Venture

Mason raises $7.5M seed round to scale its no-code commerce engine • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 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. Hello! And it’s Thursday! We are all waiting with bated breath for the latest installment of “Will Elon Actually Buy Twitter or Will He Squirrel Out of It” — the miniseries of indeterminate length and too many twists and turns to enumerate. Supposedly we’ll learn more tomorrow, but who knows. Also, what is time? And if we all leave Twitter in droves, where will we discuss all of this drama? Our fave little story today was Romain’s, covering these adorable houseplants that can be used as air purifiers. Haje is out tomorrow, so a very happy weekend from him, and Christine will look after all your crunchy needs tomorrow. Adios! — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 Ixnay on the self-drivay: Darrell has had it with all the speculation and calls it: “Truly autonomous vehicles just aren’t going to happen. The evidence pointing to this has been mounting for years now, if not decades, but it’s now tipped the balance to where it’s hard to ignore for a reasoned observer — even one like myself who has previously been very optimistic about self-driving prospects,” he writes. Darrell, we love you, and we hope you’ve never been more wrong. Closing the barn after the horse has bolted: We also have the latest on Elon Musk after his now-famous Twitter office sink video: Amanda reports on his open letter to Twitter advertisers that people have it all wrong about why he is buying the social media giant, but also that Twitter cannot become “a free-for-all hellscape.” Rebecca writes that Musk now says he won’t fire 75% of Twitter’s staff. Avoiding that seller’s tax: Jagmeet writes that sellers on Amazon have to meet certain requirements to sell on the platform, but a startup called Mason is out to change that. The India- and California-based startup secured $7.5 million in fresh funding, led by Accel and Ideaspring Capital, to offer an Amazon-like selling experience but without requiring that “Amazon tax.” Startups and VC There’s a ton of new funds happening all at once, seemingly. Christine reports that Streamlined Ventures, led by Ullas Naik, secured $140 million in new capital commitments for its two newest funds. Haje reports that Human Impact Capital is a new $50 million fund investing in social impact startups, and Mike notes that Paris-based VC Satgana completes the first close of its €30 million fund to back climate tech startups. Meanwhile, there were a bunch of mega-rounds that put the actual investment funds to shame; it’s a weird world when you can’t skim the headline numbers to figure out whether it’s a company raising a round or a new fund closing. We’re collecting a handful of ’em below. 5 tips for launching in a crowded web3 gaming market Image Credits: Chelsea Sampson (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Every online product requires some network effect, but gaming is unique: Without large, loyal and enthusiastic customers, there’s no way to build products that can be monetized. Play-to-earn games (P2E) are particularly susceptible to this problem, which is why “building a game that succeeds in the long term means developing monetization strategies that can weather market ebbs and flows,” says Corey Wilton, co-founder and CEO of Mirai Labs, the gaming studio behind Pegaxy. In this primer for P2E founders, Wilton shares suggestions for how to approach investors, explains why tokens are not a reliable fundraising vehicle and discusses the recent “shift toward Web 2.0 monetization.” 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. The New York Post had to do some deleting today after it was discovered that someone hacked into both the newspaper’s website and its Twitter account, Zack reports. The article headlines in question were racist and sexually violent in nature, and the newspaper told ZebethMedia that an employee was to blame for the incident but did not go into further details on how it came to that conclusion. Also, our team paid attention to earnings so you didn’t have to. Rebecca has a look into Ford’s third-quarter earnings, which she reports took a $2.7 billion hit related to Argo AI, which we reported yesterday was being shut down. Meanwhile, over at Meta, Amanda writes that Meta had yet another decline in its third-quarter revenue. And now we have three more for you: Googling: Google Cloud has entered web3 territory with a managed blockchain node service by taking on the heavy lifting there so that developers can do their thing, Ron reports. Meanwhile, Manish has details on a $100 million acquisition the search engine giant made in Alter, an AI avatar startup. On an acquisition roll: Ron also reported on yet another Thoma Bravo acquisition. This time, it and Sunstone Partners announced the proposed acquisition of UserTesting for $1.3 billion. The company plans to combine it with its UserZoom, another company Thoma Bravo acquired in 2021. Get your health advice here: YouTube says it will begin certifying channels for licensed health professionals, like doctors, nurses or therapists, who produce health-related content, Ivan writes.

How to raise funds when you aren’t in the Bay Area • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, EC venture capital, fundraising, remote work, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

Perhaps sitting perched somewhere in sunny Miami, Florida, is a founder wondering the best ways to fundraise for a company when situated outside a traditional tech hub like the Bay Area. They need not worry. Last week, Mike Asem from M25, Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund and Accel’s Rich Wong answered that question at ZebethMedia Disrupt. The consensus of the venture capitalists was that remote work accelerated the trend of VCs looking at emerging markets, founders and companies throughout the nation. That and social media — specifically Twitter — have made it easier to connect with people. To some, sliding into an investor’s DMs can be just as legitimate as diving into one’s network for a warm intro. “We noticed a couple of years ago, in looking at our own analytics, that most of our deals were coming through Twitter,” Yin said at Disrupt. “If I look at my portfolio, my companies who are active on Twitter actually do have an easier time raising money because investors feel like they know them.”

The UserTesting sale to private equity is bad news for unicorns • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in EC venture capital, Startups, Sunstone Partners, thoma bravo, user testing, VentureNo Comments

News broke this morning that UserTesting, a former startup that went public last year, is selling to private equity (Thoma Bravo, Sunstone Partners) for $1.3 billion, or $7.50 per share in cash. The deal, expected to close in the first half of 2023, does include a “go-shop” period, in case a better deal crops up. Holders of UserTesting shares have some cause for joy. The customer insight platform is selling for what it describes as a “premium of approximately 94% over [its] closing stock price” yesterday. As a result, shares of UserTesting soared today as investors digested the news. UserTesting dropped earnings this morning in conjunction with the deal news, giving us a window into its health. We can cross those numbers with the final price that UserTesting will command in the sale to improve our understanding of the value of smaller technology companies — at least when compared to the giants of their industry. The lessons thereof are pretty simple and not great for yet-private unicorns. Looking at the deal, it’s clear that single-digit SaaS multiples are not merely real but durable. UserTesting is exiting at a nearly 100% premium for a fraction of the price at which it went public last year. Unless the company is a financial mess, that’s terrifying for unicorns that raised money last year.

3 VCs explain how founders can stand out when pitching • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, EC venture capital, fundraising tactics, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

Venture capitalists get flooded with startup pitches, which can make it difficult for founders, especially those building in crowded categories, to stand out. And while every investor is looking for something different, there are ways founders can improve their chances of getting noticed. Speaking at last weeks’ Disrupt 2022 conference, investors Annie Case, a partner at Kleiner Perkins; Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures; and Jomayra Herrera, partner at Reach Capital, said that the founders who manage to capture their attention are the ones who come to the pitch process prepared. Of course, this could mean a lot of things. Case said that it’s incredibly helpful when founders help investors prepare for their pitch meeting. When founders send over information before the pitch, or offer a preview of the deck, she can to go beyond surface-level questions right away, which leaves more time for in-depth questions, she said. That allows her to walk away from the meeting with more information, which could help a founder get a check down the line. If you’re starting a company, and there are three or four other companies that people would look at, I expect you to know intimate details about them. Sheel Mohnot, co-founder, Better Tomorrow Ventures For Herrera, just sending over a partial or basic pitch deck, or a demo, if relevant, can be wildly helpful. “I generally recommend having almost like a teaser version of the deck with enough data and information to give us a sense of where you are in terms of the journey of your company,” Herrera said. “Just enough information so that we come prepared to the meeting.” The three investors agreed that founders should come to the pitch meeting ready to answer questions about the team, progress and TAM. Mohnot said it’s a red flag when companies don’t seem to have thought through these potential questions, especially when it comes to competition. “If you’re starting a company, and there are three or four other companies that people would look at [in the space], I expect you to know intimate details about those companies,” Mohnot said.

The lack of VC funding to women is a Western societal shortfall • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in EC DEI, EC venture capital, Europe, Startups, Venture, venture funding, womenNo Comments

The issue of women startup founders not receiving equitable venture funding is a shortfall of the West: It’s here, everywhere in the U.S., and over there, all throughout Europe. It’s hard to say that some of these metrics represent investors simply pulling back when data shows the bias has historical precedence. Even in 2008, all-women U.S. founding teams raised 1.2% of all venture capital, according to PitchBook data. In 2012, they raised 1.8%, then 1.7% in 2016. If anything, 2021 was the anomaly, which saw 2.3% of venture dollars allocated to all-female U.S. teams. Today, that number is tracking at 1.9% so far, which is nearly on par with what, typically, always has been. That the solution is so simple — cutting more checks to women — highlights the discriminatory ideological strongholds that our society continues to impose on us. In Europe, the story is quite similar, although 2020 was the standout year that saw women raise 2.4% of all venture capital on the continent. Last year paints a more realistic picture: All-women teams raised only 1.1% of all venture funds in Europe, a number on par with what they raised in 2017, 2018, and 2019, which saw these teams pick up 1.5%, 1.8%, and 1.5% of all venture capital, respectively, as previously reported by ZebethMedia. The inequality gap is failing to move in a meaningful direction. It’s no coincidence that our societies, with frameworks and ideological mores hand-crafted with sexism and misogynoir, have made little progress toward equitable change. There are two concurrent narratives here: In one, the data reflects how investors, the men in charge, truly feel about economic gender equality. At the same time, the numbers are a byproduct of our Western society, one that is still beholden to excluding and devaluing women, one that relishes their treatment as second-class citizens, rendering their dreams irrelevant.

Solo GP secures $140M for fifth seed, third opportunity funds • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Enterprise, solo GP, streamlined ventures, Ullas Naik, VentureNo Comments

Streamlined Ventures, led by Ullas Naik, secured $140 million in new capital commitments for its two newest funds. This brings the total funds managed to eight with the assets under management reaching about $325 million. Institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals pumped $102 million into the firm’s fifth seed fund, which targets startups focused on data science, AI, software automation, APIs and Web 2.5. The second is $36 million into a third opportunity fund that invests in mid-stage financings of seed-stage companies from prior seed funds. Naik is a solo general partner who started Streamlined Ventures in 2011, but prior to starting his own firm, had been in both angel investing and venture capital for more than 25 years. He was also a co-founder of the investment firm Cota Capital and spent a large chunk of time at Globespan Capital. In the past 11 years, Streamlined has had its hand in the seed financings of such companies as DoorDash, AppLovin, Forge, Rigetti and Rappi. Naik told ZebethMedia that 16 companies crossed $1 billion in value, with three of them over the $10 billion valuation mark. He has already deployed some of the capital from the new seed fund in companies, including Ratio, byCore, fun.xyz, Haystacks.ai, Precog and FenixCommerce. He intends to invest in 30 to 35 companies with this new fund. Naik sat down with me to talk about the new funds, the fundraising environment and why he decided to go it alone — he did admit that it was difficult for limited partners to initially embrace the idea. However, it’s clear that changed, enabling him to start with $33 million for his first fund and make his way up to $102 million with this latest one. The following was lightly edited for clarity and length. ZebethMedia: A lot of solo GPs start off that way, but don’t intend to stay that way. Why have you decided that was best for you? Naik: Part of the reason I started off as a solo GP is because I’ve been in partnerships in the past. This is my third venture firm that I’m helping build. The other two I did with partners, and so I understand the pluses and minuses that come with having a partnership. I was moving with a certain velocity and assumed that having a partner in the mix would just slow me down, and it actually has been the case. We have built this platform at such a velocity over the span of 10 years, and I don’t think that would be possible if I had a partnership that was imposing “checks and balances” on my instincts. Now, if I was a new entrant into venture, the idea of having partners makes complete sense because you do want checks and balances on your behavior because your instincts haven’t been honed yet. In my case, I felt comfortable and confident in my instincts that it made sense to actually stay solo and accelerate, which is exactly what we did, and so far it’s been wonderful. What was the fundraising environment like for you raising these two funds? We closed the seed fund in May or June, but the bulk of it got raised when things were still relatively good. I think I’d already started to see the environment tighten, even when we were raising our seed fund, and so I think we may have been one of the last few that kind of made it through, but we definitely felt it on the opportunity fund. We were raising $40 million and we would have gone up to $50 million. I could sense that limited partners were having a harder time and were hurt by what’s happening in the public markets. It was just a question of rebalancing, where to allocate capital and everybody was in “risk off” mode. What were some of the concerns from LPs this time around? There is no doubt that innovation and disruption will continue with software, and I don’t think that anybody doubted that. Where they were more concerned is what happens with the current monetary policy. With inflation, a potential recession, implications for earnings and implications for the ability of our software companies to sell into our customers, which are mostly B2B businesses. The only way to address that is to say, “well, that is fair, but that’s probably not the likely scenario.” Valuations are ultimately coming down, and that’s why we’re buying low. However, we’ll be selling probably in four or five years. This environment is not going to persist. In about two or three years, all this will have been a memory, a bad memory, but a memory. Are you looking at founders in a different way at all given the current fundraising environment? There’s a temptation to solve for more traction, which of course we look at, but at the end of the day, we’re betting on big market opportunities with founders who think in an uncapped manner. Almost every company we’ve invested in has that mix of things. Are you doing anything different with these funds that you have previously done? We generally tend to be the first money into those companies, but in today’s environment, I don’t have to be the first money. I can wait for a seed extension round and invest in the seed extension at the prior valuations. Now we get a lot more traction for the same valuation. You invest mainly in data science, AI, software, etc. Are there industries that you are shying away from or staying away from? In terms of vertical markets, like fintech, insuretech or health tech, we’re looking at everything, and we still continue to. We’re doing this speculative phase on web3. We invested in a few web3 companies, but only in companies where we saw true value transfer, like in gaming or DeFi. The bar is kind of high around web3 and it’s an area where I’m sort of deploying dollars much slower. How

Mattilda wants to take over payment collection for Latin America’s private schools • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Fintech, FinTech Collective, mattilda, Mexico, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Digital payments are gaining momentum in Latin America, and startups like Mexico-based mattilda are putting their spin on streamlining financial and administrative processes for private schools while also offering credit backed by future school fees. The company was founded in 2022 by José Agote, Jesús Lanza, Juan Pablo Bravo, Adrián Garza and Ileana Gómez. Agote, Lanza and Bravo all previously worked together at Lottus Education, a university-focused educational platform in Mexico. It’s forecasted that cashless payments in Latin America will double by 2030. Debit cards are used a majority of the time, with cash a close second, according to reports. Most schools accept bank transfers and debit card payments, but are not set up for those to be made other than by driving over to the school with a card in hand. Schools also do not have an easy way to see who was still missing payments, CEO Agote said. It was while at Lottus that they saw how difficult it was for private schools to perform collections and get financing. In the United States, most private schools charge per semester. Parents can take out loans to pay for school in advance and the bank will assume the risk rather than the school. In Latin America, many of the payments are month to month, and if payment is not made, the school is the one to spend time contacting parents to collect that payment. “There is a fault in the system with schools nowadays and they’re painfully aware of it,” Agote told ZebethMedia. “The main problem is that these collection cycles are much longer than what people expect.” He explained what ends up happening is that, on average, 20% of the parents don’t pay by the due date and the school spends the next part of the month, if not more, trying to collect. For example, a school with 300 students will send 300 invoices then have to send out 300 follow-ups while also reconciling 300 payments each month. Here’s where mattilda comes in: the company provides a SaaS tool that enables parents to get a personalized payment link via email or WhatsApp and can then make tuition payments in a number of ways, including debit cards, credit cards, bank transfers and flexible credit lines, in seconds. Mattilda also manages communication with students’ families while also offering a hub for parents to easily access relevant documents and information pertaining to payments. In addition, it offers loans to schools based on their future school fees. “It’s hard for schools to get loans because banks will never execute on those assets,” Agote said. “There’s a lot of opportunity for investment in education, and no one is providing capital to these institutions, or if they are, they’re charging ridiculous rates like 30%.” Rather, Agote said mattilda is comfortable advancing the tuition payments, which means the company takes on the risk if payment is not made, but gets compensated through the advancement when they do. It is also charging cheaper lending rates, around 18% to 20%, than the banks. In addition, the company makes money on the receivables, which it buys for below face value, he added. So far, mattilda is working with 17 schools accounting for some 9,000 students, which Agote said will become 24 schools and close to 14,000 students as of November 1. Schools using mattilda average an 85% collection rate, versus the market standard rate of 70%, which he attributed to the removal of barriers to make the payment. Helping private schools with their payments is an area where startups are blooming across Latin America. Earlier this month, we reported on Argentina-based Fidu, which raised $5 million and is working with 1,000 schools. Its approach, as Natasha Mascarenhas reported, is to “build a new operating system for LatAm schools so that institutions can digitally manage everything from finances to school-wide announcements.” The company is also the latest to secure capital, raising $10 million in seed funding led by FinTech Collective. Also participating in the round was a group of investors including DILA Capital, QED Investors, GSV Ventures, Picus Capital, Emerge Education, SMP and Xochi Ventures. Carlos Alonso-Torras, head of emerging markets at FinTech Collective, told ZebethMedia via email that he heard about mattilda through an angel investor friend that had been one of the first checks in. What stood out to him initially was the “quality of the founding team.” He decided to invest when he saw how well the team was able to recruit some key hires and were responsive to recommendations on how to improve in skillset areas where they were weaker. “On the back of Lottus Education’s success, they have a unique level of nuance in their understanding of the education space, and a powerful network that can result in partnerships conducive to hyper scaling in Spanish-speaking Latin America — several are already in place,” Alonso-Torras said. “Furthermore, they are very knowledgeable of the higher education space, which opens a frontier, so to speak, that other models in LatAm within this vertical haven’t successfully tapped into yet.” Mattilda intends to deploy the new funds into expansion into other Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, lending to schools and development of new products. Agote said there are more than 5 million students in Mexico accounting for $15 billion in tuition, so the company has a long way to go as it works to target over 30,000 schools. There are also plans for creating a marketplace so schools can find better prices for items like laptops, uniforms lab and sports equipment and even desks and blackboards. “We’re still scratching the surface in terms of penetration in Mexico and the marketplace,” he added. “We have those two different verticals we are targeting for the future of the company, and I think we can pursue both at the same time.”

Human Impact Capital is a new $50M fund investing in social impact startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in EnjoyVenture, Germany, Redstone, social impact, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Redstone and EnjoyVenture have combined forces to create Human Impact Capital (HIC), Germany’s first dedicated scial impact VC fund. The fund will deploy cash into digital business models focusing on health, education and “living,” and explicitly invests to have an impact along sustainable development goals. To HIC, this means “No Poverty, Good Health and Wellbeing, Quality Education, Gender Equality and Reduced Inequalities.” I spoke with the fund’s manager, Lucas Paul, to find out what drove the creation of the fund and its investment thesis. “We are convinced that innovation is key to overcoming the biggest social challenges of our time, and we are dedicated to contributing to a better future and supporting innovation through investments in social impact startups,” said Paul in an interview with ZebethMedia. “Entrepreneurs providing solutions to these social problems will advance our society and lay the foundation for the generations to come. While impact VC investments are on the rise, 75% of those flow into environmental topics.” For the initial closing, the fund decided to partner with strategic anchor investors having strong ties to the social sector. Among others, the Bank für Sozialwirtschaft, Germany’s leading bank for the social sector, committed substantially to HIC, fund reps told me. The fund aims to invest in digital business models that tackle society’s biggest challenges, typically investing between €500,000 and €1.5 million. The firm focuses on early-stage startups in Europe, and reserves more than 60% of its commitments to follow-on investments. “We firmly believe that economic profit and positive impact mutually reinforce each other and will accelerate at scale. We’d like to prove this fundamental belief and show that we’re able to generate above-average returns for our investors while maximizing the social impact of our investments,” Paul said. “Ideally, this concept is proven and widely accepted 10 years from now, which would make the world a better place.” One of the areas where the firm believes it can have an impact, and where it is actively seeking to invest, is in technologies that make aging smoother. “One element that is a common characteristic of all Western society is an aging population. Access to this growing target group is crucial today and will become even more important in the future. The challenge needs to be faced now. We currently do not see a lot of models that have solved the problem of accessing this group and of including them in an ever-changing jungle of digital solutions,” said Paul. “Most digital startups simply ignore people older than 50 within their target group and are missing out on enormous revenue potential while the quality of life of the elderly stagnates. We’d like to see more ambitious founding teams working on solutions for the elderly to ensure health care, to protect the aging population while limiting loneliness.”

GenZero’s Frederick Teo on “limitless” opportunities in climate tech • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Climate, climate tech, GenZero, Singapore, sosv, Southeast Asia, temasek, VentureNo Comments

2050 is an important year for climate tech, with the Paris Agreement calling for emissions to reach net zero by then. In a conversation with GenZero’s Frederick Teo for SOSV’s Climate Tech Summit, we talked about realistic paths to hitting that goal and how startups can tackle what Teo called one of the most existentialist challenges of our generation. GenZero is a $3.6 billion investment company that is backed by Temasek, already known for its climate investing. Teo talked about how it gauges companies before investing, supporting nascent technologies and solutions in the space and what startups can tackle in the next two decades. This Q&A was edited for length, and you can watch the full conversation here or at the bottom of the article. TC: GenZero’s initial commit is from Temasek, which was already a leader in global investing when it announced GenZero in June. It’s a wholly-owned company of Temasek, so why did Temasek decide to start GenZero and what is GenZero doing that Temasek isn’t already? FT: Temasek, as you know, has already taken a lot of steps in the past few years into making investments into sustainability, as well as clean energy and climate-related spaces. It is important for us to think about how to deploy capital in this space because obviously all of us are aware of the climate emergency, the fact that this is actually likely to be one of the most existentialist challenges of our generation. It is important for us to be able to find solutions that can actually address many of these things like global warming, sea level rises, the challenges of food production in a sustainable way. So we wanted to be able to have a dedicated capability to access some of these decarbonization opportunities, and Temasek decided to park aside a sizable amount of capital to be able to develop a team that would be able to focus on issues like carbon markets, decarbonization technologies as well as nature solutions. So that is the reason why we established GenZero as a separate investment platform company. In our work we have been looking at technology solutions such as low carbon materials and carbon capture capabilities, nature solutions that seek to protect and restore natural ecosystems, often with a view to generate carbon credits on top of that, as well as to invest into ecosystem enablers in the carbon market space. The reason for that is because we think that in the near term, energy transition would require some form of participation from carbon markets to allow people to gradually execute this transition. But we do need carbon markets to be credible, effective, transparent, high quality, and therefore there is still investments needed in order to be able to improve capabilities and technologies and solutions in that space. TC: For companies that are curious about trying to pitch themselves to you, what are some examples of your current portfolio companies? FT: In the technology space, we have invested into both funds as well as companies, so a major fund investment is Decarbonization Partners, and that is basically a climate-focused fund that is a joint venture between Temasek and BlackRock. We are an LP invested in that, and they are very focused on late-venture, early growth opportunities across different areas in the decarbonization space. We have also invested into a technology company called Newlight, which seeks to be able to produce bio plastics from captured methane. On the nature side, we have been investing into a few forestry projects that generate carbon credits, and then on the carbon market side, we count among our portfolio companies things like South Pole, which is a global leader in providing project advisory, technical advisory solutions and project development for companies seeking to embark on a net zero decarbonization journey, as well as a carbon exchange called Climate Impact X, which is headquartered here in Singapore. TC: For companies that are curious about potentially getting investment from you, what investment stage does GenZero typically look at? FT: We are kind of flexible. For very early-stage companies, say around the Series A or just before, we will work with different partners to be able to evaluate and deploy capital to support early-stage companies, but I think it’s important to understand why we need to do this. If we think about the broader net zero decarbonization challenge, everybody talks about this 2050 timeline to get to net zero. But the reality is that if we want to create significant climate impact by 2050, we are looking at new solutions that must already somewhat exist today or are starting to come into being today, because we will need another 10 to 15 years for the technologies and solutions to mature and get to a stage where they could be commercializes, and then probably another 10 to 15 years for it to actually be able to be deployed and create some kind of impact. That basically means that this current cohort of young companies are going to make a difference to the 2050 agenda. That is the reason why we are very excited to participate in this space right now, because the action must take place now in order to have any meaningful difference by 2050. TC: Considering that, with technology not coming to fruition by them until then, or making actionable results by then, in light of that, what kind of metrics or milestones do you like to see companies bring to the table before you consider them for your portfolio? FT: I think it goes back to the way we evaluate our performance at GenZero. We have a double bottom line, so our shareholder expects us to be able to obviously achieve some level of financial returns. That’s a given. But we also take the idea around measuring climate impact rather seriously. We try and understand, for example, the kind of climate impact that a solution would be able to achieve if successful deployed. We also look

After buying Twitter, will Musk bite back at Apple’s in-app purchase fees? • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 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. Wednesday, and we’re excited to bring you another round of our esteemed Daily Crunch newsletter. There’s a wide variety of morsels, nuggets, and other bite-sized delights, so let’s go! — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 Startups and VC Asset management firm Stone Ridge has launched a startup accelerator, Wolf, that will be dedicated to growing Bitcoin-focused applications. The program will bring four cohorts per year, each consisting of about eight to 12 teams, or about 30 to 50 founders, to New York City from around the world for eight weeks at a time to focus on building on the Bitcoin-centric Lightning Network and Taro protocol, Kelly Brewster, CEO of Wolf, told Jacquelyn. Today, for a series of climate-related conversations organized by the global venture firm SOSV, Connie interviewed famed investor Chris Sacca. In their chat, Sacca dismissed questions around whether efforts like carbon capture can work at scale. (“The naysayers kind of fuel me, actually.”) He also said — naturally — that he has “no doubt we will have multiple companies worth trillions of dollars that emerge from our portfolio.” It wound up being a fairly wide-ranging conversation. Moar? Moar! Investors are sitting on mountains of cash: Where will it be deployed? Image Credits: H-Gall (opens in a new window) / Getty Images No matter what’s happening in the public markets, bees make honey and venture capitalists raise money: It’s just what they do. But since the “extreme valuation recalibration” in the public markets, VCs are amassing more and more dry powder, write Jeremy Abelson and Jacob Sonnenberg of Irving Investors. More frustrating news for founders: Investor fundraising “is on pace to finish the year at $172 billion,” but capital deployment is way down. “Dollars are flowing and will continue to flow, but it will be more capital to fewer companies,” they write. Now that “traditional SaaS has become too expensive and secondarily saturated,” sectors like web3, life sciences and agtech will attract more investors, they predict. 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. Kirsten has some late-breaking news that Ford’s and VW’s autonomous vehicle startup Argo AI will be shut down and parts of it will be absorbed by the two companies. This story is still developing, so keep going back to it for more, particularly a comment from the companies in question. Who doesn’t like a good fraction yelled at them? Duolingo certainly does not. Natasha M writes that Duolingo’s owl will now shout all the fractions you want at you as part of its new math app that is now public after spending some months in beta. And we have five more for you: