The Road Ahead
Theme of the Week
The amount of liquidity available to both VCs and startups remains a focal point in the media, as funding for high-quality startups is still available despite an overall contraction. News coverage also focuses on where we are in the business cycle.
Market Insights
VCs invested $76 billion into global startups in Q1 2023, down 53% YoY from Q1 2022’s $162 million invested and nearly equal to Q4 2022’s $77 billion invested. The quarter’s total was also helped by OpenAI’s $10 billion and Stripe’s $6.5 billion funding rounds. When broken out by stage, the quarter saw seed funding drop 44% YoY to $6.9 billion, early-stage drop 54% YoY to $25.6 billion, and late-stage ~53% YoY to $43 million (Pipe Newsletter)
The State of Startup Funding in 2023 (The Pragmatic Engineer)
SaaS retention benchmarks: How does your business stack up? (TechCrunch)
US venture capital returns by Cambridge Associates (LinkedIn – Marcelino Pantoja)
A deep dive into the European ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) market (tech.eu)
FDIC makes public March enforcement actions – fintech/bank partnership model (LinkedIn – Todd Baker)
Editorials
Lesson from Silicon Valley Bank (Memos from Howard Marks)
Elon Musk revives old banking dream in pursuing $250 billion Twitter valuation (WSJ)
VCs are paying up as they scramble to get in on generative A.I. (Fortune)
VC Fundraises
Arthur Ventures raises $470M for new fund, despite shakeups from SVB, crypto (BizJournal)
Climate tech VC firm closes $300M fund after LPs push for broader investment opportunities (TechCrunch)
Vesey Ventures closes on $78M debut fund to back early-stage fintech startups (TechCrunch)
For Founders
The dry powder fallacy: why there is 50% less startup capital than we think (Jackie Dimonte)
Micro-fund managers feel deflated as LPs cool on VC (Pitchbook)
Venture round sizes, pre-pandemic to now (LinkedIn – Peter Walker)
VC Insights
Seed-stage startups in 2017 – where are they now? (LinkedIn – Peter Walker)
Financial services will embrace generative AI faster than you think (a16z)
Lessons from Ancient Rome: how banks can learn to love start-ups (BCV – Matt Harris)
The share of down rounds is 3.5x higher than Q1 2022 (LinkedIn – Rex Salisbury)
Notable Capital Raises
‘Amex-meets-SecretNYC for Gen-Z’ startup raises $15.4M equity round to expand globally (TechCrunch)
Razor Group closes Series C at $88M, acquires Stryze to consolidate (TechCrunch)
Bitcoin financial services firm Unchained Capital raises $60M (CoinDesk)
Super.com targets its $85M equity, debt raise into new savings super app (TechCrunch)
GiGstreem, a provider of residential and commercial broadband networks, raises $59M (Commercial Observer)
Mexico’s Clara secures $60M in equity funding round led by GGV Capital (Fintech Futures)