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startups
venture capital
The Coming Wave of Cram Downs
By
Kate Clark
· March 23, 2023 12:44 PM PDT ·
3 comments
What do Good Eggs, a startup that delivers $4.99 broccoli bunches, and Tonal, a fitness startup that sells $3,995 exercise equipment, have in common—other than a business model subsidized by venture capital? They’re both engaged in a painful type of financing known as a “cram down.” If you grew up in the era of easy money, ultralow interest...
What do Good Eggs, a startup that delivers $4.99 broccoli bunches, and Tonal, a fitness startup...
Dealmaker
venture capital
Venture Capitalists Made a Big Mess of SVB
By
Kate Clark
· March 16, 2023 3:30 PM PDT ·
25 comments
Venture capitalists just gave a master class in how not to handle a crisis. My sympathy goes out to the founders. They’ve been bombarded with conflicting advice for days, from all-caps emails written by panicked “seasoned” venture investors urging them to pull their funds out of Silicon Valley Bank, to emergency Zoom calls asking them to...
Venture capitalists just gave a master class in how not to handle a crisis. My sympathy goes...
Dealmaker
markets
startups
Venture’s Limited Partners Look for a Way Out; SVB’s Meltdown
By
Kate Clark
· March 9, 2023 2:13 PM PST ·
3 comments
Silicon Valley Bank’s stock was in freefall as I wrote this, down 60%, after it announced a $2.25 billion share sale, partially to counter “elevated cash burn” at the startups it banks. That news set off a wave of panic, with some VC firms like USV warning their portfolio companies to move their funds, we reported earlier today. CEO Greg Becker...
Silicon Valley Bank’s stock was in freefall as I wrote this, down 60%, after it announced a $2.25...
What Josh Kushner Can Learn From Marc Andreessen
By
Kate Clark
· March 2, 2023 3:19 PM PST ·
4 comments
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
What Josh Kushner Can Learn From Marc Andreessen
By
Kate Clark
· March 2, 2023 3:19 PM PST ·
4 comments
There are different ways to ascend venture capital’s top ranks. Move fast, be loud and raise a lot of money. Or, build slowly, stay quiet and let the deals speak for themselves.For examples of these two approaches, just look at Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital. Both launched near the depths of the 2009 financial crisis and both have...
There are different ways to ascend venture capital’s top ranks. Move fast, be loud and raise a...
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
Stripe Is No Longer the Darling of Silicon Valley
By
Kate Clark
· Feb. 23, 2023 2:44 PM PST
The last few months have laid out Stripe’s dirty laundry for the first time. As a reporter who has for years tried to find the cracks in the company’s shiny facade, I more than welcome a balanced conversation about Stripe and its prospects. For so long, questioning Stripe’s valuation was the equivalent of a crime in Silicon Valley. As one...
The last few months have laid out Stripe’s dirty laundry for the first time. As a reporter who...
Dealmaker
venture capital
Who’s to Blame for Venture Capital’s Bloat?
By
Kate Clark
· Feb. 16, 2023 2:09 PM PST ·
4 comments
After I published last week’s column, which said limited partners were still pissed off at venture capitalists for misplaced bets made during the funding boom, my phone buzzed with a string of texts from a prominent venture capitalist.“LPs propagated all of this.” “They are just as accountable.”“Who gave Tiger all the money?”It’s a...
After I published last week’s column, which said limited partners were still pissed off at...
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
VC’s Limited Partners Are Still Pissed
By
Kate Clark
· Feb. 9, 2023 2:13 PM PST ·
3 comments
The rush to join the Church of Sam Altman marked the beginning of an entirely new hype cycle, this time relating to generative AI. But venture capital’s limited partners are still reeling from the last cycle and their trust in startup investors might be at an all-time low.LPs, the individuals who represent family offices, funds of funds,...
The rush to join the Church of Sam Altman marked the beginning of an entirely new hype cycle,...
A New Bubble Is Forming for AI Startups, But Don’t Expect a Crypto-like Pop
By
Kate Clark
· Feb. 2, 2023 1:44 PM PST ·
3 comments
Dealmaker
venture capital
A New Bubble Is Forming for AI Startups, But Don’t Expect a Crypto-like Pop
By
Kate Clark
· Feb. 2, 2023 1:44 PM PST ·
3 comments
Venture capitalists have dumped crypto and moved on to a new fascination: artificial intelligence. As a sign of this frenzy, they're paying steep prices for startups that are little more than ideas. Thrive Capital recently wrote an $8 million check for an AI startup co-founded by a pair of entrepreneurs who had just left another AI...
Venture capitalists have dumped crypto and moved on to a new fascination: artificial...
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
Stripe Should Have Gone Public Already; Volition Raises $675 Million Fund
By
Kate Clark
· Jan. 26, 2023 11:32 AM PST
You can’t overstate the reverberations a Stripe initial public offering—or even the glimmer of one—would have on startup investing. As my colleagues reported today, the payment software company has told employees it plans to go public or allow them to sell stock in the next year.I doubt even a looming deadline for early stock awards could force...
You can’t overstate the reverberations a Stripe initial public offering—or even the glimmer of...
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
Founders, Beware. An AI Chatbot May Have Written That Pitch Rejection
By
Kate Clark
· Jan. 19, 2023 11:36 AM PST
Founders, remember that note in your inbox from a venture capitalist who’s “decided not to invest” but “would still like to stay in touch”? It might have been written by an artificial intelligence chatbot.Venture capital investors are tripping over themselves to buy stakes in OpenAI, the company behind the ultra popular new AI tool ChatGPT,...
Founders, remember that note in your inbox from a venture capitalist who’s “decided not to invest...
Dealmaker
venture capital
What OpenAI’s ‘Bonkers’ Deal Structure Means For Silicon Valley
By
Kate Clark
· Jan. 12, 2023 2:31 PM PST ·
7 comments
Microsoft’s expected investment in OpenAI, destined to be one of the biggest startup stories of the year, comes with a whole lot of strings attached. It’s a deal structure that two lawyers told me this week they had never seen before in VC dealmaking, and that one venture capitalist described as “really bonkers.” But the arrangement could...
Microsoft’s expected investment in OpenAI, destined to be one of the biggest startup stories of...
Insight’s New Fund & VC’s Worsening Diversity Problem
By
Kate Clark
· Jan. 5, 2023 1:58 PM PST ·
2 comments
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
Insight’s New Fund & VC’s Worsening Diversity Problem
By
Kate Clark
· Jan. 5, 2023 1:58 PM PST ·
2 comments
New efforts to back minority entrepreneurs and fund managers are relatively few and far between these days, especially compared to 2020, when heavyweights such as SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz and Google launched specialized funds to support underrepresented founders. One outlier is Insight Partners, which is planning to raise over $100...
New efforts to back minority entrepreneurs and fund managers are relatively few and far between...
Dealmaker
venture capital
The Troubled Investments VC Firms Tried to Erase
By
Kate Clark
· Dec. 29, 2022 11:00 AM PST ·
2 comments
There’s no better way to avoid flack for a slew of bad venture capital investments than simply erasing evidence of those deals—right? That’s apparently what a handful of VC partners decided in 2022, a year many will remember for the collapse in startup valuations and several unforgettable blow-ups.In between marking down the value of their...
There’s no better way to avoid flack for a slew of bad venture capital investments than simply...
Dealmaker
venture capital
Venture Capitalists Want to Save the Planet Again
By
Kate Clark
· Dec. 22, 2022 11:00 AM PST ·
1 comment
We’ve written so much about venture capitalists rushing to back instant-delivery and direct-to-consumer startups that never created any value and haven’t made a positive impact on the world. That’s why it’s a relief to hear investors are chasing deals in startups tackling climate change again.Brian Halligan, the former CEO of HubSpot, had his...
We’ve written so much about venture capitalists rushing to back instant-delivery and...
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
Musk’s Twitter Layoffs Inspire Founders to Cut Deep
By
Kate Clark
· Dec. 15, 2022 12:04 PM PST ·
2 comments
Some might call Elon Musk’s leadership style toxic. Others consider it heroic. It’s certainly influential. When the Tesla CEO and new Twitter owner fired more than half of the social network’s 7,500 staff in November, then took aim at standard tech-company perks like free cafeteria food and remote work flexibility, startup founders took...
Some might call Elon Musk’s leadership style toxic. Others consider it heroic. It’s certainly...
How Union Square Ventures Knew Venture Capital Had Peaked
By
Kate Clark
· Dec. 8, 2022 11:30 AM PST
Dealmaker
venture capital
How Union Square Ventures Knew Venture Capital Had Peaked
By
Kate Clark
· Dec. 8, 2022 11:30 AM PST
Union Square Ventures managing partner Albert Wenger, 55, has been meaning to write a blog post about Tesla’s self-driving technology, he tells me about half hour into our interview at the firm’s New York headquarters last week. Sitting between two framed NFTs, he’s already covered the fall of FTX (“a setback”), the signs that venture capital...
Union Square Ventures managing partner Albert Wenger, 55, has been meaning to write a blog post...
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
Venture Capitalists Want the Middle East’s Money
By
Kate Clark
· Dec. 1, 2022 12:47 PM PST ·
1 comment
Eight thousand miles is a long way to go for a networking event, but desperate times call for desperate measures. That may explain the horde of tech investors who piled into the Four Seasons Hotel in Abu Dhabi’s Al Maryah Island on the evening of Nov. 18. They were attending a reception hosted by Mubadala Investment Company, a $284 billion...
Eight thousand miles is a long way to go for a networking event, but desperate times call for...
Dealmaker
venture capital
The Star Sequoia Investor Behind FTX’s Collapse
By
Kate Clark
· Nov. 23, 2022 11:00 AM PST ·
2 comments
Last week, Sequoia Capital partner Doug Leone compared FTX’s blowup to childbirth. “Like having a child, you forget the pain of having that child three months later, a year later,” he said on stage at a conference in Europe.Leaving aside the strange and inappropriate metaphor, Sequoia should not “forget the pain” FTX has caused in three months...
Last week, Sequoia Capital partner Doug Leone compared FTX’s blowup to childbirth. “Like having a...
Dealmaker
startups
venture capital
Sam Bankman-Fried’s Silicon Valley Fixer
By
Kate Clark
· Nov. 17, 2022 12:03 PM PST
This fall, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried traveled to the Middle East, hoping to raise boatloads of capital from deep-pocketed sovereign wealth funds. He came away empty-handed. But in the months before, he met with 100-some investment firms, successfully raising $2 billion in venture capital funding. He didn’t do it alone.“No one does [a]...
This fall, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried traveled to the Middle East, hoping to raise...
FTX’s $2 Billion Startup Fund Ensnared in Collapse
By
Kate Clark
· Nov. 10, 2022 1:35 PM PST
Dealmaker
startups
crypto
FTX’s $2 Billion Startup Fund Ensnared in Collapse
By
Kate Clark
· Nov. 10, 2022 1:35 PM PST
The Lehman Brothers–style collapse of crypto exchange FTX is shaping up to be a major embarrassment for the venture investors who backed it. Already it’s left one VC fund in shambles: FTX’s own venture investing arm, FTX Ventures. In fact, at least one startup that received an investment from the 10-month fund has taken advantage of FTX’s...
The Lehman Brothers–style collapse of crypto exchange FTX is shaping up to be a major ...
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