venture capital

Why Q3’s median valuations actually make perfect sense • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 23, 2022Posted in EC venture capital, PitchBook Data, startup valuations, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Valuations have been top of mind for the entire venture industry this year as many VCs try to navigate their overvalued portfolios and founders scramble to conserve cash and grow into their lofty valuations. So one might have predicted that valuations would fall off a cliff this year. But that hasn’t happened because venture investing just isn’t that simple. First, let’s look at the numbers: According to PitchBook data, the median seed deal pre-money valuation in the United States was $10.5 million, up from $9 million last year. The median early-stage valuation through the third quarter of this year was $55 million, up from $44 million last year. The median late-stage valuation was $91 million, down from $100 million in 2021. It might seem silly that valuations are continuing to climb for some stages — especially after investors made it seem like they were crazy for coming in at last year’s prices, and, of course, in some ways, it is — but it also makes a lot of sense. Kyle Stanford, a senior venture capital analyst at PitchBook, told ZebethMedia that for one, we can’t forget about those record levels of dry powder. “There has been such growth over the past few years of the multi-stage investors or Andreessen [Horowitz] and Sequoia that have billion-dollar funds investing in early stage,” Stanford said. “The amount of capital that is still available for early stage is still really high and a lot of investors are still willing to put top dollars into deals.”

VCs continue to pour millions into independent beverage startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 22, 2022Posted in beverages, Commerce, EC Ecommerce and D2C, EC venture capital, eCommerce, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

After seeing a ton of venture capital investment flow into independent beverage startups recently, it was time to take a step back and see if this kind of company actually made sense as a venture investment. For one, the competition for space on grocery store shelves is fierce, eclipsed only by the fact people are finicky. The U.S. Beverage Manufacturing and Filling Locations Database contains nearly 2,500 alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverage manufacturers making everything from beer and soft drinks to coffee and 10,000 flavors of fizzy water. Within the whole beverage sector, functional beverages grew in popularity over the past five years as consumers sought out better-for-you drinks. Most of them include add-ins like vitamins, probiotics and electrolytes and boast lower sugar content and more natural ingredients. This market is also growing fast: Precedence Research estimated the global functional beverages market was valued at $129.3 billion in 2021 and would grow nearly 9% annually through 2030, when it’s forecast to be worth $279.4 billion. These companies don’t usually go public, but often sell to another entity, perhaps a soda conglomerate or even an alcoholic beverage company looking to get into the nonalcoholic space. Opening a fresh can of capital If the amount of capital going into this area is any indication, investment into the sector makes sense. Venture capital firms pumped over $170 million into functional beverage companies in 2018, up $111 million from 2017, according to PitchBook.

Amazon says OEMs won’t build their smart TVs due to ‘concern that Google would retaliate’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 21, 2022Posted in Daily Crunch, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

To get a roundup of ZebethMedia’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Christine is in an airport lounge and Haje is perched on the corner of a cafe bench, as the ZebethMedia team is in transit post-Disrupt today. We miss our work besties already (💯) and are hung over (metaphorically and literally) from an overabundance of wonderfulness this week. Enjoy Daily Crunch, and see y’all next week! Oh, and we know we mentioned this yesterday, but a good thing deserves to be repeated: A huge congrats to Minerva Lithium and their $100,000 Startup Battlefield win! — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 Holding back: Manish has some news from Amazon, which is saying that some hardware vendors are choosing not to form television partnership agreements with the delivery giant over fear of retaliation from Google. Get ready for a price hike: YouTube Premium is planning to raise prices — by $5 in some cases — for subscription plans in more countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Argentina, Ivan reports. What goes up must come down: Another one by our fabulous colleague Manish, who reports that shares of the Indian logistics company fell to an “all-time low” after reporting a not-so-svelte growth report. Startups and VC Draymond Green, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors, says he’s working with well-known investors involved in the tech space. That wasn’t a massive secret — Green has historically been quite public about his investments, like SmileDirectClub — but until ZebethMedia Disrupt, he hadn’t previously named his go-to investing partners, nor made explicit that he’s not planning to start a fund himself, Kyle reports. You can see all of Draymond’s chat (including some interesting conversation about that video that’s been floating about) with Brian. When Parker Conrad founded Rippling in 2016, the HR company initially focused on the process of onboarding employees. It has since evolved, Mary Ann reports. Yesterday, at ZebethMedia Disrupt, Rippling unveiled what Conrad describes as the “biggest launch” of his career — its new global payroll product. You know the drill — five more, count ’em! No, seriously, count ’em. We’re very tired today and may have miscounted. Dear Sophie: How can I launch a startup while on OPT? Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/ZebethMedia Dear Sophie, I’m an international student in the U.S. in F-1 status. I will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in computer science this May and plan to apply for OPT. I want to launch a startup. Can I do that with OPT? What options would I have after OPT to continue growing my company? — Forward-Looking Founder Three more from the TC+ team: ZebethMedia+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Big Tech Inc. What do you say to the company that has nearly everything? Well, Google doesn’t think it has everything when it comes to its presence in India and had some choice words for some of the country’s regulators. In response to yesterday’s $162 million fine, Google fired back at India’s competition regulators, saying that the order is a “major setback for Indian consumers and businesses” and that it “opens serious security risks for Indians who trust Android’s security features.” Manish has more. We also can’t ignore this juicy piece of…💩that came in yesterday. With Elon Musk’s deal to acquire Twitter now seemingly approaching the end, Taylor reports that layoffs at the social media giant might now be larger than originally expected. She writes that cuts at Twitter could be up to 75%. For those counting at home, that is like 5,600 people. Not cool. And we have four more for you:

Black startup founders raised just $187 million in the third quarter • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 21, 2022Posted in black founders, EC DEI, EC venture capital, funding, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

The amount of capital raised by Black entrepreneurs continues to decrease. The latest Crunchbase numbers show that Black founders raised $187 million in Q3, a staggering decline from the nearly $1.1 billion they received in Q3 2021 and a sizable drop from the $594 million the cohort raised in Q2. Black founders raised just 0.12% of the $150.9 billion deployed in Q3. Within that, Black women raised 49% of all the capital allocated to Black founders in Q3, according to Crunchbase, pacing the number at around $91.63 million. To grab crumbs, it’s good, at least, to see that Black men and women appeared to receive nearly equal amounts of funding this quarter, even though the number they split is appalling. Frankly, there are homes worth more than $187 million. Adam Neumann raised more in one round than all Black founders could in one quarter. Adele is worth $220 million. However, these numbers are not necessarily surprising. ZebethMedia reported investors often retreat to their networks amid economic downturns, taking fewer risks on minorities. “When the venture capital industry catches a cold, underrepresented founders catch pneumonia.” Tiana Tukes, investor, Colorful VC Perhaps this is best exemplified by the fact that the capital raised by Black founders this Q3 is roughly on par with the $180 million allocated to the cohort in Q3 2020. However, Black founders were able to raise that $187 million from just 32 deals, compared to 2020, when it took 93 deals to hit $180 million. In total, Black founders have raised a little more than $2 billion in venture capital this year, a decrease from the stunning $4.72 allocated in the record-breaking year that was 2021.

World’s largest Black-led VC fund leads $4M seed round for Nigerian retail automation startup • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Daily Crunch, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

To get a roundup of ZebethMedia’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. What’s uuuuup, you wonderful humans. We’re psyched to be reporting live from ZebethMedia Disrupt — without ignoring the rest of the world, natch. It’s been a super fun day, and we’re here to share some delightful morsels of news and shenanigans with you! — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 Go digital: Manual business processes were the norm, so it’s understandable that stepping away from what you know can be difficult. Enter Bumpa, a Nigerian retail automation platform that wants to do the heavy lifting for companies eyeing more digital operations. Helping it along is $4 million in new capital from Base10 Partners, Tage reports. Holiday, celebrate: The latest Airbnb ads show you can get just about any kind of house — epic pools, sleep on the side of a mountain, you name it — so it’s no surprise that vacation rental startups are popular. Case in point, Holidu grabbed $98 million in new funding to keep growing its vacation rentals business in Europe, Natasha L writes. Delivery system: Tage is back with another top story today, this time on MaxAB’s $40 million raise. The Egyptian e-commerce platform helps facilitate the grocery store relationship with suppliers. They have made 150,000 of those connections since 2018. Startups and VC Nourish Ingredients, a food tech company that creates animal-free fats using synthetic biology, secured $28.6 million in Series A funding, Christine reports. The round was led by Horizons Ventures and supported by Main Sequence Ventures and Hostplus. The multidecade rise in healthcare costs isn’t expected to reverse course any time soon. In search of a fix, Alaffia Health was founded in 2020. It’s one of the startups participating in the ZebethMedia Disrupt Battlefield 200, and it uses machine learning to try to identify fraud, waste and abuse in healthcare claims, Kyle reports. And here’s more from our Greatest Hits album from the past 24 hours: Startup Battlefield It’s day two of Disrupt and that means the second day of the Battlefield competition. Twenty companies pitched in all, and here’s who took the stage today: Ally Robotics: The company has developed a combination hardware and software solution designed to make it easier to deploy these automated solutions for those without coding/robotics experience. Nat4bio: Makes food-grade coating to protect fruit from microscopic threat. Minerva Lithium: Uses absorbent material to change the way we extract lithium. Reverion: Has developed a way to get more electricity out of biogas and existing fuel-cell technology. Incooling: Is building servers that use liquid to cool down. Intropic Materials: Intropic helps single-use plastics decompose from the inside out. BetterData: BetterData taps the blockchain to help create better synthetic data. Labby: Wants to make milk healthier and cows happier with better sensors. Advanced Ionics: Is striving to drive down the price of green hydrogen by slashing how much electricity is needed for electrolysis by as much as 50%. Kayhan Space: Kayhan Space is making orbit safer with timely, automatic collision warnings for satellites. Tune in to ZebethMedia.com tomorrow to watch the finalists pitch one more time before a panel of judges to find out who will take home this year’s Disrupt Cup and $100,000. News drop from Disrupt The Great Migration and the next 10-year cycle in cloud Image Credits: Tim Robberts (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Now that the public cloud market has undergone a correction after years of growth, will seasoned workers look for greener pastures at smaller companies? According to Andy Stinnes, general partner at Cloud Apps Capital Partners, we’re entering a decade-long cycle that will spark a Great Migration of talent. “The answer is clear once you think about it,” he says. “Companies are extending cash runways, and cloud leaders are feeling that pain as they lay off parts of their teams and face even more work and pressure.” A few more for you: ZebethMedia+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Big Tech Inc. Similar to our story from yesterday, Kyle brings us another one about how Adobe continues to unveil new features powered by artificial intelligence, including the ability to paste objects into photos and add realistic lighting and shadows. He mentions that he’s “no Photoshop wizard” but that Adobe told him “that compositing can be a heavily manual, tedious and time-consuming process,” and the new prototype will do away with that. And five more for you: Driving into acquisition: Mullen Automotive acquires ELMS for $240 million in a deal that helps out the bankrupt company, but also enables Mullen to build up to 50,000 electric vehicles each year, Jaclyn reports. Taking on TikTok: Pinterest is having a go at TikTok, of all social media platforms, by partnering with record labels so that users can add popular music to their “Idea Pins.” Sarah has more. Move over drivers, robots coming through: In a sign that the Alphabet subsidiary is ready for prime-time, Waymo tells us it plans to launch a robotaxi service in Los Angeles once it clears some regulatory hurdles, Kirsten writes. Home is where the insurance is: Amazon is entering the home insurance marketplace game in the United Kingdom by launching an insurance comparison site, Ivan reports. Klarna, Klarna, Klarna, Klarna, Klarna Kameleon: It’s been a while since we were able to use that, and it still does not disappoint. The buy now, pay later platform now has a new creator app for retailers and influencers to collaborate on features and shoppable video, Lauren writes.

AI content developer Jasper now valued at $1.5B following capital infusion • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Daily Crunch, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

To get a roundup of ZebethMedia’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. The newsletter is a little later than usual today and for the next three days. Don’t worry, it’s for fun reasons: We want to be the first to tell you about the awesomeness that is our ZebethMedia Disrupt Battlefield companies. Find ’em in our special Battlefield section belooooow! And, this is the first time EVER, that we are writing Daily Crunch, sitting next to each other, IRL. — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 Someone’s having a good day: Jasper, which calls itself an “AI content” developer, raised its first round of funding ever — and a big one at that, at $125 million, to give it a $1.5 billion valuation, Kyle reports. It also comes as the company is in the process of acquiring a grammar- and style-checking platform, Outwrite. Turning renters into owners: Christine provides an update on Landis, which raised $40 million in Series B funding. The company buys homes on behalf of clients while also providing a patch for them to build up their credit and eventually get a mortgage on the home they rent. So, Apple had an event: Romain gives you a look at the new entry-level iPad that he says looks just like the iPad Pro. Alas, it’s also more expensive, but you get a larger screen. Priorities, amirite? Startups and VC Venture capital funds focusing on niche sectors are “in,” according to Connie, and Will Ventures is here for it. Christine reports that the low-flying, Boston-based venture outfit just tripled the size of its second fund to $150 million thanks to its approach of investing in sports technologies with the help of its community of athlete backers who help promote and grow the portfolio companies. Turo, the peer-to-peer car-sharing platform that’s been described as the Airbnb for cars, will expand to Australia before the end of the year, Rebecca reports. Local car owners in all major cities, including Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane, can join the waitlist on Turo’s website. Okay, fine, have a few more: News Drops from Disrupt Crypto accelerator: Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon dishes to Anita about a “Crypto Startup School,” an inaugural accelerator program that will kick off next year in Los Angeles. He also provided more info on the firm’s recent giant investment in our favorite controversial founder, Adam Neumann.Stealthy startup: Both Harri and Tim sat in on Ingrid‘s interview with Marc Lore, who disclosed a new sports ticketing startup that he is working on called Jump Platforms and provided some insight on the Diapers.com sale to Amazon, calling it a “forced transaction.”On cloud nine: Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu spoke to Amanda about opening a new gaming studio in SoCal and getting into cloud gaming. Startup Battlefield It’s Disruuuuuupt! We are so excited we can barely sit still. Here’s the first batch of Battlefield companies that pitched onstage on this fine California Tuesday — and if you’re curious, Neesha revealed the 20 companies that are presenting on the Disrupt Stage earlier today. Here’s the first batch that pitched today: NXgenPort: A Saint Paul, Minnesota–based startup that’s looking to remotely monitor cancer patients in between doctor visits using a port catheter. Omneky: Leverages OpenAI’s DALLE-2 and GPT-3 models to generate visuals and text that can be used in ads for social platforms. Circular Genomics: Claims its new form of genetic testing can identify which medications will work for a patient in a fraction of that time. Anthill: Connects frontline workers to company resources through text messaging. AppMap: Was built on the simple idea that developers should be able to see the behavior of software as they write it so they can prevent problems when the software runs. Mother Honestly: New commerce offering aims to give employees more freedom when it comes to caregiving spending. Digest.ai: Beyond flash cards to create an AI dialogue assistant that we can all carry around on our phones. Swap Robotics: Paving the way for electric solar vegetation cuts and sidewalk snow plowing. Hormona: Hopes to encourage people with periods to do just that — add hormone-monitoring to their quantified health mix. Staax: Thinks peer-to-peer payments can onboard a new generation of stock investors. How to combine PLG and enterprise sales to improve the funnel and drive bottom-line growth Image Credits: Richard Drury (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Products and services that sell themselves sound great, but product-led growth (PLG) startups still launch marketing campaigns and hire sales teams. Combining PLG with traditional sales-led growth efforts can raise retention and acquisition to the next level, says Kate Ahlering, chief revenue officer at Calendly. In this TC+ guest post, Ahlering lays out multiple strategies that will help teams implement a “hybrid GTM strategy,” which includes suggestions for leveraging PLG data and optimizing success metrics. Three more from the TC+ team: ZebethMedia+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Big Tech Inc. We have even more for you from Apple’s surprise October event. Brian takes a look at the company’s new M2 iPad Pro, which got a refresh and arrives October 26. He talks about chips and inches, and a pencil…you get the picture. Even more Apple for you to bite into: Since we have all the Battlefield companies for your reading pleasure, here are just a few more:

Kanye West reaches agreement to acquire social media platform Parler • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Daily Crunch, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

To get a roundup of ZebethMedia’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Greetings from the ZebethMedia office! Yes, it turns out we have an office, even though we haven’t seen the inside of it for a good long stretch. We are here doing some stretches ahead of Disrupt kicking off tomorrow. Some of us have gotten to take a sneaky peek inside the venue, and it looks amazing. “Squeeeeee!” as (some of) the kids say these days. — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 “That, that, that don’t kill me, can only make me stronger”: Two of our top stories for today centered on the same topic — Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, surprising us all by announcing he was going to buy the conservative social media site Parler. Manish has the basics on the deal. More on Ye: Meanwhile, Darrell takes a look at how similar the deal for Ye to buy Parler is to Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter. Hint: billionaire tantrums. Flipping over the metaverse: Manish had yet another chart-topper today. Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart unveiled Flipverse, its metaverse shopping experience that is even gamified so users can capture loyalty points called Supercoins. Startups and VC Can we just have a little moment and celebrate Mary Ann and her fantastic fintech newsletter, The Interchange? She puts the Daily Crunch team to shame with her deep analysis and summary of what’s moving and shaking in the world of finance, and it’s always an incredible read. This week’s edition (“Even decacorns have their challenge”) was particularly brilliant. Check it out, and if you want to see the whole backlog, there’s a clicky-link for that, too. We know we have a whole section for TC+ below, but we particularly wanted to highlight Natasha M’s piece about a slew of CFOs at high-profile companies quitting, and what that says about the overall ecosystem. In Are CFOs OK? (Answer: Yes, but CEOs? That’s complicated), she breaks it down in classic Natasha style. Ugh, we love our co-workers. Can you tell? Let’s dig through the pile of news and see what else there is: 2023 VC predictions: Finding an exit from the ‘messy middle’ Image Credits: Artur Debat (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Eric Tarczynski, managing partner and founder of Contrary Capital, says we are entering a “messy middle” era for venture capital: “Companies can no longer raise $5 million to $10 million seed rounds with nothing but a deck and the assumption that revenue multiples will skyrocket beyond historical norms,” he writes in a TC+ guest post. Looking ahead to 2023, Tarczynski foresees an environment where “the VC landscape has started to bifurcate” as “slow M&A activity and no IPOs” and “good companies in ‘safe’ industries” temper investor expectations. Three more from the TC+ team: ZebethMedia+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Big Tech Inc. If you love shopping and love shopping with discounts, PayPal has some news for you. The payments giant replaces its Honey Gold rewards program with PayPal Rewards, which Sarah writes “allows customers to redeem their points for cash, gift cards or PayPal shopping credits. With the new PayPal Rewards, consumers will be able to track and redeem their points directly inside the PayPal app, and will have new ways to earn.” And we have five more for you:

Don’t let today’s software rally improve your mood • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in EC venture capital, Startups, stocks, tech stocks, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

After a rough year in the public markets, you might take today’s brilliant trading as good news. Any positive price movement is a win, right? Kinda. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index rose 3.4% today, while other major U.S. indices jumped smaller amounts in a hall-of-fame start to the trading week. (That the markets are turning up for Disrupt is rather kind, I must admit.) Even more important to the tech industry, however, is sector-specific news. Observe: Good news? Sure, but only if you are into squashy cats. Let me explain. When the value of a particular commodity or security falls sharply, it often follows up its declines by bouncing back a little. If the underlying forces that drove the security negative remain in place, such rebounds often prove short-lived, and not indicative of the actual “bottom” of any particular trading range. This is often called, somewhat inartfully, a “dead cat bounce,” or more specifically, the sort of modest rebound that a cat’s corpse might manage if it hit concrete after falling from a high window.

Finding an exit from the ‘messy middle’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in 2023, Column, EC Column, EC venture capital, fundraising, limited partners, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Eric Tarczynski Contributor More posts by this contributor University entrepreneurship — without the university To predict what 2023 will look like for venture capital, we need to start by understanding where we are now. We’re entering a messy middle where prices continue to drop and the “2021” deal, industry slang for an investment made at an exorbitant price, is long gone. Companies can no longer raise $5 million to $10 million seed rounds with nothing but a deck and the assumption that revenue multiples will skyrocket beyond historical norms. The VC landscape has started to bifurcate, and it will continue to do so during 2023 both for fundraising and investments. Fundraising: A tale of two worlds Even though the best vintages originate during downturns, it’s difficult to allocate to something you’re already substantially overexposed to. In 2023, we will see two worlds emerge. The companies with the best talent, products and positioning will command capital at normalized market prices, and everyone else will experience a depressed market. Due to the Fed’s rate hikes and geopolitical tensions, the macro environment has slowed and inflation hit record levels. Investor confidence is down across the board and growth rounds are largely dead on arrival, with both seed and Series A valuations down by 30%-50%. It’s now questionable to pump money into a company that doesn’t have the traction to back up its worth. But this doesn’t mean all deals are off. Venture firms still have tens of billions of dollars to deploy, but they’re more hesitant about doing so now — growth, in particular, is experiencing a hanging-around-the-hoop effect that is likely to linger as the overall macro environment stays depressed.

Carving out conviction around the future of AI with Sarah Guo • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 15, 2022Posted in artificial intelligence, EC venture capital, Sarah Guo, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

There’s no better way to show you have high conviction in yourself as an investor than being the biggest LP in your $101 million fund, right? Especially if you name your firm Conviction, as Sarah Guo did after leaving Greylock following a decade of investing for the well-known venture group. Last week, she announced that she raised $101 million for her new fund to back companies that are building artificial intelligence and what she describes as software 3.0. Guo spoke to ZebethMedia’s Equity podcast, co-hosted by Natasha Mascarenhas and Alex Wilhelm, about her inaugural fund and the broader market that she is investing in today. The entire conversation is live now wherever you find podcasts, so take a listen if you haven’t yet. Below we extracted four key excerpts from the interview to discuss further. Guo’s comments were edited lightly for clarity. Think of venture in innings Part of the allure of startups is that when things don’t go wrong, which they often do, you might just find yourself as an early employee of a rocket ship. That counts in VC, too, of course, if you were the first person to back a company like Airtable or see the power of connected fitness. But what happens when you want to disrupt a category that has been around the block a few times? Guo shared her framework around venture innings, and how that plays a role in her new focus areas at Conviction: