VC Daily Digest - 29/09/2023

📢 Major News

• 8 Proven Strategies To Beat The ~80% VC-Venture Failure Rate

• Europe's VC direct secondaries market heats up with downturn

• AlphaSense, an AI-based market intel firm, snaps up $150M at a $2.5B valuation

• Featured Article: Instacart: Is The VC Investment Model Broken?

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📢 Venture Capital Highlights

8 Proven Strategies To Beat The ~80% VC-Venture Failure Rate: Contrary to the assumption of a VC shortage, there may actually be too many VCs. Experts estimate that only about 2% of VCs (about 20), are said to earn about 95% of VC profits. Most VCs do poorly because early stage VCs fail on 80% of their ventures and there are few home runs to offset the many failures. Marc Andreessen, a Top 20 VC, notes that the Top VC funds invest in about 200 ventures per year and do well in about 15. More Here

Investing In Smaller, Agile Venture Capital Funds Amid Economic Uncertainty: As global economies traverse the unpredictable tide of financial turbulence, the quest for secure, profitable investment avenues becomes paramount for limited partners (LPs). Historically, large, well-established venture capital funds have attracted LPs due to their size and perceived stability. However, there's a new contender on the block, one that offers intriguing potential and attractive returns, particularly during times of economic uncertainty—emerging managers. More Here

Europe's VC direct secondaries market heats up with downturn: European venture capital has seen significant growth in deals for secondhand stakes in startups, driven by dwindling liquidity options for investors and employees of portfolio companies. Unlike their US counterparts, European VCs were previously slow to embrace direct secondaries, in which founders, employees and investors sell shares, in part because of a smaller primary market and more complex deal terms. More Here

FemHealth Ventures Closes $32 Million Fund for Women's Health: FemHealth Ventures, which invests in companies focused on women’s health, has closed a $32 million debut fund despite a difficult fundraising environment for new venture firms. FemHealth, formed in 2020, sought to raise up to $50 million for an initial fund, holding a first closing of more than $10 million in October 2021, said co-founder and Managing Partner Maneesha Ghiya. More Here

Mercury Fund closes $160M Fifth Fund invest in SaaS startups between the coasts: Mercury Fund, an early-stage venture firm, closed on $160 million in capital commitments for its fifth fund, also its largest. In general, it’s been a busy month for venture capital firms announcing new capital commitments. Mercury Fund joins firms, including Mythos Ventures, Connect Ventures, Fuse and Unconventional Ventures, in announcing new funds this month. More Here

African VC firm Enza Capital launches founder partner program as it closes $58M across funds: Enza Capital, a venture capital firm that backs startups “organizing the offline online” and “digitizing key African industries,” has closed $58 million across two funds. In 2019, the company launched an early-stage fund to “find, back, and help build category-defining startups” in the pre-seed and seed stages. The fund is still active and has invested in fintech, logistics, health, human capital and climate tech companies. More Here

Should VCs back the FTC suit against Amazon?": The FTC is not incredibly popular in the tech world today, taking aim at several high-dollar deals and executing vigorous antitrust efforts that could make it harder for the richest companies in tech to snap up smaller rivals. The FTC has continued its hearts-and-minds campaign by filing suit against Amazon this week, alleging a “pattern of illegal conduct” that “blocks competition” and allows the company to “wield monopoly power to inflate prices, degrade quality, and stifle innovation for consumers and businesses.” More Here

VC firm Anzu Partners raises $200M for third fund: Investment firm Anzu Partners, which has a presence in Atlanta, closed its third venture fund and has already invested a large chunk of the proceeds into a dozen early-stage companies in the life sciences, clean technology and industrial technology sectors. The 9-year-old firm announced early Tuesday that it raised $200 million for its Fund III from both new and existing investors that include public and private institutions and single and multifamily offices. More Here

📢 Massive Fundings Updates

AlphaSense, an AI-based market intel firm, snaps up $150M at a $2.5B valuation: The Series E round — which bumps New York-based AlphaSense’s valuation up to $2.5 billion — is being led by Bond, with participation also from CapitalG (Alphabet’s fund focused on larger investments), Viking Global Investors, Goldman Sachs and new backer BAM Elevate. More Here

OpenAI and Jony Ive in talks to raise $1bn from SoftBank for AI device venture: OpenAI is in advanced talks with former Apple designer Sir Jony Ive and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to launch a venture to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence”, fuelled by more than $1bn in funding from the Japanese conglomerate. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief, has tapped Ive’s company LoveFrom, which the designer founded when he left Apple in 2019, to develop the ChatGPT creator’s first consumer device, according to three people familiar with the plan. More Here

Open source Datadog rival SigNoz lands on the cloud with $6.5M investment: SigNoz today announced it has raised a fresh $5.4 million in a round of funding led by SignalFire, with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures, Alumni Ventures and a slew of angels including GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner. Additionally, SigNoz revealed that it had raised another $1.1 million in previously undisclosed funding following its participation in Y Combinator (YC) back in 2021, with backers including SignalFire and several angel investors. More Here

Resourcify, a platform to digitize waste management, raises €14M: Resourcify, a waste management and recycling platform, today announced that it raised €14 million ~($14.94 million) in a Series A round led by Vorwerk Ventures with participation from Revent, Ananda Impact Ventures, Speedinvest, BonVenture and WEPA Ventures. More Here

Apron grabs $15 million to simplify invoice processing: London-based startup Apron announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Index Ventures, with Bessemer Venture Partners and Visionaries Club participating. The company wants to help small companies when it comes to processing invoices. More Here

Transfr, a VR platform for workforce training, raises $40M: Transfr, a startup creating VR tools for training and career development, today announced that it raised $40 million in a Series C round led by ABS Capital with participation from JPMorgan Chase Impact Finance, Advisory, Lumos Capital Group, Akkadian Ventures, Spring Tide Capital, Firework Ventures and Album. More Here

Nextdata is building data meshes for the enterprise raised $12M: Nextdata today announced that it raised $12 million in a seed investment led by Greycroft and Acrew Capital, which Dehghani says will be put toward developing its tooling and expanding hiring across Nextdata’s product, engineering and go-to-market teams. Dehghani says that she launched Nextdata to solve the challenges around data sharing as they relate to AI and machine learning. More Here

Nexusflow raises $10.6M to build a conversational interface for security tools: Nexusflow, a startup using generative AI to help companies make sense of cybersecurity data, today announced that it raised $10.6 million in a seed round led by Point72 Ventures with participation from Fusion Fund and several AI luminaries in Silicon Valley. The tranche, which values Nexusflow at $53 million post-money, will be put toward hiring, R&D and ongoing product development. More Here

📬 Featured: Today’s Featured Article

Instacart: Is The VC Investment Model Broken?🤔

Recently I come across an article by Gavin and he shared an interesting perspective on VC investment model by considering Instacart story.

It’s worth to read! Have A Look 👇

📢 The Latest In Emerging Tech: AI

Six imperatives for building AI-first companies: Change happens slowly, and then all at once — especially in complex industries like healthcare. Just five years ago, venture capital investments in healthcare AI were emerging and exploratory. Half a decade and one global pandemic later, we’re living in a brave and more ambitious new world defined by an unbridled enthusiasm for leveraging revolutionary technologies like AI. Pointing this technology at previously intractable problems in key industries such as healthcare, life sciences, and beyond is among the greatest opportunities of the century. More Here

Your website can now opt out of training Google’s Bard and future AIs: Large language models are trained on all kinds of data, most of which it seems was collected without anyone’s knowledge or consent. Now you have a choice whether to allow your web content to be used by Google as material to feed its Bard AI and any future models it decides to make. It’s as simple as disallowing “User-Agent: Google-Extended” in your site’s robots.txt, the document that tells automated web crawlers what content they’re able to access. More Here

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📢 Startups Snap: The Latest Buzz

Indian music label giant Saregama acquires Pocket Aces: Saregama has acquired a 51.82% stake in the digital entertainment startup Pocket Aces as the oldest Indian music label makes a deeper push into videos. Saregama is paying about $20 million for the 51.82% stake in Pocket Aces and plans to invest an additional $1.8 million into the startup, the Kolkata-headquartered firm disclosed in a stock exchange filing. More Here

Investors taking 30% of a startup in a round are being short-sighted: Over the last couple of months, I’ve spoken to a number of early-stage investors — both angels and VCs — who seem to be proud that they’ve been able to take 25% to 30% of a startup’s equity in an early-stage funding round. In one case, an angel investor patted themselves on the back for “managing to convince the founder to give them a 41% stake.” More Here

Fortnite maker Epic Games is laying off 16% of its workforce, impacting 870 people: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its employees, impacting about 870 people, the Fortnite maker announced on Thursday. The company also announced that it’s divesting Bandcamp, an online audio distribution platform it acquired last year, and spinning off most of SuperAwesome, a kid-safe technology developer that it acquired in 2020. More Here

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Where startup looking to raise fund can add their startup by filling out the form and investors can access the database. If any investors interested in speaking with founder, you can directly message and get on a call with them.

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What Do You Think Of Today's Newsletter? 🤓

• ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Amazing piece

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✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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