 Sequoia has released a 52-slide presentation to inform its portfolio companies of what to expect in the oncoming downturn. As seen by The Information, the slide show continues a long history of Sequoia sending out grim memos, such as "Coronavirus: The Black Swan of 2020" and "R.I.P. Good Times" during the Great Recession. More: - Calling the coagulation of financial markets, inflation, and geopolitical conflict a "crucible moment" of uncertainty and change, the presentation differs starkly from its pandemic-based predecessor.
- Specifically, the investment giant does not expect a correction followed by a "swift V-shaped recovery like we saw at the outset of the pandemic," but rather a much longer recovery in the wake of a "downturn to impact consumer behavior, labor markets, supply chains and more."
- The presentation was sent out to 250 founders on Monday, May 16, over Zoom and followed similar downturn playbooks from Y Combinator, Craft Ventures, and Lightspeed Ventures, among others.
- At its core, Sequoia suggests quickly making cuts to preempt the worst of the downturn and avoid the "death spiral," all of which can prepare a company to take advantage of others' failures and emerge a winner.
- Sequoia's status as a premier investor and its use of strong language mean that its message is heard loudly by founders all over the world.
- However, the firm has been criticized for hyperbolic takes in the past, with some even going so far as to question some of its memos' accuracy.
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Cybersecurity outfit Semperis has raised $200M led by PE firm KKR in an up round. Though the firm's valuation was not disclosed, the company was worth $142M after a $40M funding round in May 2020. More: - The Hoboken, N.J.-based company was founded in 2013 as an enterprise identity protection and cyber resilience provider for cross-cloud and hybrid environments. All said, it has raised $240M to date, inclusive of today's Series C round.
- It focuses on hybrid Active Directory users with special emphasis on Microsoft's Active Directory.
- That directory service is widely used by Fortune 500 companies, giving an idea of Semperis' target market.
- The company reported $11.6M in revenue in 2020 and furthermore reported over 100% growth YoY since then.
- Moving forward, it wants to expand beyond identity protection to safeguard all cloud-based data.
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Indian startups are starting to feel the funding crunch as they collectively lay off over 5,000 employees so far this year. Funding for India-based startups dropped to $3.6B in the second quarter of 2022 so far, down from $8B in Q1 and over $10B during the same period last year. More: - The two-quarter decline is the first sequential dip the country’s ecosystem has seen since Q4’20.
- While VCs are pulling back rapidly, sovereign wealth funds are still signing term sheets and are responsible for the five largest funding rounds so far this year, which collectively made up a fifth of all capital deployed to startups.
- Not only is this a big switch from 2021, where the top rounds were led by firms like Footpath Ventures, GSV Ventures, and Redbird Capital, the sovereign wealth funds are now requiring stronger business models and generally want to see 24-month runways.
- Two of the country’s biggest investors, SoftBank and Tiger Global, were burned by several IPOs and have seen massive losses on the public markets, prompting their pullbacks.
- SoftBank’s two biggest investments in India, Paytm and PolicyBazaar, were worth $1.4B and $400M, respectively, at the time of the deal. Now, those figures have dropped to $800M and $100M.
- One source pegged the capital requirements of Indian startups in the next half-year at between $10B and $15B, while the available funding is only $2B to $4B.
- The same source expects 10,000 job losses as investors pivot to early-stage strategies, leaving big, late-stage startups hanging.
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Cribl, a data observability platform, has clinched a $150M Series D led by Tiger Global. The round saw participation from Sequoia, Greylock, Redpoint Ventures, IVP, and CRV and valued Crible at $2.5B. More: - Cribl’s main value proposition is that it offers companies the ability to look into their own systems.
- That includes details of customer interactions when opening apps, selecting menu options, and encountering errors in the process.
- According to Clint Sharp, Cribl’s co-founder and CEO, all companies are effectively software firms now, but few are able to create in-house data processing capabilities, particularly as remote work makes it harder for companies to manage IT systems and data distributed across multiple locations.
- Cribl provides, as opposed to other offerings, a central point of control for data observability.
- Founded out of San Francisco in 2017, Cribl currently has customers as diverse as Accenture, Domino’s, and 7-Eleven, and has raised $250M to date.
- Its prior funding round was for $200M at a $1B valuation less than a year ago.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Aerospace - Lunar Outpost (Golden, Colo.), commercial planetary mobility to the moon: $12M Seed led by Explorer 1 Fund, participation from Promus Ventures, Space Capital, Type One Ventures, et al.
Blockchain - Energi (BVI), security-focused blockchain: $50M led by GEM Digital Limited.
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Quick Hits - Bubbles, with users from around the world, encourages teams to decline meetings-that-should-have-been-emails.*
- As the number of reports of cuts grows, Crunchbase has begun keeping a list of the most notable layoffs in U.S. tech. Beyond big names like PayPal, Klarna, and Better.com, the list includes smaller operations as well.
- Blockchain-focused investor Standard Crypto has raised almost $500M for its maiden fund, according to Axios sources. The figure is representative of the fund’s hard cap. The firm had initially targeted only $150M.
- Tiger Global topped PitchBook’s list of most active global investors with 130 deals in Q1’22, while Alumni Ventures’ 66 made it top dog in the U.S. Andreessen Horowitz also made a good showing in its native country with 63 term sheets signed.
- Washington, D.C.-based Updata Partners closed a new growth equity fund at $608M. Focused on B2B software companies not hailing from the Bay Area, the latest vehicle is the firm’s seventh and brought its AUM to $1.5B.
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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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