By Evan Vitale
Here are some of the latest headlines in venture capital news:
According to GeekWire, a new study from MIT discovered that startups are more likely to succeed when their venture capital backers are connected to them via direct flight.
The research informs larger questions about the effects of venture capital oversight and whether it improves the operations of the startups in which the firm has invested or whether startup success depends solely on effective internal management.
The researchers — Xavier Giroud of MIT, Shai Bernstein of Stanford, and Richard R. Townsend of Dartmouth — compared startups in cities where a direct flight recently had become available between startups and their existing VCs to startups in cities where no direct flights existed to connect the two groups.
Read the rest of the story here: bit.ly/1PCt8oe
The Jewish Business News is reporting in 2015, Singulariteam, a medium sized Israeli fund founded by Moshe Hogeg and Kenges Rakishev, topped all VC fund investors by making 12 first investments, according to report by IVC Research Center and APM & Co. Law Firm analyzing first investments in Israel by venture capital funds in the past five years, and ranking the most active venture capital funds which invested in Israel in 2015.
Singulariteam’s investments makes a slight increase for the number of deals made by the top ranked fund, compared to 10 first investments made in 2014 by the year’s Most Active Fund, JVP.
Singulariteam manages $152 million via three funds – two early stage funds and a new growth stage fund. The first investments made in 2015 were funded by Singulariteam II, a $102 million early-stage fund closed in 2014.
The full story is here: bit.ly/1KbDOxl
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a $104 million fund managed by Lewis & Clark Ventures is a big deal for St. Louis.
Startups that have been nurtured by the region’s various angel investing groups, accelerator programs and seed-stage funds now have someplace to go when they need larger sums.
The fund plans to invest in series A and B rounds, which are when an early-stage company gets its first or second dose of institutional investment. Lewis & Clark says it will invest between $3 million and $7 million per company, and will bring in co-investors when firms require tens of millions of dollars.
The full story is here: bit.ly/1KFdqMl
