Sam Altman Raised VC Fund & VC Partner Sentence Prison To Fraud Over 50 Investors

🗞️ TODAY’S MAJOR UPDATES

• Sam Altman quietly got $75M from the University of Michigan for a new venture capital fund

• George Iakovou, CEO of New York-based venture capital firm Vika Ventures Sentenced Prison for 97 Months

• Electric Scooter Startup, Bird Filed For Bankruptcy

• Featured Tweet: How To Identify Emerging Market? By Elad Gill

• What do you think: What Factors Would Most Likely Drive A Decision To Pivot Business?

VENTURE-DAILY DIGEST+ : THURSDAY DEEP DIVE DOSE

Today, you will receive the first Venture-Daily Digest write-up. We have interviewed a General Partner (GP) and a Limited Partner (LP) who shared interesting perspectives / insights from their million-dollar fund and some unknown facts about startup fundraising..

Stay tuned & Keep eyes on your inbox. 👀

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💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

Harvey AI, a one-year-old San Francisco startup whose mission is to help law firms by automating and streamlining various complex legal tasks and processes, raised an $80 million Series B round at a $715 million valuation. The deal leads were Elad Gil and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from the OpenAI Startup Fund and Sequoia. The company has raised a total of $100+ million. More Here

ShareChat, a Bengalaru startup that operates a social network in India, is in talks to raise a $50 million round at a sub-$1.5 billion valuation, a steep drop from the $4.9 billion valuation it secured in a round early last year. Existing investors Temasek and Tencent are rumored to be involved in the financing. ShareChat has raised a total of $1.4+ billion. More Here

Hurr, a six-year-old London startup that operates a peer-to-peer clothing rental marketplace, raised a $12.7 million round. Praetura Ventures was the lead, while Octopus Ventures, Ascension, and D4 Ventures also contributed. The company has raised a total of $10 million. The Industry. More Here 

Sweetch Energy, a seven-year-old startup based in Rennes, France, that is creating clean electricity from an osmotic process related to the difference in salt concentration between seawater and river water, raised a $27.4 million Series A round. Révolution Environnementale et Solidaire was the lead investor, with Demeter Investment Managers, Go Capital, Positive Future Capital, and CNR also participating. More Here

Liminal Space, a four-year-old Los Angeles startup that aims to create immersive 3D experiences without the need for headsets, raised a $2.5 million round. Investors included Avex USA, Hibino Corp., Luminus, and San'an Optoelectronics. More Here

Strike Graph, a three-year-old Seattle startup that helps to streamline compliance processes for HIPAA, SOC 2, and other security programs, raised an $8.5 million round. BAMCAP led the investment, with Madrona, Information Venture Partners, and Rise of the Rest also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $20.4 million. More Here

TômTex, a three-year-old New York startup, raised a $2.25 million seed round. The syndicate was made up of Happiness Capital, SOSV, Parley for the Oceans, and MIH Capital. The company has raised a total of $4.15 million. More Here

GreyOrange, a 12 year old startup based in north of Atlanta, in suburban Roswell, Georgia provide the robotics instrument for warehouse, it has raised a $135 million growth financing Series D. Anthelion Capital led the round, which also featured returning investments from Mithril, 3State Ventures and Blume Ventures. More Here

PaintJet, a US based startup building big industrial robots for big industrial paint jobs, it has raised $10 million Series A, led by Outsiders Fund and featuring Pathbreaker Ventures, MetaProp, Builders VC, 53 Stations and VSC Ventures. The round follows a $3.5 million seed led by Dynamo Ventures and brings its to-date funding up to $14.75 million. More Here

Claim, a platform that is both a rewards app and a social network to make shopping fun, rewarding and social. It has raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital. More Here

Spill, a polar opposite of X, a platform that continues to alienate users with platform policies that make the app actively less inclusive founded by ex-twitter employees, it has raised a total of $5 million in pre-seed funding so far, including a recent $2 million extension led by Collide Capital. More Here

Soum, a two year old Re-commerce marketplace based in Saudi Arabia, it has raised $18M series A Funding led by Saudi’s Jahez Group with participation from New York-based Isometry Capital alongside existing investors Khwarizmi Ventures, AlRajhi Partners and Outliers Venture Capital. More Here

Peach Worlds, a London, UK-based provider of a Squarespace for 3D Immersive Websites, raised USD$540K in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Blockchain Founders Fund and ID345 fund. More Here

Formless, a Cambridge, MA-based company building decentralized network infrastructure for property rights management and revenue sharing, raised $2.2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round saw participation from a16z Crypto CSS, Beacon web3 accelerator, and angel investors that included Sandeep Nailwal (Co-Founder of Polygon Network), Ryan Fang (Co-Founder and COO of Ankr), Dharmesh Shah (Founder and CTO of HubSpot), and Dallas Austin (Grammy-award winning producer and CEO of Dallas Austin Distribution). More Here

Knownwell, a Boston, MA-based in-person and virtual, weight-inclusive primary care and metabolic health company, raised $20m in Series A funding. The round, which brought total funding to $24.5m, was led by A16Z with participation from existing investors including Flare Capital Partners. More Here

Redrob, a Seoul, South Korea-based global recruitment platform operated by McKinley Rice, raised a $4M seed round, which closed in October. This round was co-led by Murex Partners and DS & Partners. More Here

ElastiFlow, an Oakland, CA-based provider of network observability solutions, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Venture Guides. More Here

Tres, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based comprehensive accounting and financial data reporting platform for crypto assets, raised $11M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $ $18.6M, saw participation from Faction, boldstart, New Form, Cyber Fund and Ambush Capital. More Here

Skyline Robotics, a NYC-based developer of Ozmo, a robotic-armed window cleaning robot, raised $9.8M in Pre-Series A-2 funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $19.4M, was led by Standard Skyline with participation from Durst Ventures, the venture capital investment arm of the Durst Organization, and HNW individuals. More Here

Farmstead Manufacturing, a Leeds, UT-based supplier of croissants, donuts, danishes and pastries, received a $1.7M investment from Advantage Capital. More Here

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Sam Altman raising new VC Fund: The University of Michigan's endowment cut back its new investments in venture capital and private equity by more than 40% in the 12 months ending in June 2023, according to public documents reviewed by Fortune, but the endowment did make room for the fourth fund launched by Sam Altman's Hydrazine Capital, adds the outlet. More Here

George Iakovou, CEO of New York-based venture capital firm Vika Ventures, has been sentenced to 97 months in prison for defrauding over 50 investors in a pre-IPO scam. Iakovou falsely claimed access to pre-IPO shares in companies like Palantir and SpaceX, using fake emails and bank statements to solicit $5.96 million from investors. The funds were diverted for personal expenses, including a Corvette and luxury watches. More Here

Al Mada Holding Group, one of Africa's largest private investment funds, has launched Al Mada Ventures (AMV), a $110 million evergreen venture capital firm. AMV aims to fill the gap in growth-stage funding in Africa, focusing on Series A and B startups. The firm seeks to bridge the communication gap between corporates and startups, fostering collaboration and innovation across sectors such as finance, health, logistics, renewable energy, and telecom in 27 markets. More Here

OurCrowd, Israeli investment platform has raised $13 million in capital commitments for its $50 million Israel Resilience Fund, a fund the organization launched shortly after the Israel-Hamas war began to support startups that were impacted by the war or were developing solutions to Israel’s immediate needs. More Here

GREE LP Fund, a San Francisco-based fund-of-funds manager, recently closed on $52.75 million to back U.S.-based venture funds. The majority of GREE LP Fund’s capital comes from Tokyo-based publicly traded gaming and media company GREE. Other investors include Japanese corporations and a Chinese family office, says the outfit. Per the WSJ, GREE LP Fund has already invested in funds from Khosla Ventures, Upfront Ventures, NFX, Hustle Fund, Behind Genius Ventures and others since it began deploying its fund in 2021. More Here

Novo Tellus, a Singapore-based private equity firm, closed its third fund, at USD $510M. Novo Tellus PE Fund 3, L.P. surpassed its fundraising target by 36%. Led by Loke Wai San, Managing Partner, Novo Tellus is a private equity firm specialising in building lasting growth in technology supply chain companies throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED TWEET

Elad Gill On - “How To Identify Emerging Markets?”

Everyone wants to know - how to identify emerging market as this markets leads to innovation and next billion dollar startup. But how to identify this emerging market..

Recently Elad Gill (Co-founder & CEO of Mixerlab acquired by Twitter) shared three different methods to identify emerging market… Read More Here

💡 STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

Bankruptcy

Bird, Electric scooter company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, following a tumultuous year marked by a declining stock price, CEO departure, and delisting from the NYSE. The restructuring aims to strengthen Bird's balance sheet, with existing lenders providing $25 million in financing. The company's goal is to sell assets through a bidding process while continuing day-to-day operations, with its Canadian and European operations unaffected by the bankruptcy. More Here

Micromobility, formerly Helbiz, was delisted from the Nasdaq on Monday as a result of the company’s noncompliance with the stock exchange’s listing rules, according to a regulatory filing. Competitor Bird — the only other shared micromobility company to brave the public markets — was also delisted from the stock exchange in September. More Here

People

Stanford professor and Google Brain co-founder Andrew Ng makes the case for AI optimism. "I can’t prove that AI won’t kill us all,  which is akin to proving a negative, any more than I can prove that radio waves being emitted from Earth won’t allow aliens to find us and wipe us out. But I am not overly concerned about our radio waves leading to our extinction, and in a similar way I don’t see how AI could lead to human extinction." More Here

Alibaba Group is creating a firm to oversee its investment assets around the world. Trudy Dai, one of an inner circle of partners present when Jack Ma founded the company in 1999, will reportedly help set an entity to manage some of the company's vast portfolio of "non-core" assets around the world, which includes stakes in startups as well as businesses from entertainment to physical retail. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

VCs expect crypto valuations to rise again in 2024: In 2023, the crypto industry experienced a funding downturn, with early-stage valuations dropping by around 15%. While early-stage deals remained active, PitchBook data reveals a decline in venture capital investment for pre-seed, seed, and early-stage levels in the crypto space since Q1 2022, with median post-money valuations dropping from over $30 million to lower levels. Expectations for 2024 include a modest improvement in valuations, potential seed extension dynamics, and a resurgence in mid- to late-stage funding activity, particularly for startups that raised in 2021. More Here

📰 TODAY’S MUST READ ON: STARTUP, TECH & VC

• The 4 Questions Startups Should Ask Themselves about Building with Generative AI Read More (Technology & AI)

• Airbnb emails to Y-Combinator For Cohort Read More (Startups & Venture Capital)

• How founders should approach TAM when venture capital is scarce? Read More (Startups)

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Previous Poll: 66.67% vote for the sometime (depend on context) option. This is an interesting perspective that most people think that - having MOAT (Competitive advantage) is totally depend on your startup… that’s why we recently shared an article on why are founders afraid to talk about MOAT? You can read here…

That’s It For Today! Will Meet You Tomorrow!
Happy Thursday! 🥂

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✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team