VC Daily Digest - 20/09/2023

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📢 Top Venture Capital News

How Reed Jobs’ venture firm tackles cancer: Reed Jobs’ new venture firm can change the lives of the estimated 18.1 million diagnosed cancer patients worldwide. Yosemite, Jobs’ fund for cancer-fighting biotech, launched in August with $200 million in funding from investors like MIT, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and John Doerr. More Here

a16z’s Arianna Simpson believes crypto will be just fine: If the crypto investment craze of 2021 could be defined with one investor name, that would be Andreessen Horowitz — or a16z for short. The well-known VC firm has raised over $7.6 billion for its crypto funds. And yet, crypto isn’t doing so well this year. As TechCrunch’s Jacquelyn Melinek wrote earlier this summer, crypto funding dropped for the fifth consecutive quarter. More Here

Not all companies need to be venture-scale: We live in an era rife with the narrative of unicorns, decacorns, and startups that seemingly explode overnight into multi-billion-dollar enterprises, and every budding entrepreneur is seemingly dreaming of being the next Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. But the truth is, not every startup needs to be “venture-scale.” I see a common problem with many startups I work with as a pitch coach: Companies will attempt to raise from VCs despite knowing they can’t possibly deliver venture-scale returns. More Here

You don't need to be an AI startup to raise capital, VC says: It's been a tough year for founders trying to raise capital, unless you're building in AI, but there are still ways to close deals in other industries, one Bay Area venture capital investor says. Defy.vc partner Neil Sequeira dished out advice for founders during a packed roundtable discussion Tuesday at TechCrunch's annual Disrupt conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco. More Here

📢 Top Startup’s Fundraising News

Shaquille O’Neal led edtech startup Edsoma’s $2.5M seed round: Edsoma, a startup that developed an AI-powered reading, education and communication platform for children, raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by Shaquille O’Neal. Edsoma raised the $2.5 million from more than a dozen individual investors — or family and friends as Wallgren put it — with a post-funding valuation of $14 million. This is O’Neal’s first edtech investment. He did not disclose the amount. More Here

Kenyan fintech FlexPay is helping shoppers save for future purchases raised $800k: FlexPay has raised $785,000, backed by a number of investors, including the Acacia Group (formerly the Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund), LoftyInc, Expert Dojo, Google Black Founders Fund, and Renew Capital. FlexPay Technologies is a Kenyan fintech out to enable consumers to afford products that would have otherwise been out of reach for them. The startup allows customers to shop at partner merchants, reserve products and pay over a period of time, at no added cost. It initially partnered with a Kenyan retailer during launch but scaled in 2020, and has to date grown its merchant network to 600. More Here

European carbon accounting startup Plan A raises $27M from VC and corporate heavyweights: Plan A, a carbon accounting and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) reporting platform for corporations, has raised $27 million in a Series A round of funding led by U.S. VC giant Lightspeed Venture partners. Technically the funding is an extension of a $10 million Series A round it announced nearly two years ago, meaning for all intents and purposes this is the closing of a $37 million Series A round, taking its total raised to $42 million across its six year history. More Here

Allie wants to layer intelligence on top of factory floors raise $2.3M: Factory downtime is an expensive problem. According to one estimate, it costs enterprise companies 11% of their yearly turnover, amounting to almost $1.5 trillion each year. That works out to about $129 million per facility among Fortune 500 companies, over double what Fortune 500 companies reported paying in downtime in 2020. To solve this issue, Allie raise $2.3 million in venture capital. More Here

Dragos raises $74M to secure industrial control systems from threats: Dragos, a company building software to secure the control systems for manufacturing and industrial equipment, has raised $74 million in a Series D round extension led by WestCap. The round, which brings Dragos’ total raised to $440 million, leaves the startup’s post-money valuation unchanged for the second year at $1.7 billion. More Here

ZayZoon, which lends employees money for a fee, raises $34.5M: ZayZoon, which lends employees money for a fee, raises $34.5ZayZoon, a fintech firm that got its start charging employees $5 to get paid sooner, has raised $34.5 million in a Series B round co-led by Framework and EDC with participation from ATB Financial. CEO Darcy Tuer says that the funds, which bring ZayZoon’s total raised to $53 million, will be put toward “doubling down” on ZayZoon’s growth and accelerating the development of new features on its product roadmap. More Here

Cato Networks, valued at $3B, lands $238M ahead of its anticipated IPO: Cato Network raised $238 million in an equity investment that values the company at over $3 billion. LightSpeed Venture Partners led the round with participation from Adams Street Partners, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Sixty Degree Capital and Singtel Innov8, bringing Cato’s total raised to $770 million. More Here

HiddenLayer raises $50M for its AI-defending cybersecurity tools: HiddenLayer, a security startup focused on protecting AI systems from adversarial attacks, today announced that it raised $50 million in a funding round co-led by M12 and Moore Strategic Ventures with participation from Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Capital One and TenEleven. More Here

Alcion, which provides backup and security services to enterprises, raises $21M: Alcion today closed a $21 million Series A funding round led by Veeam, the IT company owned by Insight Partners. It’s a curious investment, considering that Veeam competes with Alcion in the areas of data backup/restoration and disaster recovery (unless the investment in the precursor to an acquisition). More Here

📢 Featured: Today’s Featured Tweet

What does Product Market Fit Mean And Look Like For Consumer Brands ? What are the metrics to understand status of PMF?

Recently Arindam Paul, founder of atomberg shared a tweet on what’s the PMF look like for a consumer brands and what are metrics founder can use to understand status of PMF? It’s a great read for consumer brand’s founders and investors. Have a Look! 👇

📢 Top AI News

New SambaNova chip designed to handle 5 trillion parameter model: Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of last year, terms like generative AI and large language models have been on everyone’s lips. But when you dig beneath the hype, large language models generally require a lot of expensive GPU chips to run. SambaNova is introducing a chip today that it purports will reduce that cost significantly, while handling a 5 trillion parameter model. More Here

Pryon raises $100M to index and analyze enterprise data: Pryon, a startup developing an AI-powered platform to look for insights in — and surface answers from — enterprise knowledge bases, today announced that it raised $100 million in a funding round led by Thomas Tull’s U.S. Innovative Technology Fund. More Here

Google’s Bard chatbot can now tap into your Google apps, double-check answers and more: Google today is releasing a more capable version of Bard, its generative AI chatbot and ChatGPT rival, which now lets you double-check its answers, collaborate with others and, notably, integrate with Google’s own apps and services, including Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps, YouTube and Google Flights and hotels. More Here

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📢 Top Startups News

Elon Musk says X will charge users ‘a small monthly payment’ to use its service: X owner Elon Musk today floated the idea that the social network formerly known as Twitter may no longer be a free site. In a live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Musk said the company was “moving to a small monthly payment” for the use of the X system. He suggested that such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots on the platform. More Here

8 web3 gaming experts discuss hurdles and opportunities in the road to wider adoption: The web3 gaming world has been a work in progress for a handful of years now. Studios in the space have found it difficult to gain Web 2 gamers’ trust and get over the image issues resulting from the “play-to-earn” era, and traction has been slower than predicted. Amid the ongoing crypto bear market, investors and startups alike are diving deeper into the emerging space to answer that very question (among others) as they look to web3 gaming to bring in the next wave of users to crypto and the wider web3 industry. More Here

Instacart’s IPO storms out the gate, showing that unicorns can, in fact, go public and survive: Instacart was worth $42 per share out the gate and has since moderated slightly to $39.89 per share. Still, it’s up 33% from its IPO price, which is a pretty darn good first day for any public company. More Here

YC says visa challenges hampering participation of international founders: The most recent cohort from Y Combinator features more than 200 startups. More than a record half of the S23 startups focus on AI applications, highlighting a dominant trend we can expect in the coming years. The S23 is remarkable for at least one more reason: Only one firm in the batch hails from India/Southeast Asia, according to YC’s official directory. More Here

How deep tech founders can secure early-stage fundraising in a downturn: The funding environment in 2013, when we at Cailabs were looking for early-stage investment, was a tough one. According to some metrics, it’s much like the one we find ourselves in today. Startup founders must persuade investors to part with their money at a time when many investors aren’t inclined to do so. And that’s even harder for deep tech founders, whose products are often highly complex and highly distinct. More Here

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

• 📜 Navigating Dilution and Ownership in Startup Fundraising Read More

• 📪 Decoding Term Sheets for Founders and Investors in Simple Terms Read More

• 📑 Understand Convertible Note Investment Option: The Valuation Game-Changer! Read Here

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

• 📮Decoding Startup Valuations with the Venture Capital (VC) Valuation Method 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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