VC Daily Digest - 02/10/2023

Health IQ Backed by A16Z Went Bankrupt & Fintech Seed Stage Deals Soar

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Venture Daily Digest
October 02, 2023

📢 Major News

  • Increasing seed stage deals in fintech industry.

  • VCs opening gates for defense tech startups

  • Health IQ Backed by A16Z Bankrupt

  • Featured Article: Why Do VC Firms Want an Option Pool Before the VC Round?

📢 Venture Capital Highlights

VCs Tell Startups to Pump Brakes on IPO Plans: Venture capitalists (VCs) are reportedly telling startups to put plans to go public on hold. As the Financial Times (FT) reported, that sentiment has become popular following the underwhelming initial public offerings (IPOs) of two high-profile companies. “In our portfolio we would advise: unless you really need to, hold back,” Mike Volpi, a general partner at VC firm Index Ventures, told the FT. “The market has been rough in the past few weeks. … Unless you need to go out, I’d wait until the second half of next year.” More Here

Why we’re seeing so many seed-stage deals in fintech: Across the board in all industries, except perhaps AI, we’ve seen a big drop in later-stage funding deals and no shortage of seed-stage rounds. When it comes to fintech, I can tell you at least anecdotally that the vast majority of pitches that hit my inbox are for seed rounds. It is very rare these days to get pitched for Series B or later, or even for Series A rounds. More Here

Venture capital is opening the gates for defense tech: Defense company Anduril was once described as “tech’s most controversial startup.” But that hasn’t stopped it from raising a massive $1.48 billion Series E round of funding last December, which is presumably fueling its recent acquisition spree. Its latest deal is the takeover of Blue Force Technologies, the design and engineering firm behind the “Fury” unmanned fighter jet. Anduril is more than a counterpoint, though. It is symbolic of a trend in which defense tech and venture capital dollars are no longer antithetic. More Here

US appeals court blocks venture capital fund’s grant program for Black women: A federal appeals court on Saturday blocked a venture capital fund from moving forward with a program that awards funding to businesses run by Black women in a case by the anti-affirmative action activist behind the successful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to race-conscious college admissions policies. The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote granted a request by Edward Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights to temporarily block Fearless Fund from considering applications for grants only from businesses led by Black women. More Here

Investors eyes blockchain analytics, gaming and crypto privacy: Crypto startups keep raising capital despite tight liquidity and adverse macroeconomic conditions. September saw major developments in the space, such as Farmville co-creator Amitt Mahajan raising $33 million to create Web3 games, and Animoca Brands disclosing $20 million capital gathered to push forward the development of its Mocaverse platform. More Here

📢 Massive Fundings Updates

Cybersecurity startup Lumu raises $30m in Series B funding: Lumu, a cybersecurity startup, has raised $30m in a Series B funding round led by Forgepoint Capital. The company’s existing investors, Exceptional Capital, BIP Ventures, and SIMMA Capital also participated in the round. The new investment takes the total funding raised by Lumu to $38m. Based in Florida, US, Lumu said it provides unified visibility across all assets, including endpoints, servers, clouds, OT, and IoT by monitoring the network in real time. More Here

OneChronos Secures $40 Million Series B Investment Round: OneChronos, a technology company leveraging advances in auction theory and artificial intelligence to optimize financial markets, announced today the completion of its Series B investment round of $40 million. The financing was led by Addition. OneChronos operates Smart Market periodic auctions at the speed, scale, and resiliency required of the most demanding electronic capital markets. More Here

DeepMind Vet Raises $14 Million For AI Startups: A veteran of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) unit has reportedly launched his own fund to back startups in that space. Vishal Maini, a one-time researcher for Google’s DeepMind, has founded Mythos Ventures and thus far raised at least $14 million for AI startups. The report noted he is among dozens of Google alumni who have the money, expertise and motivation to help shape AI, either through investing, entrepreneurship or a combination of the two. More Here

Crypto’s First Year After the FTX Blowup: ‘It’s Been Miserable’: Feenan, whose stints over the years included a blockchain technology company and the Binance exchange, was excited to be part of a movement that promised to remake and improve seemingly everything. She even named her dog after the inventor of Bitcoin. Then came the convulsions of 2022, capped by the spectacular blowup of the FTX exchange last November. More Here

📬 Featured: Today’s Featured Article

Why Do VC Firms Want an Option Pool Before the VC Round?🤔

I have been interacting with so many founders at events or during pitch sessions or finalizing investments in their startups, I observed that almost all founders get confused when VCs say they will invest some amount at pre-money. What does it mean?

In our recent newsletter, we shared our thoughts on this with some example. So, Have A Look 👇

📢 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI

Meta quietly unveils Llama 2 Long AI that beats GPT-3.5 Turbo and Claude 2 on some tasks: Meta Platforms showed off a bevy of new AI features for its consumer-facing services Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp at its annual Meta Connect conference in Menlo Park, California, this week. But the biggest news from Mark Zuckerberg’s company may have actually come in the form of a computer science paper published without fanfare by Meta researchers on the open access and non-peer reviewed website arXiv.org. More Here

How much can artists make from generative AI?: As tech companies begin to monetize generative AI, the creators on whose work it is trained are asking for their fair share. But so far no one can agree on whether or how much artists should be paid. A recent open letter from the Authors Guild signed by more than 8,500 writers, including Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown and Jodi Picoult, urges generative AI companies to cease using their works without proper authorization or compensation. More Here

AI assistants boost productivity but paradoxically risk human deskilling: Recent research has demonstrated the potential productivity gains that can come from incorporating ChatGPT (and presumably other chatbots) into knowledge work. Wharton Business School Professor Ethan Mollick participated in a study alongside several other social scientists and consultants at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) who used generative AI to determine whether the tool improved their output. More Here

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📢 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz

Andreessen Horowitz And Others Poured $200 Million Into Startup Health IQ - Now It's Bankrupt: Nearly 90% of startups fail. As one of the riskiest alternative investment avenues, retail investors typically steer clear of startups given the risk parameters, while ultra-wealthy people and venture capital firms often choose to invest exclusively in startups. Though nine out of 10 startups fail, making a bet on one can quickly make you a millionaire. With $35 billion in total assets under management, Silicon Valley-based Andreessen Horowitz is the world's biggest venture capital firm. More Here

SBF’s trial starts soon, but how did he — and FTX — get here?: The highly anticipated criminal trial for Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, begins Tuesday to determine whether he’s guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. The 31-year-old co-founded FTX in 2019; within a few years the once third-largest crypto exchange’s valuation hit $32 billion at its peak. It’s now trying to claw back any funds to distribute to creditors. More Here

How much should startup founders pay themselves in salary?: On the whole, startup founders seem to have been busy this year enjoying the spoils of their hard labor: Their median salary, according to a new report by the startup-focused accounting firm Pilot, has increased by 15%. But then another pattern jumps out: The biggest change in the annual survey, released on Tuesday, was in the proportion of founders who paid themselves absolutely nothing at all: It grew by 30%, from 5.5% of respondents to 7%. More Here

🪙 Access To Disruptive Startup Deals

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Where startup looking to raise fund can add their startup by filling out the form and investors can access the database. If any investors interested in speaking with founder, you can directly message and get on a call with them.

It’s all free, we want to help founders & investors to be more transparent and make the innovation happen.

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What Do You Think Of Today's News Updates? 🤓

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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