VC Daily Digest - 30/08/2023

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Your Monday to Saturday Daily Dose of Venture Insights, Funding Updates and Startup Stories Delivered Straight to Your Inbox. Stay Informed, Stay Inspired and Stay Ahead In the World of Venture Capital !

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📢 Top Venture Capital News

The IPO drought was worse than you thought: The American venture market has been experiencing a significant gap in technology IPOs for the past 1.5 years. This makes the recent public-offering filings of Instacart and Klaviyo particularly noteworthy. The volume of startup exits has been notably weak since the end of 2021, marking a shift from previous market conditions. According to Crunchbase, billion-dollar exits, once a hallmark of the post-2013 unicorn era, began to decline in frequency in the final quarter of 2021. This decline continued into 2022 and 2023, with only 13 billion-dollar exits recorded so far this year. More Here

Chamath Palihapitiya's VC firm tried to sell stake worth $312 mn in 100 startups: In an unexpected move, Chamath Palihapitiya's investment firm, Social Capital, attempted to sell its stake worth $312 million in hundreds of startups. The motivation behind this decision remains unclear, as does the completion of these sales. This comes as part of a broader trend where investment firms are looking to return money to their own investors, known as limited partners. Palihapitiya, an early senior executive at Facebook and the founder of The Social+Capital Partnership (now Social Capital), has been a significant player in the startup investment scene, with notable investments in companies like Yammer, Slack, and Twitter. More Here

MoonPay launches venture arm to invest in web3 infra, gaming and fintech: Web3 infrastructure firm MoonPay is expanding its horizons with the launch of MoonPay Ventures, an investment arm dedicated to early-stage startups in web3, gaming, and fintech. With investments ranging from $100,000 to $1 million, MoonPay Ventures aims to accelerate adoption for startups through operations like scaling, distribution, and compressing sales cycles. Already, over 25 companies, including BCB Group, Ledger, and Mythical Games, have benefited from this initiative. More Here

CoinFund Secures $152M To Support Crypto, AI Startups: Venture capital (VC) dollars have been hard to come by lately, but some firms — like CoinFund — continue to push forward. The New York-based VC firm, which currently has more than 100 companies in its portfolio, announced that it raised $152 million in its latest round. The funds will be used to invest in early-stage crypto and artificial intelligence (AI) startups. More Here

Why Israeli VC firm Team8 is eyeing growth investing even as the downturn batters startups: Despite the challenging fundraising environment, Tel Aviv-based firm Team8 is considering expanding into "early growth" or late-stage investment. Managing Partner Rakefet Russak-Aminoach believes that the firm's expertise can help identify and support promising companies that have survived the downturn. While some early investors have moved away from late-stage funding, Team8 sees potential in leveraging its operating platform to benefit startups at later stages. More Here

📢 Top Startups News

Fusion Power Is An Emerging Growing Sector: As we look towards the future, the 2030s could be the decade of fusion power, given the solid foundation it has built over the past few years. With advancements in semiconductors, magnets, and artificial intelligence, fusion power is moving forward at an unprecedented pace. The sector has seen an influx of over $6 billion in investments, thanks to the numerous startups that have risen to the challenge. More Here

Pieces of Advice for Managing Your Startup Finances: Starting and funding a business is a challenging endeavor, requiring strategic financial management. A solid business plan is crucial, serving as a blueprint for financial success and a key to attracting investment. Hiring should be done with precision, focusing on roles that are essential to the business. It's also important to be prepared for unexpected costs, potential failure, and to time revenue and fundraising initiatives wisely. In essence, managing a startup's finances is about turning money into an ally, not an enemy, in the journey towards success. More Here

📢 Featured: Today’s Featured Tweet

98% Of Founders Get The Definition of Product Market Fit Wrong. 

Most founders think that initial signs of repeatable revenue growth, low churn, happy customers, and customer referrals/word of mouth mean that they find the PMF. This is where most founders get wrong. 👇

📢 Top AI News

4 ways to show customers they can trust your generative AI enterprise tool: In the wake of the cloud revolution, we're now witnessing another significant shift with 65% of workers using AI daily. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are poised to revolutionize businesses, but they also bring challenges, such as the risk of "hallucinating" fabricated information or retaining sensitive company data. As there's currently no regulatory body to certify the trustworthiness of generative AI, it's crucial for providers to actively reduce LLM "randomness", stay updated on data privacy regulations, and obtain relevant certifications like SOC2 compliance, ISO/IEC 27001, and GDPR. In this emerging field, providers have the unique opportunity to not only set their own safety benchmarks but also contribute to shaping future regulations. More Here

DeepMind partners with Google Cloud to watermark AI-generated images: Google DeepMind, in collaboration with Google Cloud, is launching SynthID, a tool designed to watermark and identify AI-generated images. This innovative tool, currently in beta for select Vertex AI users, embeds a digital watermark into the pixels of an image, making it virtually imperceptible to the human eye but detectable by an algorithm. More Here

Google Says Over Half of Generative AI Startups Use Its Cloud: Despite the competitive landscape of the AI startup scene, Google continues to hold significant influence, particularly through its cloud computing platform. Over half of venture-backed generative AI startups, including those valued over $1 billion, rely on Google Cloud. Interestingly, a third of these are led by former Google employees. This trend not only underscores Google's continued impact in the AI field but also highlights the growing preference for Google Cloud among startups, thanks to its flexibility and the option to use AI models from various companies. More Here

Microsoft signs new partnership with AI and data analytics startup: Microsoft has announced a five-year agreement to provide nearly 1 million hours of cloud-computing resources to Synthetaic, a startup that leverages AI to analyze data from space and air sensors. This collaboration will see Synthetaic working with Microsoft Azure Space to develop new solutions for processing geospatial, static, and video imagery for various operations including national security, disaster response, and environmental sustainability. More Here

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📢 Top Startup’s Fundraising News

Refiberd sews up $3.4M seed round to use its AI to tackle textile waste: The fashion industry is grappling with a significant waste problem, with over 14 million tons of clothing ending up in landfills or incinerated annually. Refiberd, a startup co-founded by Sarika Bajaj and Tushita Gupta, is aiming to address this issue by developing a technical approach to accurately sort textiles for effective recycling. However, the diverse range of materials and blends used in clothing, such as spandex and layered fabrics, present significant challenges for chemical recycling processes. As the industry recognizes the importance of this issue, Refiberd hopes to fill the gap and enable true textile-to-textile recycling. More Here

Lighter Capital raises $130M credit facility to ignite revenue-based financing for startups: At a time when securing venture capital funds is not especially easy, Lighter Capital continues to provide non-dilutive funding, in the way of revenue-based financing, to technology startups. The firm, led by Melissa Widner, CEO, was founded in 2010 and has since provided hundreds of millions dollars in financing via more than 1,100 rounds of growth capital without startups having to sell equity. It also surpassed $350 million in growth capital. More Here

Allseated, a virtual venue tour and event planning platform, raises $20M: Allseated, a platform that helps event organizers plan and showcase venues virtually, has raised $20 million in a debt round of funding. Founded in 2011, Allseated serves a collaborative space-visualization platform that allows venues and planners to create virtual walkthroughs for prospective clients, including tools for building 360-degree views of buildings and designing floor plans. More Here

TeamSense helps manufacturers keep in touch with deskless workers raised $4M: Deskless workers make up about 70% to 80% of the global workforce. Because they spend most of their time away from a computer, many deskless workers often find it challenging to keep in touch with their employers. TeamSense is an app-free platform designed specifically for hourly employees in the manufacturing sector which lets them manage attendance, talk to managers and access company resources through SMS. The Seattle-based company announced today it has raised $4 million led by Bonfire Ventures with support from Operator Collective. More Here

Flojoy is bringing no-code Python testing to industrial instrumentation raised $1.3M: Whether you’re building a chip or an airplane, you need to measure the effectiveness of the product at each step of the manufacturing process, much like you do with developing software. Flojoy, an early-stage startup, wants to help with a new open source tool that lets companies typically left out of the automated testing process take advantage of no-code Python testing to build test scripts in an automated way. Today the company announced a $1.3 million seed round to build out the vision. More Here

Rockset lands $44M to power real-time search and analytics apps: Rockset, a company building tools to drive real-time search and data analytics, today announced that it raised $44 million — $37 million in equity and $7 million in debt — led by ICON Ventures with participation from Glynn Capital, Four River Partners, K5 Global, Sequoia and Greylock. CEO Venkat Venkataramani says that the new capital, which brings Rockset’s total raised to $105 million, will be put toward R&D, geographic expansion and increasing Rockset’s investment in sales and marketing. More Here

ControlRooms.ai raises $10M for industrial manufacturing troubleshooting platform: Industrial manufacturers face significant unplanned downtime each year, costing an estimated $50 billion in lost productivity and revenue. ControlRooms.ai, an Austin-based startup, aims to revolutionize this process with their AI-powered analytics application, designed to automate industrial troubleshooting. The company, co-founded by AI expert Monte Zweben and Omar A. Talib, recently raised an oversubscribed $10 million Series A round, bringing their total funding to $13.75 million. More Here

🗞️ Interesting Weekday Reading On: Startups, Technology & VC

• 🗃️ YC Startup Index Gives 176% Return Read Here

• 📮 Understand Math Behind Secondary Sales, Measuring Startup Tractions Read More

• 📑 How To Convince Investors That Your Startup Can Give Maximum Return To Them? Read Here

• 📰 Why it's Better To Raise Less Capital In The First Round? Read More

• 📪 What Venture Capital Investors Look for in Early-Stage Startups Read More

• 📜 Do Things That Don’t Scale By Paul Graham Read More

• 📑 Hidden Trap Of Convertible Note and Liquidation Preference Multiples Read Here

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✍️Written By The Venture Crew Team

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