Sequoia has promoted partner Roelof Botha to Senior Steward of its global brand and operations. Botha will replace Doug Leone, thereby marking a transition to a third generation of investors at one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and largest investing powerhouses. More: - Botha will remain a GP in Sequoia’s funds. The transition is the culmination of a two-year process pegged to Leone’s 65th birthday on July 4.
- The company will additionally hire a chief financial officer, a chief compliance officer, and a chief intelligence officer.
- Botha made his name as the chief financial officer at PayPal. He joined Sequoia in 2003, one year following the payment platform’s IPO.
- Subsequently, he was responsible for Sequoia’s bets on household names such as Instagram, MongoDB, Square, YouTube, and 23andme.
- A 13-time Midas List member, he became the sole leader of Sequoia’s U.S. (now U.S. and Europe) operations in 2017.
- With a big-picture mandate, it is not clear what exactly Botha’s powers will be.
- That question is particularly murky now that Sequoia has aggregated all of its U.S. funds into a single evergreen fund.
- Meanwhile, the firm still allows for independent operation of Sequoia China, India, and Southeast Asia funds, Sequoia Heritage, and Sequoia Capital Global Equities.
- At any rate, he will have little direct control over the Chinese operations, which are headed by Neil Shen.
- Leone took over in 1997 and spent his time at the top, which he shared with Michael Moritz until 2012, uniting Sequoia’s global operations under one banner.
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Shein, a Chinese fast fashion e-commerce company that emerged onto the tech scene years ago, is reportedly raising $1B at a $100B valuation. Though it was founded 14 years ago, it really exploded last year after becoming the second-most-downloaded shopping app in the U.S. last year after Amazon. More: - In fact, Shein’s app installation grew 68% YoY, while Amazon’s declined by 2.4%.
- On the global scale, Shein, along with Singapore’s Shopee and India’s Meesho, have long overtaken Amazon in terms of app downloads.
- According to the reports, the funding is supposed to come from General Atlantic. The talks are still ongoing.
- If the firm actually snags a $100B valuation, it would become the world’s third-most-valuable startup, behind only ByteDance and SpaceX.
- It claims Tiger Global, IDG, Sequoia, and others as prior backers.
- Shein’s growth is due to its use of a network of small textile workshops in Guangzhou, which quickly produce cheap clothing in small batches for testing.
- Once the company has determined which articles are selling well, it places more orders, thus reducing inventory costs.
- It has been further helped by a boost of the de minimis value threshold in the U.S., which allowed more of Shein’s clothing to quickly enter the country duty-free.
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 A message from MALWAREBYTES Top trends in remote work and collaboration. Remote work has changed our use of tools across cloud collaboration, cybersecurity, backup, and other solutions. We asked people who look after security* for their organizations what is changing in their environment: - 78% report an increase in the use of cloud storage platforms
- 76% saw in increase in the use of video conferencing
- 73% noted an increase in the use of identity management and cloud access tools
- 72% reported an increase in the use of instant messaging
- 71% noted an increase in the use of cybersecurity and antivirus tools
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 According to Crunchbase, March saw the lowest number of new unicorns since Feb. 2021. Last month’s count of 34 companies reaching a $1B+ valuation was down from 49 the previous month and from 60 a year earlier. More: - At $14B (28% of the month’s total), the aggregate funding raised by unicorns in March was the lowest it has been since Nov. 2020. That’s down from $15B in February and $26B a year earlier.
- Unicorns have raised 30% to date of all venture dollars in 2022, down from a 44% in 2021.
- Crunchbase’s unicorn board recently hit a $4T aggregate valuation for the first time. It currently stands at $4.3T in total market value distributed over 1,260 companies.
- While the number of new unicorns dropped, there were two new decacorns ($10B+), bringing the year’s total to seven so far.
- These included Istanbul-based delivery company Getir with an $11.8B valuation led by Mubadala and London-based cryptocurrency exchange platform Blockchain.com with a $14B price tag.
- For context, 37 companies reached decacorn status in 2021, up from 14 in 2020.
- The majority of the new unicorns were U.S.-based, led by AngelList’s $4.05B valuation following a Tiger Global/Accomplice-led $100M funding round.
- Two crypto companies move particularly quickly to reach unicorn status.
- Dec. 2021-founded Aptos, which is building a layer 1 blockchain with Diem-level aspirations, closed its very first funding last month by raising $200M at a $1B valuation.
- Yuga Labs, creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, hit a $4B valuation in a funding round also led by a16z after being founded just last year.
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Crypto investment firm Paradigm disclosed that its assets under management (AUM) have ballooned to $13.2B, up from $2.98B in Dec. 2020. The increase marks a 343% jump in just over a year. For comparison, a16z’s AUM jumped by 53% from $35.8B to $54.6B in the same period. More: - Tiger Global’s figures jumped by a similar amount: It has $124.7B, up 58% from $79.1B in its 2021 filing.
- Sequoia currently lays claim to $85.5B in AUM (up from $80.7B in September 2021) and Coatue disclosed $72.1B.
- The sudden barrage of disclosures is due to VC outfits filing for registration as investment advisors in order to be able to invest heavily in crypto (VCs can only have 20%).
- To keep the designation, firms are required to report AUM once per year.
- The disclosed figures are based on a portfolio’s equity value plus dry powder, minus assets distributed back to LPs.
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| A message from MASTERWORKS Where to Invest $100,000 Right Now According to Experts Investors face a dilemma. Inflation is at 7.9%. And now, firms from Goldman to Blackrock predict stock returns under 5% until 2035. Finding promising investments is harder than ever. Recently, Bloomberg asked experts where they’d invest $100,000 right now. The result? They overwhelmingly advocated for alternatives like art. After all, the ultra-wealthy have placed their bets on art for centuries. This explains why: - Contemporary art prices appreciated 14% annually from 1995-2021.
- Deloitte estimates global value of art to increase by $1 trillion by 2026
- Low correlation to equities according to Citi.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Adtech/Martech - Prizeout (New York, N.Y.), ad platform for gaming, neobank, crypto, gig economy, payroll & finance: $25M B from Precept Capital, Mark Cuban, Continental Investment Partners, Astralis Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Anchor Capital.
Biotech/Health - ARC Canada (Saint John, Canada), small modular reactor technology: $30M A from undisclosed sources.
- Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (Gaithersburg, Md.), therapies to treat infectious diseases: $20M from AMR Action Fund, et al.
- ProofPilot (New York, N.Y.), SaaS clinical trial research platform: ...
Want to read about all of today’s funding in one place? The funding roundup is only available to free users on Mondays and Fridays. Upgrade to Inside VC Premium for either $10/month, or $100 billed annually, to receive the full list in every issue! For a limited time, we are offering a 14-day free trial. Click here to sign up! | | | |
Quick Hits - Evok Innovations announced a $300M second early-stage North American cleantech fund. The fund was backed by Export Development Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, and The Toronto-Dominion Bank.
- Plus, a Chinese self-driving EV company, is considering listing its non-China-based share in a U.S. IPO. The plan comes after the company was unable to merge with a SPAC.
- Ron Fisher, the head of SoftBank’s U.S.-based Vision Fund, will step down. Fisher, one of the fund’s longest-standing lieutenants, had already left the firm’s board last year.
- Spain will invest $12.4B (€11M) into microchip and semiconductor production capacity in a bid to modernize its tourism-dependent economy. The plan comes as Europe tries to become less dependent on foreign tech.
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 |  | Inside VC's writer/curator Stephen currently lives in Berlin and is pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy. He otherwise spends his time trying his hand at recipes from India and Southeast Asia, escaping it all at the kickboxing gym, and offending aural sensibilities with his band. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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Did you know contemporary art outpaced the S&P 500 by 164% from 1995-2021? Now you do. Get access | |
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