VC Daily Digest - 16/09/2023

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📢 Top Venture Capital News

Dreamcraft Ventures Raises $59 Million to Invest in B2B Software Companies: Denmark-based venture capital (VC) manager Dreamcraft Ventures has reached its target of 55 million euros ($58.7 million) for its Fund II. Fund II has made six investments in the last nine months, the firm said in a Wednesday (Sept. 13) post on LinkedIn. The VC manager invests in European tech companies from pre-seed to Series A, according to its profile on the platform. “We are in a time where many of the big tech companies are tightening their belts,” Dreamcraft Ventures Managing Partner Daniel Nyvang-Szekely Mariussen said in the post. More Here

Sierra Ventures Raises $265 Million to Continue ‘Right-Sized Fund’ Approach: Sierra Ventures announced today the closing of their 13th fund at $265M, exceeding its target. The firm has a disciplined model of right-sized funds to focus on being an early investor in the best B2B companies across North America at the Seed and Series A stages. The firm has generated top-performing funds by being the first investor in unicorns like Reify Health (Vertical SaaS) in Boston, Phenom (Enterprise Applications) in Philadelphia, and Astronomer (Infrastructure Software) in Cincinnati. More Here

Only 5% of $22B in VC funding for generative AI went to Europe: European startups got just $1bn of the €22bn that VCs have invested in generative AI since 2019, according to data from Dealroom. Unsurprisingly, American companies attracted the bulk of the money. A whopping $20bn — 89% of the global total — went to US startups. Their Asian counterparts raised only $790mn, while the rest of the world combined bagged just $454mn. More Here

Scaramucci Emerges as a Leading Bidder For SVB Financial's Venture-Capital Arm: SVB Financial Group, the former parent of Silicon Valley Bank, is closing in on a deal to sell its venture-capital and credit-investment arm out of bankruptcy. Two front-runners are vying in the bidding process for SVB Capital, as it is known, according to people familiar with the matter: a duo of Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital and Atlas Merchant Capital, and San Francisco private-equity firm Vector Capital. A court decision on a winner is expected in the next few weeks. More Here

Upper Arlington's Overlooked Ventures stops fundraising – but not investing – amid nationwide VC pullback: Overlooked Ventures LP, the VC fund betting on a group of female and nonwhite entrepreneurs who are simultaneously underfunded and over-performing, has stopped raising money to focus on growth for its portfolio startups amid a nationwide pullback in venture investing. The firm has invested in eight startups – and aims for three more by the end of this year – but will not have reserves for the usual practice of joining in a portfolio company's future rounds, said Janine Sickmeyer, the firm's Upper Arlington-based founding partner. When economic conditions improve, she said, Overlooked could launch a second fund. More Here'

📢 Top Startup’s Fundraising News

Superorder raises $10M to help restaurants maintain their online presence: Raghav Poddar was studying computer science at Columbia University when he became intrigued by the challenges restaurant owners were facing maintaining an online presence. A self-described “foodie,” Poddar — who didn’t have much time to cook meals — was a heavy user of food delivery and pickup services in New York City. Superorder today announced that it raised $10 million in a funding round led by Foundation Capital with participation from Y Combinator managing director Michael Seibel, Cruise co-founders Kyle Vogt and Daniel Kan, I2BF Global Ventures and others. More Here

Patronus AI conjures up an LLM evaluation tool for regulated industries raised $3M: It turns out that when you put together two AI experts, both of whom formerly worked at Meta researching responsible AI, magic happens. The founders of Patronus AI came together last March to build a solution to evaluate and test large language models with an eye towards regulated industries where there is little tolerance for errors. While making their product generally available, and also announcing a $3 million seed round. More Here

Wicked Saints, a Video Game Studio Led by Black Developers, Secures $3.5 Million for Expansion: Black female-led video game studio Wicked Saints has raised $3.5 million in a fresh seed round to help the firm expand. Co-led by Riot Games and Oregon Venture Fund, the financing included a collective of angel investors as well as funds with creativity and deep gaming expertise. Now armed with funding of $4.6 million, CEO and co-founder Jess Murrey joins a small group of Black women in her industry to raise over $1 million. More Here

Spanish Startup Revel Raises $125 Million for Car Subscription Platform: Spanish digital car subscription service provider Revel has reportedly raised 115 million euros (about $123 million) in a funding round. The money, which includes a 15 million euro (about $16 million) capital investment and a debt financing structure of up to 100 million euros (about $107 million), will accelerate the company’s expansion plans and further develop its car subscription servic. Collaborating with Santander Consumer Finance and credit funds managed by global investment firm KKR, among others, Revel aims to transform the way people access and use cars, according to the report. More Here

Quantum Computing Startup-Nanofiber Quantum Technologies Secures $8.5m Funding: Nanofiber Quantum Technologies Inc. ("NanoQT") raised $8.5m from leading venture capital investors. Phoenix Venture Partners (PvP) in the US, and Japan's JAFCO Group Co Ltd, SPARX Group Co Ltd, Keio Innovation Initiative, Inc. (KII), and Waseda University Ventures (WUV) financed the round through convertible notes. Founded in 2022, NanoQT is a leading startup company focused on fiber connectable quantum computing hardware. 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.

Also they always wondered why VC firms want an option pool before VC round. To make this clarification, yesterday we shared a newsletter on this to 6000+ founders & investors. Have a Look! 👇

📢 Top AI News

Nvidia has a stranglehold on AI companies as a chip shortage begins to bite : If there was one company to rule them all in the generative AI boom of 2023, that company might well be Nvidia. Few exert as much power and influence as the $1 trillion chip behemoth because of its graphics processing units (GPUs), which have proven to be the vital source of the compute power needed to train the large language models behind apps like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard. Demand for Nvidia's GPUs, like the $40,000 H100, have been so great that CEO Jensen Huang is reportedly preparing to triple production next year in the face of shortages. Nation states have been scrambling to secure supplies, while black markets for the processors have sprung up in recent months. More Here

DeepMind discovers that AI large language models can optimize their own prompts: When people program new deep learning AI models — those that can focus on the right features of data by themselves — the vast majority rely on optimization algorithms, or optimizers, to ensure the models have a high enough rate of accuracy. But one of the most commonly used optimizers — derivative-based optimizers— run into trouble handling real-world applications. In a new paper, researchers from DeepMind propose a new way: Optimization by PROmpting (OPRO), a method that uses AI large language models (LLM) as optimizers. More Here

Answering AI’s biggest questions requires an interdisciplinary approach: When Elon Musk announced the team behind his new artificial intelligence company xAI last month, whose mission is reportedly to “understand the true nature of the universe,” it underscored the criticality of answering existential concerns about AI’s promise and peril. Whether the newly formed company can actually align its behavior to reduce the potential risks of the technology, or whether it’s solely aiming to gain an edge over OpenAI. More Here

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📢 Top Startups News

What’s missing from Guy Kawasaki’s 10-slide deck: Guy Kawasaki has been a loud voice of influence in the world of startups. His 10/20/30 rule (a pitch should have 10 slides, last no more than 20 minutes, and contain no font smaller than 30 points) is a great place to start. He’s been talking about that format for a decade (here’s a video from about 11 years ago). The 10-slide rule made sense in the context where some founders were still using MBA-style business plans that run 50 to 60 pages and still fail to get to the meat of things. More Here

The right treasury management strategy can extend your startup’s runway: It doesn’t matter how much users love your product; every founder knows that if you run dry on funds, you’re done. In today’s tightened funding environment, this is happening more and more often. Operating in unpredictable markets is what first taught me the art of treasury management. It can be a lifeline and a safety net, which can sometimes be make or break for a startup during its most pivotal growth junctures. More Here

Web3 adoption could come via the enterprise, but the real boom will be through startups: As the race for enterprise adoption in web3 accelerates, some people believe it’s not one-sided growth, but a journey where both mainstream enterprises and crypto startups can bring on new opportunities. “The signals that we see right now are that the innovation is coming more from enterprises,” Gagan Mac, head of product and senior director of web3 services at Circle, said on a panel at the Avalanche House event in Seoul, South Korea. More Here

🗞️ Interesting Today’s Read On: Startups & Venture Capital

• 📑 Is the "1% Market Fallacy" Holding Your Startup Back? Read Here

• 📰 Why Your Startup Idea Isn’t Big Enough for Some VCs? Read More

• 📮Visualizing Funding Runway & Burn Rate Read More

• 🗃️ Decoding Term Sheet: Liquidation Preference | Participation & Non-Participation Rights Read Here

• 📪Hidden Trap Of Convertible Note and Liquidation Preference Multiples Read More

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What do you think of today's newsletter?

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Amazing piece

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ This was really good

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ It was okay

• ⭐️ ⭐️ Not your best

• ⭐️ Waste of time

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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