1.
Discord is about to close a funding round that would value the startup at as much as $7 billion
Earlier this week, my 10-year old daughter asked if I would let her join Discord, an app that combines group messaging with voice and video chats. Yesterday, TechCrunch reported Discord is about to close a funding round that would value the
startup at as much as $7 billion. I don’t think those two events are coincidences. Discord has surged in popularity this year, doubling its monthly active users to 120 million and with 800,000 downloads a day, according to TechCrunch. Created in 2015 as a platform for Internet gamers, its growth has been fueled first by Fortnite and more recently the mega-hit Among Us, a game where groups of players band together in an outer-space version of Survivor. But much of its popularity is due to its power to connect communities at a time when so many—particularly those of young people—are isolated from each other. As
founder Jason Citron noted in a July blog post, Discord leapt from the gamer world to connecting all sorts of groups, so the company consciously redesigned its interface to be less game-oriented. There are now 13.5 million servers—Discord speak for channels—active every week and it’s the social media app of choice of teens and even preteens, like my daughter (I’m still on the fence about letting her join). [ QZ ]
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2.
Prestigious Silicon Valley VC firm looks to Europe for start-up success stories
Sequoia Capital, one of the best-known venture capital firms on Menlo Park’s Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley, has made a major new bet on what it thinks is the next hottest thing: Europe. Founded 48 years ago by Don Valentine, the prestigious firm that backed Apple and Google early on, is poised to sign a lease on a new office in London in the next couple of weeks to house a small but growing team of European investors. “Being physically on the ground … enables us to move more quickly … and to dramatically level up the effort,” veteran Sequoia partner Matt Miller told CNBC on a video call on Monday. “I was coming (to London) one week a month but you can only see and do so much. We felt that being on the ground would make
a material difference in our ability to find opportunities earlier.” There are now several European tech firms worth in excess of $10 billion and Miller believes people are starting to ask when a $100 billion start-up in Europe will emerge. [ CNBC ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Special:
Tiger Global invests in India’s Unacademy at $2 billion valuation
Unacademy, an online learning platform in India, has added two more marquee investors to its cap table. The Bangalore-based startup, which focuses on K-12 online education, said on Wednesday it has raised new funds from Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group. The funding round, which is between $75 million to $100 million in size (according to a person familiar with the matter; Unacademy has not disclosed the figure), valued the four-and-a-half-year-old startup at $2 billion, up from about $500 million in February this year when Facebook joined its list of backers, and $1.45 billion in September, when SoftBank led the round. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
3.
FinTech Stripe Eyes Funding Round That Could Put Valuation At $100B
FinTech Stripe is considering a funding round to value it higher than the $36 billion it got on its last round, Bloomberg reports. According to people familiar with the discussions, the new valuation could hit as much as $70 billion or maybe as
much as $100 billion, Bloomberg said. If it got as high as $100 billion, it would make Stripe one of the most valuable venture-backed startups in the country, Bloomberg reported. Stripe's software is used by businesses to accept payments. The company competes with giants like Square and PayPal, and has benefited from the pandemic due to the increasing reliance on eCommerce
as the pandemic forced people to stay away from physical spaces, and consequently resulted in more digital payments. [ pymnts ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform
4.
Germany to Invest €10 Billion in Start-Up Support
Early on Friday, after a marathon 17-hour budgetary meeting, the German Bundestag approved a massive investment of state capital to promote start-ups in the country. The 2021 budget will see the government provide €2.4 billion via Germany's developmental bank, the KfW, and other channels to help new and growing companies scale up their activities. The government has committed to investing a total of €10 billion between next year and 2030. It is hoped that this financial infusion will create an additional €20 billion in private venture capital investments. "The Bundestag has created the necessary budgetary conditions for significantly improving the financing of start-ups in Germany," the president of the Federal
Association of German Start-Ups, Christian Miele, told German business newspaper Handelsblatt. Robert Hermann, the CEO of the German national economic promotion agency Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI) welcomed the parliament's decision. [ PR Newswire ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
5.
Chainalysis Sees Raising $100M in Venture Capital at $1B Valuation: Report
Cryptocurrency investigation firm Chainalysis expects to raise $100 million venture capital at a $1 billion valuation as early as next week, the company told Forbes. The Series C is being led by VC newcomer Addition with participation expected from Accel, Benchmark and Ribbit, Forbes reported. Those three firms have all invested in earlier Chainalysis rounds. Once closed, the raise will vault Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm that builds crypto tracing tools for governments and exchanges,
into cryptocurrency unicorn status. Only a handful of crypto firms have notched $1 billion plus valuation. None have done it from the crypto tracing niche before. [ coindesk ]
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6.
Morse Micro IoT, the deep tech startup by the co-inventors of Wi-Fi, has completed a $42 million Series A
Morse Micro, which is reinventing Wi-Fi technology for the Internet-of-Things (IoT), has raised an extra $18 million in its Series A to take the total round to $42 million. The Sydney deep tech venture, founded in 2016, has some of original inventors of Wi-FI in the team and will use the funds to expand its product and technology development teams and expand into emerging applications. New and existing investors, including Blackbird Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Clean Energy Innovation Fund, Skip Capital, and Ray Stata backed the round. The semiconductor company has created Wi-Fi HaLow chip; an ultra-low-power, long-range and secure Wi-Fi chip for IoT environments. Co-founder and CEO Michael De Nil said they were redesigning connectivity. [ Startup
Daily ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
Google-backed Chinese truck-hailing firm Manbang raises $1.7 billion
The Chinese Uber for trucks Manbang announced Tuesday that it has raised $1.7 billion in its latest funding round, two years after it hauled in $1.9 billion from investors including SoftBank Group and Alphabet Inc.’s venture capital fund CapitalG. The news came fresh off a Wall Street Journal report two weeks ago that Manbang was seeking $1 billion ahead of an initial public offering next year. The company declined to comment on the matter, though its CEO Zhang Hui said in May 2019 that the firm was “not in a rush” to go public. [ Tech Crunch ]
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8.
VC who’s backed companies like Peloton: My best advice for growing and scaling your side hustle
Some of today’s most notable companies began as side hustles before they saw success. And at some point, all these founders had to ask themselves the same question: “Will this idea scale?” I’ve been a venture capitalist for 15 years, investing all over North America in 40 companies, including Peloton and Bill.com, both of which went public, and Freshly, which was acquired by Nestle for $1.5 billion. In 2017, I founded H Venture Partners to help entrepreneurs launching consumer brands connect with the capital and expertise they need to grow their companies, from help with research and development to introductions to retailers like Target and Walmart. To date, we’ve invested in nine brands led by a diverse group of founders — women, people of color,
members of the LGBTQIA+ community — and we’re proud to be their partners in growth. [ CNBC ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
9.
Victoria’s budget has $186 million for startups, including $10m for angel investment in female founders
Female startup founders in Victoria will have access to $10 million in angel investment under a new fund announced in the state budget today. Treasurer Tim Pallas allocated $10 million towards the Women Founders Angel Sidecar Fund while hoping it will unlock a further $30 million in private sector equity. The funds are part of a $186.2 million package backing Victoria’s startup ecosystem in this year’s budget, with $40 million over four years allocated to the state’s startup agency LaunchVic, and $60.5 million for Australia’s first, Fund of Funds, the Victorian Startup Capital Fund, leveraging up to $180 million in private sector investment towards early-stage funding. [ Startup Daily ]
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10.
Kahoot has acquired language learning mobile game maker Drops for up to $50 million
Norwegian learning platform company Kahoot has acquired Estonia’s language learning mobile game maker Drops for as much as $50 million. Kahoot is paying $31 million in cash, plus another $19 million if Drops performs well from 2020 to
2022. It’s a nice payday for the company, which has 25 million users and recently reached a revenue run rate of $10 million. This year, the Tallinn, Estonia-based Drops saw an increase of 7.5 million users. It is forecast to hit 30 million in total by the end of the year, CEO Daniel Farkas said in a recent interview with GamesBeat. The Oslo, Norway-based Kahoot, which was founded in 2013, has plenty of cash on hand since it raised $215 million from SoftBank in October. [ Venture Beat ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
11.
Israel’s Percepto secures $45m funding to develop AIM solutions
Israeli drone operator Percepto, has secured a $45 million investment in Series B funding led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) to launch a new solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring, inspection and compliance of industrial sites. KDT is joined by new investors State of Mind Ventures, Atento Capital, Summit Peak Investments, Delek-US and existing investors US Venture Partners, Spider Capital and Arkin Holdings, bringing the total investment in the company to $72.5 million. Evolving its drone-in-a-box solution to the next level, Percepto’s Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform aims to set a new standard for how critical infrastructure and assets are monitored end-to-end. [ commercial drone
professional ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
12.
Dija, a new delivery startup from former Deliveroo employees, is closing in on a $20M round led by Blossom
Dija, a new U.K.-based startup founded by senior former Deliveroo employees, is closing in on $20 million in funding, TechCrunch has learned. According to multiple sources, the round, which has yet to close, is being led by Blossom Capital,
the early-stage venture capital firm founded by ex-Index and LocalGlobe VC Ophelia Brown. It’s not clear who else is in the running, although I understand it was highly contested and the startup had offers from several top-tier funds. Blossom Capital and Dija declined to comment. Playing in the convenience store and delivery space, yet to launch Dija is founded by Alberto Menolascina and Yusuf Saban, who both spent a number of years at Deliveroo in senior positions. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
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