Venture

How to turn user data into your next pitch deck • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Column, EC Column, EC How To, fundraising tactics, pitch deck, Startups, VentureNo Comments

David K Smith Contributor David Smith is VP of data and analytics at TheVentureCity, a global early-stage venture fund investing in product-centric startups across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. Of every 100 deals a VC firm considers, about a quarter get a meeting, and only one ends up securing investment. Given the downturn in the markets leading to a startup funding squeeze, getting through the door is a critical first step. But then what? How do you prove you’re that one in 100? Well, you have one drastically overlooked superpower: your data. Many early stage startups don’t have a data team or even a data expert. They’ve been told that it looks good to have cash flowing in and user numbers ticking up. But investors are looking past superficial metrics for indicators that your product is poised to grow years into the future. There’s no one metric for that, which is why you need to know exactly which ones to focus on, and what they tell others about your product’s growth prospects. If possible, collect the most granular, user-level data you can: events and transactions. Having this data allows you to X-Ray how people are interacting with your product. Visualizing and communicating this data can definitively power up a pitch deck. If you’re a founder of a new SaaS, fintech, marketplace, or consumer subscription product, here’s what you should be showing investors at the early stages of your journey. Investors need to see that you’re not being blindsided by easy wins that can go up in smoke within weeks, but are using hard data to build a sustainable company. At all stages: Focus on active usage, not vanity metrics If you haven’t been thinking about product-market fit, you don’t have a pitch. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to prove you have product-market fit, but you absolutely need to show investors that you’ve been working towards it. If investors can’t tell where you are in your lifecycle, they have no way of telling how close you are to getting real traction — and getting them their returns. Product-market fit isn’t a defined point. It’s more about reading the right signals: You have to know which metrics to look at and how to measure their strength. The stronger the signals related to user engagement and retention — all measured in different ways and all trending positively — the more evidence you have that you’ve reached, or are reaching, product-market fit. Building up all that evidence through data helps bolster a pitch and increases your odds of landing an investment.

Fiat Ventures, with $25M for first fund, brings ‘insider’ approach to investing in early-stage fintechs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Alex Harris, Drew Glover, Fiat Ventures, Fintech, Marcos Fernandez, VentureNo Comments

Fiat Ventures general partners Drew Glover and Alex Harris, along with managing partner Marcos Fernandez, are out to find and invest in fintech’s next generation of startups, and are leveraging their unconventional backgrounds to find equally unconventional founders. The early-stage VC firm started in 2021 is now armed with $25 million in capital commitments to close its first fund; the partners are targeting financial services and financial technology startups building for the 90% of Americans who don’t already have enough savings or don’t know how to start managing what they do have. And they don’t just want to invest capital. The firm has taken a unique approach in the way it works with its companies, coming in initially as more of a marketing and strategic partnership. This came about when the partners started Fiat. They didn’t have capital to invest right away, so they asked founders for advisory shares and the right to invest eventually, Glover said. As such, Fiat focuses on ownership percentage, taking about 2% to 2.5% in companies the firm invests in, Glover told ZebethMedia. That might look like a $100,000 to $500,000 check with available funds to double and triple down on some of its more successful companies. That initial approach turned into half of a business with partnerships, like affiliates, strategics and influencers, and the other half being everything that touches performance and growth. “Think of us as basically a turnkey fractional CMO where we can walk in and help with strategy and execution,” Glover added. “Don’t hire a $400,000 a year CMO, but let us come in with our team of former VPs and CMOs and work with you to build out your growth ecosystem.” Fernandez told ZebethMedia that he believes this approach is one of Fiat’s “greatest strengths and advantages,” and something that typical venture capital firms hire an operating team to do when they reach their third, fourth or fifth fund, not the first fund as Fiat has been able to do. The partners have formed this type of relationship with more than 100 companies so far, working with them for a minimum of three months. In 2021 when they established a more formal venture business, they say it gave them unique insight into the companies — the good, the bad and the ugly — which helped them pinpoint where best to deploy the capital, Harris said. “Two out of the three of our investments have been from these relationships,” Fernandez added. “It’s given us the extra due diligence to see if they have product market fit and to see founder dynamics, for example if they can raise funding, recruit and know where their gaps are. You can’t get that from getting on calls or data rooms.” Investors into the new fund include Invesco Private Capital, which anchored the fund, DAHG Capital Partners, Joint Effects LLC, Full Spectrum Capital, Temerity Capital Partners, Now Investments, Mountaineer Capital, Permit Ventures and a group of fintech founders, including Bestow’s Jonathan Abelmann, Chime’s Kyle Daley and Mulberry’s Chinedu Eleanya. Some notable investments among the 22 companies in Fiat’s portfolio so far include teen-focused banking app Copper, which raised $29 million in April; insurance company Breeze, which grabbed $10 million last year; and Sleek, a one-click checkout company that bagged $1.7 million earlier this year. In addition, the Fiat team itself has diverse backgrounds, and the partners said it was equally important to show that in the companies they invest in as well. Sixty-seven percent of investments are in underrepresented founders, 30% are female founders and 40% are minority led. “It really comes down to our backgrounds and that’s what we cherish the most,” Glover said. “Marcos is Hispanic-American, I’m African-American and Alex is 100% our people and also Jewish.” He went on to describe growing up in East Oakland with exposure to all forms of socioeconomic classes, and with parents who were deeply ingrained in civic action. Meanwhile, Marcus grew up in Texas and in a similar type of environment, while Alex grew up in Stockton. “We all grew up with this mindset of investing in the best ideas that are making the greatest impact,” Glover added. “The networks that we grew up in bred other networks and gives us the access to see some of the best underrepresented founders and ideas that are making the largest impact.”

High-precision induction stove startup Impulse powers up with $20M Series A • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 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 on this fine Tuesday. There was a lot of news today, so I’m not going to waste time and instead will get right to what you came here for. — Christine. The ZebethMedia Top 3 Taking telehealth’s temperature: Amazon is getting back into telehealth with Amazon Clinic, a marketplace for third-party virtual consultants that will initially launch in 32 states, Ingrid reports. Yes, we know it’s been a few short months since the delivery giant shut down its Amazon Care telehealth service, but as Ingrid writes, this is the company’s chance to provide care that may be a bit more complex for the corner drugstore, but not as necessary for what could be an expensive doctor’s visit. Heating things up: Impulse isn’t able to light a physical fire under consumers to get them to try out its stovetop, but now with its $20 million cash injection, it can heat up the competition with its induction technology. Haje has more. UPI XOXO: This is the moment that India has been waiting for — Google Play finally adds United Payments Interface subscriptions, Jagmeet writes. Startups and VC Most of us live and die by our calendar, but Vimcal thinks we shouldn’t have to spend that much time creating the actual event. Ivan writes that this “nifty calendar app” will have you entering a new event and even providing scheduling options in just a few steps. Oh, and it also has a desktop version. Pucker up, robot enthusiasts! Pickle brought in $26 million in new funding to continue developing its truck unloading robots, which Brian writes is one of the “links in the chain that remains one of the least addressed.” And we have five more for you: 5 sustainable best practices for bootstrapped startups Image Credits: Getty Images / Ratchapoom Anupongpan / EyeEm For founders interested in building on their own, maintaining control and staying off the fundraising treadmill for as long as possible, investor/entrepreneur Marjorie Radlo-Zandi sets out five basic principles for bootstrapped founders in her latest TC+ article. “Don’t be tempted to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to meet potential customers in glamorous locations or for meetings in far-flung locations,” she writes. “Your bootstrapped business likely will not survive such big, optional financial outlays.” Bootstrapped founders face longer odds, but if they can drive growth and reach product-market fit, “fundraising will be that much easier.” 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. Alibaba’s logistics arm, Cainiao, is stretching out its arms to hug Latin America, which it hopes will fill some of the gap left by a Chinese commerce slowdown, Rita reports. The e-commerce giant started delivering goods in Brazil earlier this year and has plans to boost its presence in the country over the next three years. Netflix wants to help you get someone off of your account, no matter who it is and if they know your password. The streaming company has a new feature that lets subscribers kick devices off their accounts, meaning it will forcibly log a device out of that account, Lauren writes. And we have four more for you:

Bling Capital, avoiding crypto bets, pulls in capital across two new funds • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in VentureNo Comments

Ben Ling, a prolific angel investor turned venture capitalist, has never put a lot of stock in the need for a new, decentralized internet. It’s why the firm he founded almost exactly four years ago— naming it Bling Capital (a nickname from way back) — doesn’t have the kind of bets that are right now becoming a black eye for a lot of other venture outfits. It might also be why Ling, whose longtime friend and co-investor Kyle Lui joined Bling Capital eight months ago from the cross-border firm DCM — seemingly had little trouble closing on $212 million across two new venture funds: a $109 million seed-stage vehicle, and a $103 million opportunity-type fund that the two will predominantly use to invest in their breakout portfolio companies. Investing in companies like Rippling, a six-year-old software platform now valued at $11.25 billion, and Airtable, the cloud-collaboration service that’s also valued at around $11 billion, didn’t hurt, either, of course. We talked with the pair yesterday to learn more about their mission to back startups focused on fintech, digital health, B2B SaaS and, on rarer occasion, the consumer internet. Our chat, below, has been edited for length and clarity. TC: Ben, Kyle is based in San Francisco, but you moved to Miami a couple of years ago. Are you seeing the effects of FTX’s implosion? Has the mood shifted there? [Editor’s note: FTX last year won the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena, though the team cut ties with FTX last week. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, based in the Bahamas, also spoke routinely at Miami-based crypto events.] BL: I’m not qualified to answer that question, because I was out [of town] last week. But what’s actually interesting is that during my time in Miami and meeting a lot of entrepreneurs and investors, FTX actually never came up. For me, the circles that I ran in with, probably one out of 10 was a focused crypto investor and the other nine were traditional VCs or entrepreneurs. Our firm has not invested in crypto, it’s not a focus area for us, so that’s also why we don’t spend a ton of time with a lot of the crypto funds and VCs. TC: Why did you decide to avoid crypto? BL: We’ve never been focused on crypto since the start of Bling capital. Even when I was at Khosla Ventures [where Ling logged close to six years before hanging his own shingle], we avoided crypto. Generally, my feeling is that all the currencies will have value if people agree that there’s value. Just like art, just like gold, when people agree on something as a store of value, it becomes [valuable] because there’s a common belief system. For a lot of the applications, we struggled to really understand why they were truly better than the existing incumbents and why they would actually take over. Why were they going to be 10x better, 10x faster, 10x cheaper? We just had standard questions around adoption. We also never really focused on it, so we felt that others were more experienced in the space and much more advanced and that we did not have a comparative advantage. TC: You don’t believe that blockchains could improve current-day SaaS offerings? BL: B2B SaaS is an incredible area of focus. There’s a lot of verticalized software that I think will make major inroads because there’s a lot of the standard Salesforce-type SaaS and there’s consumer-type SaaS that has risen, and now the SaaS marketplace movement is really making its way into B2B, as well. And I think that most, if not all, of these problems can be solved by the traditional Web 2 technologies. We question whether you need web3 technologies to succeed in B2B SaaS. Our investing philosophy is that we either have to have a network advantage or an expertise advantage over the other investors in order to invest in something. Otherwise we’re not qualified to [make a particular bet]. TC: When you talk about network advantage, are your LP base? I know that Bling Capital’s two earlier funds had something like 100 limited partners. You also, relatedly, have what you call a product council. Are these people one and the same? KL: Yeah, I mean, [our] product council members are folks who tend to be heads of product, heads of engineering, heads that go-to-market at various top technology companies and it’s important for us to continue to add them because they are not only our largest source of deal flow, but are also very active in advising our startups. TC: And they are also LPs? They have a stake in your funds to incentivize them to help your portfolio companies? BL: All product council members are LPs in the fund, so when the fund is invested in a company, all of them are invested in the company as well. But 80% of the fund is now institutional investors. TC: Obviously the market has slowed down, even for early-stage startups. What are you seeing in terms of how long it now takes to do a deal? KL: I would say on the new deal front, on the pre seed and seed side, we’re seeing timelines that were one to two weeks now [extending into] more like two to four weeks, which is really healthy because it allows for more proper diligence. We are able to do deals in a matter of days if we have strong conviction, but we do like that the market is a bit more sane. Another dynamic that we’re seeing is that entrepreneurs are starting to really wake up to this new world, and that wasn’t the case even six months ago. Back then, we saw growth deals really kind of halt, but that didn’t really impact the way that first-time founders in particular thought about their valuations. Now we’re seeing them come around as well. So [collectively] we’re actually seeing a lot of really interesting deals. TC: In terms of returns,

October funding plateaus with valuations likely to blame

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in EC News Analysis, EC venture capital, funding, fundraising, Startups, VentureNo Comments

After a particularly slow summer, the mood in venture capital seemed to change with the season come Labor Day. By the end of September, it felt that maybe the worst had already come in terms of this year’s falling venture funding numbers. Investment volume had stopped declining and was starting to make up ground. Investors said that anecdotally it felt like the market was really starting to gain momentum again — especially at the early stages. But October funding data showed that the venture capital market still has a long way to go.

Bootstrapping basics, fintech’s future, tech employers gain advantage • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in EC roundup, Fintech, immigration law, Startups, tech layoffs, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Are you planning to play League of Legends during your next investor pitch? (If so, reading this probably isn’t a good use of your time.) For founders who are interested in building on their own, maintaining control and staying off the fundraising treadmill for as long as possible, investor/entrepreneur Marjorie Radlo-Zandi sets out five basic principles for bootstrapped founders in her latest TC+ article. It’s not for everyone: self-funded companies will ask more from their employees than larger operations that offer free lunches and other perks. At one bootstrapped startup where I worked, I was asked to defer part of my salary — after I was hired. Full ZebethMedia+ articles are only available to membersUse discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription Radlo-Zandi covers the basics with regard to hiring, managing expenses and shaping company culture, but she also urges self-funders to tamp down expectations and take a measured approach: “Don’t be tempted to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to meet potential customers in glamorous locations or for meetings in far-flung locations,” she writes. “Your bootstrapped business likely will not survive such big, optional financial outlays.” Bootstrapped founders face longer odds, but if they can drive growth and reach product-market fit, “fundraising will be that much easier.” Thanks very much for reading, Walter ThompsonEditorial Manager, ZebethMedia+@yourprotagonist The power pendulum is swinging back to employers, isn’t it? Image Credits: AOosthuizen (opens in a new window) / Getty Images More than 120,000 tech workers have lost jobs so far this year, according to layoffs.fyi. And with more than a fifth of those layoffs taking place in November, many from well-capitalized public companies, it’s easy to see why Continuum CEO Nolan Church believes this is the beginning of a wave. “Over the last 12 years, the pendulum between who has power between employees and employers has drastically swung toward employees,” he said last week on the ZebethMedia Equity podcast. “Now, we’re in a moment where the pendulum is swinging back.” Answers for H-1B workers who’ve been laid off (or think they might be) Group of young adults, photographed from above, on various painted tarmac surface, at sunrise. Sophie Alcorn, an immigration law attorney based in Silicon Valley, estimates that 15% of the people recently laid off from Bay Area startups are immigrants, 90% of whom are H-1B holders. If you’re a visa holder who’s been laid off, your first priority is to “figure out your last day of employment, because that’s when you need to start counting the 60-day grace period,” says Alcorn. “You either get a new job, you leave, or you figure out some other way to legally stay in the United States, but you have to take some action within those 60 days.” Nearly 80% of venture funds raised in just two states as US LPs retreat to the coasts Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / ZebethMedia After the pandemic began, there was a lot of buzz about how venture capital was shifting away from its roots in San Francisco and New York to make inroads into the Midwest. But after an extended slump in public markets led so many investors to sit on the sidelines, data show that “most funds outside of the two largest startup hubs… are feeling the frost from potential LPs,” reports Rebecca Szkutak. “So far this year, 77% of capital has been raised in just California and New York. In 2021, those states raised 68% of the year’s totals.” Preparing for fintech’s second decade: 4 moves your firm must make now Image Credits: Emilija Manevska (opens in a new window) / Getty Images According to consultant Grant Easterbrook, fintech startups that hope to succeed over the next few years must be prepared to go up against: Major banks and financial service providers with loyalty programs and “super apps.” Emerging DeFi protocols “that can offer financial products that involve real-world assets.” Banking, invoicing, lending, payments, accounting packaged as “embedded financial products.” Multiple countries issuing their own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). “Your firm will need a very strong value proposition to compete with all four types of competitors,” writes Easterbrook, who shares his ideas for navigating the next decade of fintech in a TC+ guest post.

MadKudu lands $18M led by Felicis for its lead scoring platform • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in felicis, product-led growth, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

It’s hard to get ahead when you’re just trying to stay afloat. But startups weathering the downturn with fewer employees and a smaller budget are finding ways to survive and move forward by relying on a 15-year-old twist on software adoption called “bottoms-up” SaaS. The idea, dating back to the enterprise social network Yammer, is that new software tools can find their way into a company by landing first in the hands of employees. In a financial downturn especially, the model is attractive because it doesn’t rely on a massive (expensive) salesforce but rather a groundswell of interest. Yammer, a kind of social network for enterprises, kicked off the wave when it was founded in 2008. Something similar is happening now, though the wave has been renamed “product-led growth” or PLG, and one startup that fits the mold is MadKudu, an eight-year-old, Paris- and New York-based company behind a customer data platform product. Founded by Sam Levan and Francis Brero, who met at a since-acquired predictive marketing platform, they realized more data science was needed to help sales reps sift through thousands of product users to identify who is ready to buy. According to the company, Levan was able to show soon after that growth teams could double their free-to-paid conversion rate within weeks and got to work on developing tech that would give other organizations “data science superpowers” to discover revenue opportunities, including those with severely limited engineering resources, which, these days, is a lot of startups. Asked for metrics in an interview with ZebethMedia last week, Levan declined to share anything concrete but said that MadKudu has been growing its numbers by “5x over the last 12 months.” He also mentioned a lot of customers whose brands readers will recognize, including Dropbox, Cloudera, Amplitude, Plain, Unity, and Miro. Levan also said the traction the company is seeing led to a flurry of term sheets recently that resulted in a new $18 million Series A round that the early-stage firm Felicis led, joined by BGV, Alven, Techstars, and numerous individual investors. (The company has now raised $27 million altogether.) Niki Pezeshki, a general partner at Felicis who led the deal, meanwhile suggested that he would have been remiss not to notice MadKudu. “I think in the span of a week or two, we had two separate board meetings where the go-to-market head or the CRO said that they had just implemented MadKudu and that it was making a really, really positive change for their go-to-market strategy, especially around PLG. And when you hear that from two different members of high-performing companies, you definitely take notice.” Indeed, for now, MadKudu remains very focused on lead scoring that helps salespeople understand which leads are valuable and which would be a waste of time to chase. Levan claims that by analyzing the product usage data of its customers to find patterns in their users’ activity, MadKudu now has the “largest PLG data set in the world.” Going forward, Levan said last week, the idea is to use its fresh capital to triple its 35-person team by next year — including to beef up on customer success and support staff — and to invest more time and attention into improving the user experience. That includes spending time on creating educational programs that can help market leaders better understand what PLG is all about and how to fully realize the potential of MadKudu’s product specifically. “We already have the best technology out there,” said Levan, without sounding completely obnoxious. Now he just wants more people to use it. Pictured above, from left to right, MadKudu founders Sam Levan and Francis Brero.

YC, Khosla-backed Atmos lands $12.5M to design custom dream homes • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Atmos, Khosla Ventures, real estate, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Atmos, a startup which has built an online marketplace that teams up homebuyers with builders and land developers to design and build custom homes, has emerged from stealth today with $12.5 million raised in Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures. Founded in 2018, San Francisco-based Atmos touts that with its tech, homebuyers are able to select land, design a home within their budget and approve the design using 3D tech. It then teams up buyers with a “vetted builder partner.” The startup aims to give buyers more options as the nation faces a persistent housing shortage and during a time when mortgage interest rates have more than doubled since last year. Atmos claims it can also help builders by providing them with ready-to-go buyers as opposed to building on spec (without committed customers) in an uncertain market. It also says it can help land developers by allowing them to go direct-to-consumer. Existing backers Bedrock, JLL Spark, YC and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman participated in the financing along with new investors real estate brokerage Keller Williams, Duke Angel Network, Bain Capital co-chairman Stephen Pagliuca and Figma CEO and co-founder Dylan Field. The company previously raised nearly $2 million in March 2020. It participated in Y Combinator’s summer cohort that same year, and then raised an additional $4 million led by Khosla. “On Demo Day, we got a term sheet from Khosla,” said Nicholas Donahue, CEO and co-founder of Atmos. “Within two weeks, we’d accepted it.” Atmos says its technology allows buyers to see “exactly what can be built on any specific lot depending on the size, shape and development requirements.” First, it assists buyers with getting a survey and soil test, and then designing a home based on their individual preferences. Once a builder is solidified, construction can begin. “We’re trying to put more of the design process online,” Donahue said. “We also onboard partners as well as gather certain local data such as zoning requirements and typography.” It also checks to make sure construction would not violate any HOA restrictions before a buyer wastes too much time on a project. The average cost of building a home through Atmos is about $225/square foot. So for a 1,500-square-foot home, that comes out to about $337,500. That’s cheap or expensive, depending on which market you’re building in. Certain selections such as whether a buyer chooses to build a one-story ranch home or a two-story house can impact costs, Donahue adds. So far, the startup has built six homes and is “working on a few dozen more,” he said. It makes money by charging a 5% service fee on the cost of construction to homebuyers “for due diligence, design, and project management.” It also charges a $20,000 flat fee to builders for finding, vetting and servicing a client, as well as handling any of the pre-construction services they would otherwise have to handle. Eventually, Atmos has its sights on what it describes as other emerging tech markets such as Denver, Austin, Portland and Salt Lake City. Unlike fellow Khosla portfolio company Homebound, which raised $70 million earlier this year and describes itself as a “tech-enabled homebuilder,” Donahue says Atmos is focused more on the pre-construction of a home. “We’re more design-oriented, and focus more on the process that someone goes through to create the house,” he told ZebethMedia. “My belief is that more people would build if it was just simpler and less ambiguous, and they had the ability to design a home that is unique to them.” He believes Atmos’s biggest differentiator compared to other startups in the space like Welcome Homes is that it offers “more flexibility” and freedom in the design phase. Interestingly, unlike most startups that raise capital, 26-person Atmos does not plan to use its new funds to hire in this market, according to Donahue. It’s focusing on building out its marketplace. “You have all of these, like builders and developers that are functioning in a very hot environment … that ended up purchasing tons of land on which they usually choose to go spec instead of working with a client to build custom,” he said. “We see opportunity to help them unload some of their over-leveraged assets.” Khosla Ventures partner and DoorDash co-founder Evan Moore gained experience in the real estate space having helped the Opendoor team pre-launch to lead product. He told ZebethMedia via email that in his prior work, he spoke with many families buying tract homes, which are “the massive subdivisions of homes that all look the same.” “Many wanted to build a home custom to their own needs, but couldn’t figure out where to start, and couldn’t get certainty of timeline or price,” Moore said. “It was clear to me then that if someone could provide a trustworthy, transparent process, more people would build custom homes… I think in the coming years it’ll seem obvious that one should be able to find available lots, design homes that work on those lots per local regulation, and start your build — all online.”

IFC launches $225M platform to back early-stage startups in Africa, Asia, Middle East • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in africa, Asia, IFC, Middle East, VentureNo Comments

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has today launched a $225 million platform to back early-stage startups in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, and Pakistan. The IFC, a member of the World Bank, will through the platform make equity and “equity-like” investments in tech startups to “grow them into scalable ventures that can attract mainstream equity and debt financing.” The institution said in a statement that it will also use the sector-agnostic platform to work closely with other members of the World Bank to champion for regulatory reforms, sector analyses and other changes that can grow the venture capital ecosystems in these regions. The IFC will also rally for more capital from other development institutions and the private sector. It has so far received a $50 million backing from the Blended Finance Facility of the International Development Association’s Private Sector Window, which de-risks investments in low-income countries. “Support for entrepreneurship and digital transformation is essential to economic growth, job creation, and resilience,” said Makhtar Diop, IFC’s managing director, in a statement shared with ZebethMedia. “IFC’s Venture Capital Platform will help tech companies and entrepreneurs to expand during a time of capital shortage, creating scalable investment opportunities and backing countries’ efforts to build transformative tech ecosystems. We want to help develop homegrown innovative solutions that are not only relevant to emerging countries but can also be exported to the rest of the world,” he said. The IFC’s regions of focus continue to receive a small percentage of the global capital funding, and IFC hopes to help bridge this gap. This is, especially, in the wake of a funding slowdown amidst macroeconomic headwinds. IFC hopes to grow the platform to other startup ecosystems beyond major hubs like Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, and South Africa. The platform adds to IFC’s Startup Catalyst Program, which is also part of investments and efforts to tap tech ecosystems in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, and Pakistan. In its initial program, IFC has made investments in Twiga Foods, a Kenyan technology food distribution platform; TradeDepot, a B2B e-commerce startup connecting brands with retailers; and Toters, an on-demand delivery platform in Lebanon and Iraq.

Lisbon’s Indico VC launches €25M Opportunity Fund for its scale-ups, taking it to a €141M total • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Indico Capital Partners, the Lisbon, Portugal based VC, has launched a €25 million ‘Opportunity Fund’, with the help of previous LPs, to invest up to an additional €5 million in the most promising four or five companies from its first fund. Indico says this would double the maximum investment per startup from €5-10 million. Indico launched its first €54M fund at the beginning of 2019 (covered on ZebethMedia here). In 2020 it launched a Partnership with Google for Startups and a related €12 million pre-seed fund for its early stage programme. This year it also launched a 50 million euro ‘Blue Fund‘ around ocean innovation and sustainability (€100,000 to €5 million euros per company for expansion capital). This takes its total raised to €141 million since early 2019 (€91 million for tech and €50 million for the blue economy). So far it’s put €36 million euros into 29 companies, including Anchorage Digital, Remote and Tier.