bennett Siegel will join Gorillas‘ board. Noteworthy, Accel and Index were reportedly in the running, but ultimately didn’t invest. Atlantic Food Labs previously backed Gorillas in a seed round thought to be around €1.2 million. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
How a Homeless High School Dropout Became CEO of a $1 Billion Company
Taihei Kobayashi has gone from sleeping on the streets of Tokyo to heading a technology startup whose market value topped $1 billion. His rags-to-riches story is among the most remarkable to emerge from a small-cap stock boom that’s minting fortunes in Japan. Kobayashi’s company, which helps startups and other firms to design and create new businesses and products, went public in July and its shares have since more than tripled. It’s an outcome that few could have imagined two decades ago. As Kobayashi tells it, his parents kicked him out at 17 when he quit a prestigious high school to focus on his band. He played music during the day and mostly slept outdoors, using cardboard boxes to keep warm during freezing winter nights. He was
homeless for a year and a half. [ Bloomberg ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
8.
Firebolt raises $37 million to accelerate big data analytics
Tel Aviv-based Firebolt, a startup developing a cloud data warehouse for analytics, today closed a $37 million funding round. A spokesperson told VentureBeat the funds will be used to bolster Firebolt’s go-to-market efforts as it invests in product R&D. The cloud data warehousing market is booming, with some analysts predicting the global market will reach $3.5 billion by 2025. But warehouses can become an outsized expense. Cool Data pegs the cost of a terabyte of storage and 100,000 queries per month at around $468,000, on average, accounting for total yearly cost for storage, software, and staff. [ Venture Beat ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
9.
Customer support startup Gorgias raises $25M
Gorgias announced today that it has raised $25 million in Series B funding, bringing the startup’s pre-money valuation to $300 million. When the company raised its Series A just over a year ago, CEO Romain Lapeyre (who founded Gorgias with CTO Alex Plugaru) told me that it
works with e-commerce businesses to automate responses to their most common customer service questions, while also providing tools that help the support team respond more quickly and even convince customers to buy additional products and services. Gorgias says it now supports more than 4,500 stores, including Steve Madden, Timbuk2, Fjällräven, Marine Layer, Ellana, Electrolux and Sergio Tacchini. And revenue has grown 200% this year. [ Tech Crunch ]
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10.
Tech IPO Bonanza Yields Riches for Venture-Capital Firms
The venture-capital offices around Silicon Valley remain largely empty, but their coffers will soon be brimming after what has shaped up to be a surprisingly resilient year for technology startups. The initial public offerings this week of DoorDash Inc. and Airbnb Inc. cap a string of listings that have helped make this the most lucrative year on record for IPOs in terms of money raised. More than $157 billion has been raised as of Thursday, according to data provider Dealogic—over a third of that in the past 11 weeks—and the number of listings is the largest since the final hurrah of the dot-com boom in 2000. The soaring public offerings are showering returns on some of the biggest names in tech investing, in particular Sequoia Capital, which backed both DoorDash and Airbnb as well as cloud-computing company Snowflake Inc. and videogame company Unity Software Inc., all of which ranked among the year’s 15 biggest listings, according to Dealogic. [ WSJ ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
11.
Alstom investing $7 million in Israeli rail cyber protection startup Cylus
Alstom will invest $7 million in Israeli railway cybersecurity startup Cylus Cyber Security Ltd. The investment will grant Alstom a minority stake in the company and a seat on its board of directors. The deal also includes a strategic cooperation agreement to build a commercial partnership allowing the companies to combine their respective strengths and provide best-in-class cybersecurity solutions for the rail market. Together, Alstom and Cylus will integrate cybersecurity technology into railway processes, components, and solutions. The technology will be implemented first in the Tel Aviv metropolitan light rail system with a capacity of 200,000 passengers a day. Alstom previously won a contract to supply the signaling and train control systems for
the Tel Aviv Red Line tramway in 2017. [ calcalistech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
12.
In&motion raises $12 million for its wearable airbag systems
French startup In&motion has raised a $12 million (€10 million) funding round led by Upfront Ventures, with 360 Capital also participating. The company has been working on wearable airbag systems for motorbikes. Integrated in a vest, the airbag is completely autonomous and can detect crashes in 60 milliseconds. The company has worked on a device called the In&box that analyzes movements in real time. Thanks to different sensors, the device can determine when it’s time to activate
the airbag. In&motion has worked on different profiles for different types of activities. For instance, if you’re riding a motorcycle on a MotoGP track, chances are you’re going to move faster and change your trajectory quite often. You can choose between traditional motorcycle riding, track and off-road. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
13.
How Airbnb & DoorDash Succeeded: First Principles (3 steps for billion-dollar startups)
What society imposes on us is the wrong kind of thinking: one that is based on analogy and credentialism instead of first principles thinking. But how do we break free? Here are 3 ways to do it. The third one is the most surprising! What does serenity have to do with building a billion-dollar startup? In DoorDash's case: EVERYTHING.
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14.
The future of venture capital
Axios hosts a conversation on the future of venture capital featuring Axios business editor Dan Primack in conversation with Mercato Partners director Joe Kaiser and Upfront Ventures Managing Partner Kara Nortman. This program has been pre-recorded.
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15.
Pegasus Workshop 3: Key Criteria for Fundraising from Venture Capital (Pegasus Tech Ventures)
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