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| Hey Insiders, Today's newsletter covers: - ⏳ Increased time interval between Series A & B rounds
- 🦄 45% of public unicorns worth less than $500M
- 👤 SoftBank to take 20 founders to Silicon Valley
If you find this newsletter useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | The median time taken by U.S.-based Series A startups to raise the subsequent Series B funding rounds has widened to 30 months due to prevailing fundraising challenges, per Crunchbase. The current time frame marks a three-month increase over the average interval of 27 months seen across the last 10+ years. More: - The time interval gap peaked at 31 months in the first five months of 2023, the largest in the last 12 years.
- With funding continuing to remain scarce, startups will need to wait longer to raise additional funding.
- Per Crunchbase, startups that raised cash in 2021 might have to wait until early or mid-2024 to close the subsequent round.
- While startups have reduced their burn rates and are focused on conserving cash, Crunchbase believes that even the most frugal startups will need to raise cash by 2025.
Q: How can startups effectively bridge the funding gap considering the extended funding round timelines? Join the conversation here. |     | |
| 2 | | 45% of the startups that went public in 2021 at a valuation of over $1B are currently worth less than $500M. Only 40% of the startups have still held their value of over $1B. 
What happened: Rivian, Coinbase, and Roblox were the three most highly valued companies to go public in 2021. All three are currently trading at significantly lower values than their respective IPO prices. Only 13% of the companies that went public in 2021 are valued between $500M and $1B. 32% are valued between $1B and $5B, while 9% are valued at over $5B. What the numbers say: The number of billion-dollar public listings more than tripled from 51 companies in 2020 to 182 in 2021. Of the listings completed in 2021, 93 were IPO listings, and 83 were SPAC listings. Exit activity peaked in 2021 before slumping in the following year. 2022 concluded with 3 IPO listings and 25 SPAC listings of billion-dollar companies. So far in 2023, only four SPAC listings of $1B+ startups have been completed. | | | |
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| 3 | | SoftBank intends to bring 20 founders from its portfolio of Indian startups to Silicon Valley to help their respective organizations incorporate AI technology. Sumer Juneja, the managing director overseeing SoftBank Vision Fund's investments across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India, is planning the tour. Founders of hotel booking platform Oyo Hotels, ride-hailing platform Ola, and food delivery firm Swiggy are set to join the tour. More: - Juneja said, "What we don't want to do is to invest in a company that misses the AI wave and then three years later turns irrelevant. Having a sophisticated tech team and being in the right industry where it could use AI to make the business model even more efficient are must-haves for us to write new cheques."
- Investors' interest in the AI sector has increased after the popularity of recent AI products such as ChatGPT and an increasing number of use cases.
- SoftBank, which had halted new investments after losing money on startups, has now started making new investments again since the June quarter, excited by the potential of AI.
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| 4 | | Workplace AI safety startup Intenseye intends to triple its valuation to $300M at its upcoming fundraiser. The firm is reportedly in talks with Lightspeed Venture Partners to lead a $65M Series B funding round, sources informed Forbes. More: - The firm last raised an Insight Partners-led $25M Series A funding round at a $100M valuation in 2021.
- Intenseye, which counts Coca-Cola and Coats as its two most prominent customers, was co-founded by Sercan Esen and Serhat Cillidag in 2018.
- The firm makes software that identifies unsafe behavior at the workplace by leveraging machine learning and AI to scan and analyze footage from existing surveillance cameras.
Zoom out: - So far this year, AI and machine learning startups have secured more than $32B in venture capital from investors.
- Lightspeed itself has invested $850M in 35 AI startups to date, recently leading a $50M funding round into online gaming startup Inworld.AI.
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| 5 | | Elephant Partners has secured commitments worth $791.5M toward its fifth fund, per security filings seen by Business Journals. 178 investors contributed to the fund as limited partners. More: - The VC firm was established by Andrew Hunt, one of the co-founders of Warby Parker, along with Jeremiah Daly.
- The current fund's size is $200M more than its previous fund, which closed at $600M two years ago.
- Elephant primarily invests in enterprise software, consumer internet, and mobile market startups.
- The firm counts Allbirds as one of its portfolio companies, having backed the sneaker startup through its debut $156M fund in 2016.
- Elephant led a $7.5M Series A funding into debt and lease management software startup DebtBook last year.
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| 6 | | Today's Funding: Cloud services - Cloud-based event management platform AllSeated bagged $20M in funding from Level Structured Capital, Magma Ventures, Vestech Partners, NYFF, and WGG.
Healthcare - Better Life Partners, a startup offering medical and behavioral healthcare solutions for people dealing with addictions, closed its Series B funding round at $26.5M. F-Prime Capital and aMoon co-led the funding round.
- Eldercare robotics maker Intuition Robotics nabbed $25M in fresh funding led by Toyota Woven Capital with participation from Toyota Ventures, OurCrowd, Western Technology Investment, and others.
- Medical device company Radiaction Medical received $12.6M in Series C2 funding led by InnovaHealth Partners.
Logistics - Cold chain solution provider AeroSafe Global secured $43M in fresh funding led by NewSpring Health Capital, with participation from Peloton Equity, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Hamilton Lane, Flexstone Capital, Wave Equity Partners, and Escalate Capital.
Salestech - Bain Capital Ventures led a $100M funding into sales technology platform Apollo.io. The firm cemented its unicorn status with a valuation of $1.6B. Sequoia Capital, Tribe Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners participated in the funding round.
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- Amazon acquired Y Combinator-backed startup Fig, which is building an autocomplete functionality for command line. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
- Swedish payments startup Trustly acquired French payments platform SlimPay for €70M ($75.5M).
- Revenue-based financing startup Lighter Capital availed a $130M credit facility from Apollo Global Management, i80, Invest Victoria, and iPartners.
- Insurtech venture firm Eos Venture Partners secured $100M in capital commitments towards its latest fund.
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Term of the Day White-collar crime: A white-collar crime is committed by someone of a higher social or economic status in the course of their occupation, motivated by financial gain. Question of the Week Do you share details about your salary with your coworkers? Join the conversation |
INSIDE VENTURE CAPITAL LEADERBOARD (30 DAYS) |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | This newsletter was edited by Aaron Crutchfield | |
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