VC Daily Digest - 10/10/2023

📢 Major News

• New Law: VC Fund need to reveals investment diversity information.

• This fund has $1B to invest in startups, waiting for rebound

• ChatGPT’s Growth Slowing Down

• Featured Article: Positioning Your Startup is Vital, How To Do It?

 🤗 Access Startups 🤝 Partnership 👉 Follow Us  

🤝 In Partnership With: bbv.media

Make Outsized Returns On Your Content💡

Content is fundamental in today's world of VC.

Not “How 4am alarms/cold showers made my fund 10x”
Instead, a perceptive content strategy can transform your brand to:

• Drive deal flow

• Forge a thought leader reputation with investors and LPs

• Build brand power and a network of digital IOUs

VC funds with €2B+ in exits, pro athletes, angels, and more trust bbv.media to create their content.

📢 Venture Capital Highlights

California passes law mandating VC firms to release investments’ diversity information: Last night, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 54, which will require venture capital firms in the state to annually report the diversity of the founders they are backing. This is the United States’ first piece of legislation that aims to increase diversity within the venture capital landscape. The law will go into effect on March 1, 2025. More Here

ALIAVIA Ventures fights gender funding inequalities in the US and Australia raised $8.7 M first fund: Founded by two tech veterans, ALIAVIA wants to close the funding gap for female founders. It invests in female-led startups, especially those that want to bridge the Australian and American markets. The venture firm announced today the close of its first fund, totaling $13.5 million AUD ($8.7 million USD). Investors include Trawalla Group founder Carol Schwartz, Tattarang (the Forrest Family Office), Robyn and Victoria Denholm of the Wollemi Capital Group, Euphemia and Up Bank founder Dom Pym and Zip Co managing director and group CEO Cynthia Scott.

Michigan’s Grand Ventures announces $50M early-stage fund: Grand Ventures announced its second fund to invest in early-stage companies. The Grand Rapids, Michigan firm tells TechCrunch that it aims to lead seed-stage investments in startups solving problems facing the fintech, DevOps and supply chain sectors. The $50 million Fund II is managed by general partners Tim Streit, Camila Noordeloos and Nathan Owen. This new fund brings the total amount of assets under management to $80 million. Streit says he’s thrilled to sign on new limited partners interested in venture capital firms and tech companies based outside of Silicon Valley. More Here

Canadian startups had a tough Q3, and AI’s popularity isn’t making a big difference: European startups were faring slightly better than the rest of the world, seeing more venture capital deployed in the third quarter than in the first two quarters of the year. And, of course, the venture investor adage holds true: Good companies can always raise money.And it appears Canadian startups aren’t going to escape the misfortunes of the rest of the world. More Here

Venture Fund Has $1 Billion Ready for Latin America Tech Rebound:Kaszek Ventures, the largest venture capital firm based in Latin America, is sitting on $1 billion it raised early this year as it waits for new deals to materialize and for more mature companies to run low on cash and potentially accept new valuations. After the record year in 2021 for funding of Latin American technology companies, founders were still trying to accept the tougher realities in 2022. More Here

📢 Massive Fundings Updates

Zest Equity, a UAE-based startup digitizing private market deals, raises $3.8M seed funding: UAE-based Zest Equity, a startup digitizing private market dealings, has raised $3.8 million seed funding to build more tools for enabling fast and transparent transactions by ecosystem players while increasing their liquidity through secondary deals. The seed round was led by Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) with participation from the Dubai Future District Fund (DFDF), and DASH Ventures. More Here

Saronic, a defense startup building autonomous ships, raises $55M: Saronic, a startup developing autonomous ships for defense, has raised $55 million in a Series A round led by Caffeinated Capital with participation from 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Point72 Ventures, Silent Ventures, Overmatch Ventures, Ensemble VC, Cubit Capital and the U.S. Innovative Technology Fund. More Here

Consumer payments startup Braid, backed by Index and Accel, shuts down: Braid, a four-year-old startup that aimed to make shared wallets more mainstream among consumers, has shut down. Braid raised a total of $10 million in funding “over multiple rounds” from Index Ventures, Accel and others Peyton said that Braid closed its doors in September and outlined her experiences in building the company, ultimately realizing that it wasn’t going to be a viable business venture. More Here

Wanda Fish navigates VC waters to catch $7M for production of cultivated bluefin tuna: Wanda Fish Technologies, an Israeli food tech startup, secured $7 million in seed funding to accelerate the initial production of cultivated bluefin tuna. The $7 million round was led by Aqua-Spark which was joined by existing investors The Kitchen Hub, Peregrine Ventures, LLC, PICO Venture Partners, MOREVC and CPT Capital, LLP. To date, Wanda Fish has raised $10 million in venture-backed funding. More Here

Accel leads $21M investment in UK care home marketplace Lottie: Lottie is setting out to address, with an online marketplace that helps those seeking care find the best care homes and services for their needs, while also catering to additional categories such as home care. The company today announced it has raised $21 million (£16.35 million) in a Series A round of funding led by U.S. VC giant Accel, with participation from existing backer General Catalyst. 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

Positioning Your Startup is Vital, How To Do It? 🫣

Positioning, at its core, is the bedrock upon which successful products and services are built. It involves crafting a statement that precisely defines the problem your product solves and why your solution is not just beneficial, but also unique and compelling.

Most of the founders failed to create the positioning for their startup. So we shared some of the tactics that founder can used to positioning their startup. Have A look 👇

📢 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI

Prosecutors don’t want Bankman-Fried’s lawyers mentioning his $500 million investment in AI startup Anthropic: Atorneys for disgraced FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried want to mention his $500 million investment in AI startup Anthropic in court, and prosecutors are not happy. In a filing late Sunday, attorneys for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York filed a letter asking the judge to prevent SBF’s attorneys from introducing any evidence related to the investment made by Bankman-Fried last year, saying that it's irrelevant to the case. More Here

Google’s Asia-Pacific Women Founders Fund Picks First Batch Of AI Startups: Google’s fund for female founders in the Asia-Pacific region has picked its first batch of startups, all in the hot field of artificial intelligence, that will receive an injection of cash and mentorship. The fund, called the Google for Startups Women Founders Fund, was launched in August and is managed by Google for Startups, the tech giant’s startup support arm. Each startup will receive $100,000 in financing without giving up equity, as well as mentorship and networking assistance. More Here

Join 2600+ Avid Readers For Daily Morning Venture Insights, Funding Updates And Startup Stories In Your Inbox. 🚀!

📢 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz

ChatGPT’s mobile app hit record $4.58M in revenue last month, but growth is slowing: the AI chatbot continues to see the number of app installs and its revenue grow, with September setting a new record on both fronts: 15.6 million downloads and nearly $4.6 million in gross revenue across its iOS and Android apps worldwide. However, according to new data from market intelligence firm Appfigures, revenue growth has now begun to slow. While over the past couple of months, revenue growth was topping 30% — 31% in July and 39% in August — that dropped to 20% growth as of September. More Here

The psychology behind startup dealmaking: Pitching your pilot to an industry Goliath: The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget about old ideas.Yet, complicated dealmaking psychology and deeply ingrained historical ways of doing things inside enterprises make it really tough for startups to break in and stay in. So, if you’re a founder who finds this particularly challenging, you’re not alone. More Here

Instagram Threads preps a Trending Topics feature in battle with X: In an effort to better compete with X (formerly Twitter), Instagram’s Threads is preparing to launch a much-in-demand feature: Trends. A Threads user spotted the update in a screenshot posted accidentally by a Threads employee over the weekend, which showed a numbered list of trending topics as well as how many “threads” were actively discussing each item. More Here

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

• The Promise and Pitfalls of Chaining Large Language Models for Email Read More (AI)

• How to start a startup? Read More (Startups)

• How to Leverage Herd Mentality in Fundraising Read More (Venture Capital & Startups)

Join our VC Enthusiast Community - VC Crafters - A Community For VC Enthusiasts To Learn, Collaborate, Network and Craft Path To VC.

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

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Right on the Money!

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Pretty Relevant

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Somewhat Interesting

• ⭐️ ⭐️ Not Quite My Thing

• ⭐️ Totally Off Target

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

 🤗 Access Startups 🤝 Partnership 👉 Follow Us