The Road Ahead
Theme of the Week
This week saw well-established venture firms continue raising significant funds for investing in both established and emerging opportunities. It's anticipated that these funds will be deployed at a slower pace compared to previous years, as highlighted by Peter Walker from Carta, this further substantiates the market view of a challenging fundraising environment going forward, even from top performers.
Market Insights
Of ~500 startups surveyed by Pilot, around half have over 12 months of cash runway, while 21% have less than six months of reserves. The majority of founders surveyed believe the funding environment will bounce back in time for them to raise a round, with ~ 75% expecting recovery by Q2 2024 or sooner (Pipe Newsletter)
Survey results: The state of venture capital in 2023 (Juniper Square)
These 3 charts show it’s not easy being a seed startup these days (Crunchbase)
How are startup valuations faring so far in Q2 (LinkedIn – Peter Walker)
Editorials
Private lenders won’t fill the venture debt gap left by SVB (TechCrunch)
Fintech giant Stripe is getting into the credit card game (TechCrunch)
VC Fundraises
David Sacks’ Craft Ventures raises more than $1.6bn (Venture Capital Journal)
Pear VC closes an oversubscribed $432 million seed fund (Businesswire)
ffVC, a New York- and Warsaw-based VC firm, launches a new $65M fund (TechCrunch)
Isomer Capital – backer of many of Europe’s top VCs – does first close of new €250m fund (Sifted)
Antler branches out from pre-seed to later-stage investing with $285M fund (TechCrunch)
For Founders
Bridge rounds are taking more and more share (LinkedIn – Peter Walker)
When are startups acquired; stratified by funding round? (LinkedIn – Peter Walker)
VC Insights
Negative CAC & the next generation of fintech (Medium – FirstMark)
Greycroft co-founder Ian Sigalow on investing $1B in this market (TechCrunch)
Notable Capital Raises
Vartana lands a $20M investment to scale its sales closing platform (TechCrunch)
Rent reporting platform Boom raises $4.5M in seed round (HousingWire)
Bonside launches with $4.35M to provide growth capital to brick-and-mortar businesses (TechCrunch)
Griffin, a London-based provider of a full-stack banking service, raised $13.5M (Finsmes)