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- VC Daily Digest - 09/10/2023
VC Daily Digest - 09/10/2023
Y-Combinator Hiring New Leaders & Wealth Fund Invested $600M at $100Billion Valuation
Venture Daily Digest
October 09, 2023
📢 Major News
Y-combinator Aggressively hiring New Leaders
Crypto Funding and Deals Hit Three-Year Low
This Wealth Fund Invested $600M at $100Billion Valuation.
Featured Tweet: Do VC Care About LTV/CAC Ratio?
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📢 Venture Capital Highlights
Y Combinator beefs up with a string of new lieutenants: Y Combinator continues to change shape under CEO Garry Tan, a founder-turned-investor and online influencer. While Tan and his colleagues have attracted media attention lately for quarrelsome social media posts that take on rivals and San Francisco city officials, Tan has more quietly been turning the dials inside the popular accelerator program since taking it over in January. Some of the moves saw Tan close down Y Combinator’s late-stage Continuity Fund. More Here
How founders should approach TAM when venture capital is scarce: As an investor, the TAM calculation doesn’t really change whether we are in a more flush environment or a less flush environment. You’re still going to be looking for companies that are addressing large markets and trying to figure out the biggest TAM they can get to. More Here
Women and underrepresented founders aren’t going to wait for the VC industry to transform itself: The organization I work for, Village Capital, recently worked with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), academic researchers, and a consortium of partners to identify ways to address discrepancies in investor behavior when evaluating startups. During the due diligence process, investors tend to ask women-led startups more risk- or prevention-related questions and men-led startups more growth- or promotion-related questions. More Here
How climate VC firm At One Ventures raised $375M from LPs like CalSTRS, WWF: At One Ventures has closed its flagship second fund dedicated to climate investments on $375 million at a time when emerging fund managers face a historically challenging fundraising environment. Lin At One has yet to distribute any returns from its $150 million debut fund, according to founding partner Helen Lin. Still, the climate investor managed to more than double its LP commitments to its second fund. More Here
Crypto Funding and Deals Hit Three-Year Low: Last year’s “crypto winter” apparently extended into the summer of 2023. That’s according to a recent report by blockchain intelligence firm Messari on the state of fundraising in the cryptocurrency industry. “Crypto’s ongoing bear market is possibly best exemplified by the industry’s fundraising data,” the report said. “Q3 2023 was no exception to the multi-quarter downtrend we’ve witnessed since the beginning of 2022 — Q3 marked new lows in both overall funding amounts and deal counts that have not been seen since Q4 2020.” More Here
📢 Massive Fundings Updates
Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund invests nearly $600M in Reliance Retail at $100B valuation: Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is investing $597 million in Reliance Retail, valuing the largest Indian retail chain at a whopping $100 billion. The investment follows KKR and Qatar Investment Authority together investing $1.7 billion in the Indian firm, which is part of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund’s investment will fetch it a 0.59% stake in Reliance Retail. More Here
Singapore’s tech subscription service Circular raised $7.6M: Circular, backed by Y Combinator, is a service that offers consumers in Singapore and Australia subscriptions to high-end electronics, like iPhones, Samsung Galaxy, iPad Pros and MacBook Pros. The company announced today it has closed a seed round of $7.6 million, bringing their total valuation to $30 million. The funding was led by AirTree Ventures, with participation from YC Continuity Fund, Global Founders Capital, Partech Ventures and January Capital. More Here
World Bank’s IFC backs Indian insurtech startup Onsurity in $24M funding: Onsurity, an Indian startup that offers monthly subscription-based insurance solutions to micro, small and medium enterprises, startups and growing businesses, has raised $24 million in a funding round led by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC). The Series B round also saw the participation from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Quona Capital. With the fresh funding, the three-year-old startup has raised $40 million in total. More Here
Electric seaglider startup Regent takes flight with $60M in new funding: The Rhode Island-based startup announced this week at the UP Summit it has raised $60 million in a Series A round co-led by 8090 Industries and Founders Fund. Point72, Caffeinated Capital, Mark Cuban, UAE’s Strategic Development Fund, Future Planet Capital and others participated, as well as strategic investments from Japan Airlines Innovation Fund, Yamato Holdings (the largest logistics company in Japan) and Lockheed Martin. The company has now raised $90 million to date. More Here
Open banking led to a fintech boom — as Brite raises $60M, account-to-account payment grows: Brite Payments, which today announced a Series A fund-raise of $60 million led by specialist B2B software investor Dawn Capital. Also joining the round was global VC Headline (the re-branded e.ventures) out of their European practice Headline, and existing investor Incore (out of Sweden). More Here
Raleigh based AI startup closes on $7.5M in new financing: Raleigh-headquartered Aampe, an AI-powered user engagement platform, announced a $7.5 million Pre-Series A funding Thursday. The round, led by Matrix Partners India and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA), will support product development and fuel growth as the company eyes global expansion. More Here
Senegalese FMCG intelligence startup Lengo AI secures pre-seed funding round: Senegalese FMCG intelligence startup Lengo AI has raised a seven-figure pre-seed round of funding to help it develop its product and team, and expand into new African markets. Founded in 2022 by Max Smith, Roger Xavier Macia and Ismaila Seck, Lengo AI is the first data-driven operating system for informal retail in Africa. It aims to provide intelligence and highly actionable insights to FMCG brands coming from the thousands of corner shops, with its software-as-a-service platform. More Here
📬 Featured: Today’s Featured Article
Do VC Care About LTV/CAC Ratio ? 🫣
After reading this title you might be thinking it’s clickbait, right? VCs do care about Life time value (LTV) / Customer Acquition Cost (CAC)? OR CAC < LTV. Actually they don’t care about this ratio. What! Why?
I spoke with one of investors from leading VC firm and shared his thought in our recent VCs Newsletter. Have A look 👇
📢 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI
OpenAI said to be considering developing its own AI chips: Discussions of AI chip strategies within the company have been ongoing since at least last year, according to Reuters, as the shortage of chips to train AI models worsens. OpenAI is reportedly considering a number of strategies to advance its chip ambitions, including acquiring an AI chip manufacturer or mounting an effort to design chips internally. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has made the acquisition of more AI chips a top priority for the company. More Here
Artists across industries are strategizing together around AI concerns: As creative industries grapple with AI’s explosion into every artistic medium at once, separate calls from artists warning the world to take action before it’s too late are starting to converge. From fake Drake songs to stylized Instagram profile pictures, art conjured with newly sophisticated AI tools is suddenly ubiquitous — and so are conversations about how to rein in the technology before it does irrevocable harm to creative communities. More Here
AI app EPIK hits No. 1 on the App Store for its viral yearbook photo feature: Another week, another AI app going viral. This time around, the AI app that has surged to the top of the App Store is EPIK, a photo-editing app that lets users generate nostalgic, 90s-inspired “yearbook” photos of themselves as one of its many templates. Similar to other recently popular AI apps, EPIK works by having users first upload a series of selfies which EPIK then uses to generate the throwback yearbook photos featuring the user in different poses, with different looks and hairstyles. More Here
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📢 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz
The future of social media is vertical: The future of social media startup will be more niche, verticalized entities that targeted a specific demographic or a hobby than by startups looking to build large platforms. They think a platform with a tighter focus will have more potential because it allows for strong communities to be built. Lex, a social app aimed at the LGBTQIA+ communities, seems like a perfect example of this. More Here
SEC to compel Elon Musk’s testimony in Twitter stock purchase probe: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will try to force Elon Musk to testify over his Twitter stock purchases. The federal agency charged with regulating securities markets is currently investigating Musk for allegedly violating securities laws when he bought Twitter shares before buying the social media platform, which he has since renamed X. More Here
X to test three tiers of its Premium service: X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is planning to test three tiers of its X Premium service in order to bring in additional revenue, according to Bloomberg, reporting on X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s briefing to X debt holders on Thursday. The exec told the bankers that X would split the current $7.99 Premium subscription into three different plans: Basic, Standard and Plus, at various price points. More Here
PayPal faces new antitrust lawsuit claiming it unfairly stifles competition with Stripe, Shopify and more: PayPal has been hit with a class action lawsuit by consumers represented by law firm Hagens Berman alleging that the fintech giant’s anti-steering rules stifle competition against lower-cost payment platforms such as Stripe and Shopify. Specifically, according to an investigation conducted by the firm’s consumer rights attorneys, PayPal has subjected consumers to excess charges when purchasing from online merchants that accept PayPal or Venmo. More Here
Crypto is about a lot more than a former golden boy turned villain: it’s not entirely fair to call Faux’s book “Number Go Up” an “SBF book.” Sure, it has several chapters on FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the epilogue is mostly about his fate, which has been unfolding in court this week. But it’s also about crypto more broadly, and that’s a good thing. More Here
🗞️ Today’s Must Read On: Startup, Technology & VC
What Do You Think Of Today's News Updates? 🤓
✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team
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