VC Daily Digest - 04/12/2023

📮Today’s Major News

• Tiger Global Management 18% Paper Loss.

• Stability AI - Unicorn Startup Selling it’s business Amid Investors Pressure.

• OpenAI Launching GPT Store Next Year.

• Featured Article: Why Are Some Startups Not VC Investable ? How To Identify This ?

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💰 Massive Fundings Updates

Mylight150, a nine-year-old startup based in Lyon, France, that produces smart solar panels and batteries, raised a $108.9 million round co-led by Eiffel Investment Group, Azora Capital, and Andera Partners, with additional participation from Elevation Capital Partners. More Here

Paysend, a six-year-old London startup that focuses on reducing the time and cost of cross-border payments for small- to medium-sized businesses, raised a $65 million round. Investors included Growth Capital, One Peak, Hermes GPE Innovation Fund, and Mastercard. More Here

Clayful, a platform that enables students aged eight to 18 to connect with a mental health expert within 60 seconds when they need it. The startup said it had raised $7 million in funding from investors, including Google Latino Founders Fund, Reach Capital, Ovo Fund, Common Sense Ventures, Charter School Growth Fund and Wisdom Ventures. More Here

Huboo, a UK based tech enabled warehousing startup, it has raised a further £29 million ($36.6 million) from existing investors including Ada Ventures and Maersk. There’s also been further, unspecified, debt investment from HSBC and Blackrock. This means it’s now raised a total on £122 million ($154 million) in equity. More Here

Safi, a two-year-old London startup that has built a B2B marketplace for trading recyclable materials such as plastic, paper, and metal, raised a $19.5 million Series A round led by Nosara Capital, with previous investors LowerCarbon and Transition also taking part. More Here

AnotherBall, a one-year-old Singapore startup whose platform is designed to help online entertainment creators connect with fans and monetize their content, raised a $12.7 million seed round co-led by Hashed and ANRI, with Global Brain, Globis Capital Partners, Sfermion, HashKey Capital, Everyrealm, Ethereal Ventures, and Emoote also piling on. More Here

Arrivo Bioventures, an eight-year-old startup based in Morrisville, N.C., that is developing two drugs to treat a major depressive disorder and severe acute pancreatitis, respectively, raised a $45 million Series B round led by Orlando Ventures, with Solas BioVentures Emerging Healthcare Fund, and Rex Health Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $100 million. More Here

Bright Uro, a one-year-old startup based in Irvine, Ca., that has developed a wireless and catheter-free device that gathers urological data, raised a $23 million Series A round. Laborie Medical Technologies was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $29 million. More Here

Enfuce, a seven-year-old startup based in Espoo, Finland, that handles card issuing and payments processing for its customers, raised a $9.3 million round led by Vitruvian Partners, with Maki.vc and Visa also investing. More Here

Kahuna Workforce Solutions, a nine-year-old Houston startup that provides skills training for frontline workers in energy, manufacturing, and healthcare, raised a $21 million Series B round. Resolve Growth Partners led the transaction. More Here

Culmination Bio, a 23-year-old company that licenses access to a data lake covering over 40 years of de-identified patient electronic health records and biospecimen data, raised a $10 million round from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Amgen Ventures. More Here

iPeakoin, a three-year-old Singapore startup that is attempting to bridge traditional finance and the crypto industry by providing a crypto wallet for enterprises and cross-border payment services, raised a $10 million Series A round. ZhenFund was the deal lead. More Here

Picklebet, a nine-year-old startup based in Brisbane, Australia, whose betting platform encompasses traditional sports such as racing, as well as esports, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Discerning Capital, with Drive by DraftKings, Manifest Investment, and former Hollywood exec Jeff Sagansky also pitching in. More Here

Valid8 Financial, a nine-year-old startup based in Boulder, Co., and Seattle that says it employs AI to parse data from numerous sources for financial matters and white-collar crime investigations, raised an $8.5 million Series A round led by Silverton Partners, with Touchdown Ventures, First Trust, CPA.com, and Capital Midwest also stepping up. More Here

🚀 Venture Capital Highlights

Investors in Tiger Global Management’s biggest venture fund were sitting on an 18% paper loss at the end of September after the firm slashed valuations for multiple portfolio companies, according to Bloomberg. It says, for example, that Tiger marked down its stakes in Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of nonfungible tokens, by 69%, and NFT marketplace OpenSea by 94%. More Here

The black farmer fund, a non profit debt fund looking to raised $20M fund. The fund provides economic and social opportunity to Black farmers and agricultural and food businesses in the Northeast with the goal of helping build community wealth for Black agricultural businesses throughout the region. As a debt fund, it offers low-interest community notes and grants, writing checks ranging from $1,000 to $3 million. More Here

Kvanted Ventures, a Helsinki firm that focuses on €500,000 to €3 million investments in industrial technology startups, has raised an inaugural fund of €70 million. More here.

Pakistan is launching a venture capital fund for local early-stage startups, seeking to lure global investors back to the South Asian country. Per Pakistan’s minister for information technology and telecommunications, the fund aims to allocate as much as $10 million annually. More Here

📬 Featured: Today’s Featured Article

Why Are Some Startups Not VC Investable ? How To Identify This ?

Investors often tell founders that their startup doesn’t align with their investment thesis or some generic response like “not this time (not investing this time)” leaving most founders confused.

One common reason for rejection is when investors believe that the startup is not big enough for venture capital (VC) investment. But what does this mean? Read More Here👇

💡 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz

Like a lot of these data breaches, the news about the hack at 23andMe just keeps getting worse. Now the company has revealed that data for up to 14,000 of its customers has been compromised. More Here

Startup Acquisition

PepsiCo is selling Tropicana and other juice brands to a private equity firm for $3.3bn as it concentrates on zero-calorie drinks and health-focused snacks. More Here

Stability AI, a British artificial intelligence (AI) startup, is selling the company amidst mounting pressure from investors over its financial position. The tensions between Stability AI and its investors have escalated, particularly with Coatue Management, which led a funding round that valued the startup at $1 billion. More Here

People

Vinod Khosla, now 68, says he works 80-hour weeks and plans to keep investing for another 25 years. More Here

Speaking of Khosla, veteran reporter David Kirkpatrick profiles the legendary investor, who was prescient enough to invest early in OpenAI but was just as blindsided as everyone else when the company's board tried to sack cofounder and CEO Sam Altman. More Here

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🤖 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI

OpenAI’s app store for AI, the GPT Store, will not launch this year as previously announced, but rather on an unspecified date in early 2024, the company said. TechCrunch notes that the delay is almost certainly due to the leadership shakeup that occurred in November, just after the initial announcement. More Here

Elon Musk told OpenAI to move faster right before he left the company in 2018: Elon Musk reportedly urged OpenAI to accelerate its progress before leaving the company in 2018, citing a conflict of interest with Tesla. Musk's call for speed met resistance from a researcher, leading to him calling the individual a "jackass," despite Musk advocating a cautious approach to AI innovation. Musk has since founded his AI startup, xAI, and introduced its Chat-GPT rival, Grok. More Here

Meta's Chief Scientist Yann LeCun stated that achieving human-level AI is decades away, contradicting Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's claim that AI will surpass human capabilities in less than five years. LeCun emphasized the limitations of current language models and the need for multimodal AI systems, exploring applications beyond text data. While Meta heavily relies on Nvidia GPUs, LeCun envisions future neural accelerators and expresses skepticism about the practical relevance of quantum computing in comparison to classical computers. More Here

🗞️ Today’s Must Read On: Startup, Technology & VC

• The most important metrics for SaaS funding in 2024 Read More (Startups & SaaS)

• How Does Airbnb Build Around Design Thinking? Read More (Startups)

• How To Hire An Early Team For Your Startup? By Sam Altman Read More (Startups & Early Hiring)

• Airbnb's Journey Applying For Y-Combinator By Brain Chesky Read More (Startups)

🚀 Venture Capital Jobs & Tips To Break Into VC

Honestly — Getting a job in Venture Capital (“VC”) is hard. The industry is small and very unstructured. Jobs are rarely advertised online and no one really knows where to start.

With more and more people looking to break in every day, you can’t be like everybody else if you want a seat at the table. There are 5 main hacks to stand out from the crowd and break into VC — all of which you can start doing today… Read More Here

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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