 The secondary market for tech shares has contracted as prices continue their precipitous fall, reports The Information. For example, secondary market broker Forge processed 596 trades in Q1’22, down 61% from the same period in 2021. Overall, prices on Forge fell 9% on average from Q4’21 to Q1’22. More: - According to Forge COO Jose Cobos, there is a fundamental disconnect between what buyers are willing to pay and the prices sellers are willing to accept.
- That is a big reversal from 2021, when demand for shares outstripped supply by a wide margin.
- The current glut has been intensified as startups help their workers cash out shares in order to keep talent in a tight labor market.
- Some previous players on secondary markets are sitting things out entirely for the time being, such as Hans Swildens, CEO of Industry Ventures, who is waiting for new 409A valuations for the year to come out and trading volume to recover before making moves.
- Examples abound of collapsed share prices:
- Stripe shares used to go for between $80 and $90 earlier this year and are changing hands at $50.
- BNPL giant Klarna has seen its going price fall from $1,400 to $1,000 to $1,100.
- Chat app Discord’s shares have dipped from around $750 to about $525.
- Still, according to Forge, sellers are still earning an average return in Q1’22 of 24% on their sales based on a startup’s most recent funding round. That figure is down from a 58% premium in Q4’22.
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Maze, a new provider of user research tools, closed a $40M Series B round led by Felicis. Participation came from Emergence, Amplify, Partech, Seedcamp, Atlassian Ventures, Zoom, and HubSpot Ventures. More: - The new funding brings Maze’s total raised to $60M.
- The Paris-based company, which was founded in 2018, did not disclose specific figures about its revenue growth.
- However, co-founder Jason Widawski noted that the company has 60,000 brands using its platform, including Hertz, Sony, Fidelity Investments, BNY Mellon, and Nubank.
- The company facilitates software product research by allowing customers to make prototype tests and surveys.
- It recently launched Reach, a tool that generates a database of research participants, further sending research studies via email campaigns and collecting the resulting data.
- Maze also just rolled out Clips, which captures video and screen recordings of people testing a product.
The wider lens: - The user testing space is highly competitive, with companies like UserLeap, Airkit, and SurveyMonkey having existed for quite some time.
- According to a Strategic Data Consulting study, UX investments made in a product’s conceptual phase can reduce development cycles by 33% to 50%.
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 The VC funding pullback has hit one of the sectors usually seen as immune to market oscillation: biotech. With $16.5B raised by U.S. biotech outfits so far this year, the sector is not on track to come close to the $49.6B dished out in 2021. This year has seen an average of $3.2B invested per month, compared with 2021’s $4B. More: - With only 404 rounds so far, U.S. biotech rounds are well behind the record set in 2021 of 1,238.
- At least 46 biotech companies have raised rounds of $100M+, according to Crunchbase data. The median round size is around $17M.
- The global landscape is showing similar, if not more extreme, developments: Compared to 2021’s $71.88B total funding haul, 2022’s $24.4B so far makes it unlikely that investors hit more than 75% of the previous year’s figure.
- However, the implications of the figures have to be placed in context: Globally, if not in the U.S. as well, funding is on track to top its 2020 level.
- Given that 2021 had so many extraordinary funding events, one could argue that the year was an anomaly, which means that current trend lines are still pointing up.
- Still, the exit environment is distressing: Compared with a total of 111 biotech debuts in the U.S. in 2021, only 14 IPOs have come out of the sector so far this year.
- At the current pace, exits will not come close to the previous record set in 202 of 91.
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Orderly Network, a decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol, raised $20M Series A from Three Arrows Capital, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and Sequoia China. Jump Crypto, Alameda Research, GSR Ventures, and MetaWeb.VC also participated. More: - The company was founded in Oct. 2021 and offers smart contracts to conduct peer-to-peer trading.
- Beyond that, it offers a risk management platform and will expand into shared asset pools.
- Further down the line, Orderly will offer composability allowing developers to build dApps for financial instruments such as derivatives, spot and margin trading, as well as lending and borrowing.
- The company seeks to start community lending pools to boost liquidity on its platform, which has been hitherto guaranteed by an initial investment from Kronos Research, which will continue serving in this capacity after Orderly’s public launch.
- Orderly’s initial investments came from Near and liquidity platform WOO Network, which incubated the firm.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Agtech - Seed-X (U.S./Israel), platform to optimize seed and grain sorting at the single seed and grain level: $10M A led by iAngels, participation from Neva SGR.
AI/ML - Papercup (London, U.K.), AI film dubbing in multiple languages: $20M led by Octopus Ventures, participation from Local Globe, Sands Capital, Sky and Guardian Media Ventures, Entrepreneur First, BDMI.
Blockchain - Tatsumeeko (Singapore), MMORPG-lite game on Ethereum and Solana: $7.5M led by DeFiance Capital, Delphi Ventures, BITKRAFT Ventures, participation from Binance Labs, Animoca Brands, et al.
- Ancient8 (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), infrastructure developer and a large blockchain gaming guild and community: $6M led by Makers Fund, C² Ventures, participation from Pantera Capital, 6th Man Ventures, IOSG Ventures, et al.
- Request (France), Web3 enterprise crypto payments: $5.5M Seed from Animoca Brands, Balderton Capital, XAnge.
Cannabis - Canix (San Francisco, Calif.), cannabis ERP seed-to-sale platform: $10M A from undisclosed sources.
DevOps - Luminai (Palo Alto, Calif.), API search engine: $16M A led by General Catalyst, participation from Moxxie Ventures, Underscore VC, Craft Ventures, YC Continuity, et al.
Edtech - GOMYCODE (Tunisia), coding summer project and camp: $8M from AfricInvest.
Enterprise - Strong Network (Vaud, Switzerland), B2B SaaS startup: $5.4M led by OpenOcean, participation from Wingman Ventures.
Fintech - SecureSave (Kirkland, Wash.), savings programs product: $11M led by Truist Ventures.
- Decimal (Indianapolis), accounting automation platform: $9.2M Seed led by Arthur Ventures, participation from Service Providers Capital, et al.
- Extracker (San Francisco, Calif.), change order communication platform for financial transparency in construction: $7M A led by Cloud Apps Capital Partners, participation from Building Ventures, et al.
Gaming - SuperTeam Games (California), independent games studio: $10M led by Griffin Gaming Partners, participation from Powerhouse Capital, et al.
Robotics - Teleo (Palo Alto, Calif.), construction robotics: $12M A from UP.Partners, F-Prime Capital, K9 Ventures, YCombinatol.
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- SoftBank-backed Symbiotic, a retail warehouse robot fleet provider, raised $725M by merging with a SPAC and saw its share price jump 120% during its first-day trading, valuing the company at over $10B. The share fell 40% during its second day on public markets.
- Biospring Partners closed a $245M first fund to bet on biopharma startups.
- Santa Barbara Venture Partners raised a maiden $11M fund to place bets with an average size of $1M on tech-enabled companies with $3M-$100M in ARR.
- Beijing may be nearing a decision to issue an IPO license for Ant Financial, leading to a rebound in Alibaba’s stock price. The decision could signal the beginning of the end for the regulatory crackdown on big tech within the country.
- Accenture announced two new acquisitions for undisclosed prices: Greenfish, a sustainability consultancy services provider, and Advocate Networks, a technology consultancy and managed services provider.
- The SEC probe of EV maker Faraday Future for allegedly misleading investors during its SPAC debut has attracted the attention of the DOJ. The company has long since opened up its own investigation, demoted its founder, restructured its board, and cut pay/suspended executives.
- 64% of companies used this channel to generate nearly half of their revenue — and it’s not paid ads or content.*
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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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