Our new Live Interview Series, Venturing In VC, premiers next week on Jan. 4, 2022. Venturing in VC is a live interview series where our host, Landon Campbell, interviews investors about how they broke into VC, their daily routines, views on the future, and lessons learned along the way. Who’s our first guest? None other than Turner Novak, Founder of Banana Capital — a founder-focused fund that invests anywhere from Pre-Seed to Pre-IPO with an average initial check size of $150,000-$300,000. Save your free seat to learn how Turner views the world and shares lessons he’s learned along his journey. Inside.com/vivc Venturing in VC is sponsored by SeedInvest — Fundraising isn’t easy, but it just got easier. Apply to start your raise on SeedInvest, or browse highly vetted startups to invest in. | |  Stephen |  |
| |
After surging during the pandemic, many high-profile tech stocks have seen massive losses throughout 2021. Peloton is down nearly 75% this year, while social-commerce company Poshmark is down almost 82%, and education-tech company Chegg is down 66%. Collectively, Vimeo, Peloton, Chegg, and Zillow erased $26.3B in market value in one week following their earnings reports. Several factors are at play: - Some companies fell prey to exhausted demand. Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway acquired GrubHub only to find that the growth of food delivery has already peaked.
- The realization that some physical office space is necessary for good business brought Zoom’s stock down 43% this year.
- Wall Street is forecasting Zoom’s sales will grow less than 20% YoY in the next quarter, well below the triple-digit figures recorded in 2020.
- Yet other companies have the burden of proof to show that they have universal, not just niche, appeal.
- Specifically, online fashion purveyors Stitch Fix and Rent the Runway, down 66% and 54% this year, respectively, appear hard-pressed to show that they can move beyond the subscription model to reach more consumers.
Zoom Out - The Nasdaq CTA Internet Index is in the red this year. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 returned more than 27%.
- Nevertheless, Cathie Wood, who manages the famed ARK Innovation ETF, with more than 30% invested in IT, expects an annual rate of return of roughly 40% over the next five years.
- A problem lies in the fact that many tech companies appreciated too quickly during 2020’s lockdowns — a decline of some sort was always inevitable as a correction.
| |
Google is offering big investments to companies that sign up to use its cloud services, reports the Wall Street Journal. It is deploying big sums from its $142B war chest to entice companies such as Communications and CME Group from Amazon’s AWS. It boosted its cloud market share to 6% from 5% in 2020. More: - While Google is the most aggressive in this strategy, it is not alone. Microsoft also deployed capital to land contracts with Grab Holdings and Cruise.
- While Google is making big moves, it is still in a distant third place compared to Amazon’s 41% share and Microsoft’s 20% in the cloud computing market.
- All that firepower is based on Alphabet’s conviction that Google’s cloud unit is the best chance to diversify revenue beyond online advertising, which accounts for 80% of its sales.
- The cloud unit began disclosing financials in 2020 and recorded more revenue in the first nine months of 2021 than for all of 2020. It is expected to grow 50% to $19.26B for the full year.
- While that growth came with high spending, it was able to halve its operating loss in the first nine months of 2021 to $2.2B.
| |
 A message from COIN CLOUD Welcome to Easy Buckets...where bitcoin meets basketball for a slam dunk opportunity. You could win your share of $100,000 in Bitcoin while watching some of today’s top basketball talent explore digital currency. Here’s why people are excited about the opportunity to Watch & Win with Easy Buckets: - This informational video series features Atlanta Hawks star Trae Young, New Orleans Pelicans guard Josh Hart, Las Vegas Aces forward A’ja Wilson, and Stanford Cardinal guard Haley Jones as they navigate the new and often confusing world of digital currency.
- Guiding them on their journey as series host is podcaster, publisher and recognized crypto expert Joe Pompliano.
- New episodes launch every Sunday starting December 26, 2021, with additional prizes and entry opportunities available each week (no purchase necessary to win).
- You could take home between $500 and $5,000 in Bitcoin as one of our weekly giveaway winners!
Ready to score? Enter now for a chance to win your share of $100,000 in Bitcoin. I want to win!
| |
Indian B2B manufacturing services marketplace operator Zetwerk raised $210M, led by Greenoaks Capital. Greenoaks came up with $72.5M of the total sum, while the rest was provided by ICONIQ Strategic Partners, D1 Capital Partners, Steadview Capital Mauritius, Avenir Zetwerk Investors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others. More: - The round valued Zetwerk at a reported $2.7B.
- The company pulled in $150M as recently as August. The Series E funding was led by D1 Capital and valued Zetwerk at $1.33B.
- Prior to that, it raised a $120M Series D led by Greenoaks Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
- Zetwerk specializes in connecting customers looking for customized products, industrial machine components, and other equipment with manufacturers from India and Southeast Asia.
- The products include prefabricated structures for infrastructure projects, sheet metal for electric vehicles, precision parts for aerospace, and assembly lines for consumer durables.
Zoom Out: - The Indian B2B market is really hot right now. Funds seem not to be able to move fast enough. In addition to Zetwerk, the companies Moglix, Infra.Market, and OfBusiness all became unicorns this year.
| |
Despite being the highest-valued startup in the U.S., Stripe has indicated no intention to go public anytime soon. However, the Oct. 2020 move to hire CFO Dhivya Suryadevara, previously the CFO at GM, speaks to other plans. Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, which invested in Stripe, indicated that its portfolio companies tend to begin prepping for IPOs a year in advance. More: - Stripe’s beefed-up management team includes Chief Revenue Officer Mike Clayville, Chief People Officer Carmel Galvin, and Chief Risk Officer Sarah Browne.
- With the two board additions in 2021 of Mark Carney, previous governor of the Bank of England, and Christa Davies of Aon, it is well prepared to join public markets.
- Stripe’s $95B price tag puts it behind only Ant Financial and TikTok worldwide in terms of valuation.
- It is worth noting that both of those companies would probably be public had a regulatory war not erupted between the U.S. and China in 2020 and intensified in China itself this year.
- Stripe earns $2.9B on each $100B of transactions on its platform before adding a per-transaction fee. It pulled in $7.4B in revenue in 2020, up 70% YoY.
- It has raised $2.2B from 39 investors, including Sequoia Capital (Series A), General Catalyst (Series B), and Founders Fund (Series C). Beyond big VC firms, it has found financial backing from top-tier angels Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Elad Gil, Max Levchin, Aaron Levie, and Chris Dixon.
| |
SenseTime saw its shares jump as much as 23% during its Hong Kong debut. The company raised $740M by pricing its 1.5 billion shares at $0.49 (HK$3.85), the bottom of its announced range. The company was valued at $16.4B. More: - With the early trading, the AI company’s value was boosted by $3.8B.
- The positive reception came as a surprise to some analysts. Many expected the issuing to fall flat or worse due to SenseTime’s recent addition to a blacklist for U.S. investors.
- It is accused of having developed AI-based facial analysis software to identify ethnicity, which is allegedly being used in Xinjiang province to detain Uyghurs.
- Reminder: The company initially planned to list on Dec. 13 but ended up delaying because of the news.
- Kenny Ng, Everbright Sun Hung Kai analyst, noted that the market had clearly already digested that information by the time the actual listing took place.
- The shares were further helped by the decision to price bottom-range, allowing for some upward mobility.
| |
Quick Hits - SeedInvest is where high-growth startups go to fundraise online. Apply now to get started.*
- Several drivers will keep pushing cybersecurity funding to new heights in 2022, predicts Chris Metinko for Crunchbase. They include crypto, compliance and auditing, and securing the unknown.
- Sequoia will have to separate its China operations under political pressure, predicts The Information. The political atmosphere will drive away its U.S. and European LPs, meaning that funds will have to come from Middle Eastern and Asian sources.
- DeBank, a DeFi portfolio company, raised $25M led by Sequoia China with participation from Circle, Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com, Dragonfly Capital, Hash Global, and others. It was valued at $200M.
- Didi revealed a $4.7B loss in the last quarter of 2021. Its sales were down 13% QoQ and 1.6% YoY at $6.6B. The report comes as the company prepares to delist from the NYSE and enter the Hong Kong bourse.
- Trust is the community-powered corporate card. Learn from each other’s spending patterns, get trusted advice, and increase your buyer. 100% free.*
*This is a sponsored post.
| |
Upcoming events at Inside: - January 04 - Venturing in VC Episode #1 - featuring Turner Novak (Register Here)
- January 05 - DAOs and the intersection of tech & media with Kinjal Shah (Blockchain Capital) (Register Here)
- January 06 - Augmented and Virtual Reality with Timoni West (VP of AR/VR at Unity) (Register Here)
- January 11 - The Business of Interactive Gambling with Jon Kaplowitz (Penn) (Register Here)
- January 11 - Venturing in VC Episode #2 (Register Here)
- January 13 - Education within the Metaverse with Steve Grubbs (VictoryXR) (Register Here)
- January 25 - Need To Know NoCoder - Leon Young (Cogniss) (Register Here)
- January 27 - Understanding the Metaverse (Register Here)
- February 03 - Blockchain Gaming & Play-to-Earn Economies (Register Here)
- February 10 - The Business of Wellness (Register Here)
- February 17 - Customer Acquisition in a post iOS 14 world (Register Here)
- February 23 - Need to Know NoCoder: Derya Sousa (Kianda Technologies) (Register Here)
- February 24 - Alternative Investments (Register Here)
- March 03 - The $12B Appetite for Amazon Aggregators (Register Here)
| |
 |  | 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. | |
Enter now for a chance to win your share of $100,000 in Bitcoin with “Easy Buckets” from Coin Cloud. | |
Comments
Post a Comment