Evan Vitale

By Evan Vitale

The New Year is fresh, so let’s see what stories made the headlines during the last week of 2016.

ValueWalk.com has listed its top 5 venture capital deals, exits and funds for the past year with Uber and Snap on the list. You can see the Top 5 and read more about VC in 2016 here: http://bit.ly/2is1txt

Fortune.com has an interesting piece – “Fraud in Silicon Valley: Startups Show their Unethical Underside.” The article is subtitled: As the list of startup scandals grows, it’s time to ask whether entrepreneurs are taking “fake it till you make it” too far.

You can read the full story here: http://for.tn/2htvXR9

Meanwhile, Health IT News has published an article on the low numbers of women and minorities who fill the top investment roles at venture capital firms.

Few women are in decision-making positions when it comes to investment, according to a report from the National Venture Capital Association and Deloitte.

Women represent merely 11 percent of investment partners or equivalent on venture investment teams.

The survey also reveals racial minorities are underrepresented in venture capital positions, with only 22 percent of the venture capital workforce. Black employees are at 3 percent while Hispanic or Latino employees are at 2

By race, the report found that non-white employees comprise 22 percent of the venture capital workforce.

Details: http://bit.ly/2iFS6h0

Sputnik.com shares a story on how Belarus and China are pledging to set up a $20 million venture capital fund to promote investment in the Eastern European nation.

Details: http://bit.ly/2iFV9Sf

Happy New Year!

By Evan Vitale

Let’s see what stories are making headlines this week in the world of venture capital.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Tyson is launching a $150 million venture-capital fund in hopes that it will facilitate expansion and innovation. Other food and agricultural conglomerates such as General Mills Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and Campbell Soup Co. have launched venture-capital efforts in recent years, jockeying for position against Silicon Valley firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Khosla Ventures. Details: http://on.wsj.com/2hcFuxd

GreenBiz.com has an interesting article asking the question “can venture capital ever propel cleantech?” According to the article, a July report by MIT Energy Initiative, “Venture Capital and Cleantech: The Wrong Model for Clean Energy Innovation (PDF),” has compared the performance of venture capital (VC) in the software, medical and cleantech sectors. The results showed VC is not the right model for investments in the cleantech sector. Public funding is crucial at the beginning of projects. Details: http://bit.ly/2h69A5f

According to pymnts.com, venture capital has hit a plateau citing analysts KPMG and CB Insights. Data suggests the trend is global: North America VC investments for the quarter were fairly flat compared to Q2, and while Europe saw an increase in the number of deals for VC funding, there was a decline in the value of that collective funding. Even Asia is seeing a pullback from investors, the report found, finding that VC funding activity has “slowed down dramatically” since 2015. Details: http://bit.ly/2ge84cy

Finally, Wing Venture Capital has announced that it has closed Wing Two, its $250 million second fund, according to venturebeat.com. Wing Two has the backing of some of the wrold’s most sophisticated investors, including premier universities and private foundations. Details: http://bit.ly/2gk4FfM

Have a great week!

By Evan Vitale

As we now head into the final month of 2016, let’s see what stories are making headlines in the world of venture capital.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, one of Chicago’s most active venture capital funds, is ramping up its presence in Los Angeles, where it sees opportunity in health care, artificial intelligence and consumer-facing businesses.

The firm announced Tuesday that two of its Chicago investment staff have moved to Los Angeles, a step leaders hope will help it tap into more deals in the city that is home to YouTube and Snapchat. Details: http://trib.in/2gOvKVB

Venture capital funding has dropped off leaving some small firms defenseless, so says an article published in Investor’s Business Daily.

Declines in the venture capital market are hitting startups of all sizes, but the ones left particularly vulnerable are the thousands of young companies that raised seed funding during headier times just a year or two ago.

The seed frenzy peaked in the first quarter of 2015 when more than 1,500 startups raised their first rounds of capital, according to research firm PitchBook Data. Many of those companies are now running out of cash, and most won’t be able to get more. Details: http://bit.ly/2gOAlXW

Data Center Knowledge has published an article on “Deep Tech” and how its dominating the plateauing European venture capital market.

For years, the rap on Europe’s technology scene was that it was dominated by consumer-oriented e-commerce companies, some of which were blatant knock-offs of successful U.S. businesses, while the real pioneering innovation was taking place back in Silicon Valley.

That is no longer the case, London-based venture capital firm Atomico says in its latest annual report on the state of European tech. Startups focusing on deep technology — which would encompass the kind of artificial intelligence developed by Google’s DeepMind, or typing prediction from Microsoft-acquired SwiftKey — are drawing an increasing share of European venture funding. Deep tech accounted for $1.3 billion of European venture investments in 2015 and an estimated $935 million this year, up from just $289 million in 2011, Atomico said in its report, which was jointly commissioned and released in conjunction with the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland. Details: http://bit.ly/2gJwcbb

 

 

By Evan Vitale

Here are some of the stories making headlines in the world of venture capital during the Thanksgiving holiday week.

According to the Wall Street Journal, China firms are working harder to gain a larger share of U.S. venture capital. The article claims that between 2011 and the third quarter of 2016, Chinese technology deals grew from 1.7% to 4.1%. Details: http://on.wsj.com/2ghGRtO

Forbes has a nice piece on “Biotech Venture Capital Mythbusting Redux.”

Venture capital has been on a good run over the past few years across a range of sectors; even with recent slowdown relative to 2014-2015, venture-backed investments remain above historic averages. In fact, the first three quarters of 2016 alone are already higher than the annual rate of venture investing in all but two years since 2002. Details: http://bit.ly/2fM4I18

A warning from Fortune.com in a piece titled “Venture Capital Recruiting Scam Resurfaces.”

Earlier this year Fortune unveiled two strange, related scams aimed at the private equity and venture capital industries: One involving fake recruiting firms called Prelude Recruiting and Renaissance Recruiting, a fake VC firm called Sienna Ventures, and the other involving a fake venture capital firm called Asenqua Ventures. Details: http://for.tn/2gdTt4O

Here’s hoping you enjoyed a long and relating holiday weekend that that you’re ready for a full week this week and we are truly into the big holiday shopping season!

By Evan Vitale

As we head closer to Thanksgiving and other holidays, what’s happening in the world of venture capital?

Well, the New York Times has an interesting piece on Spark Capital and their “drive” to lead a $12.5 million investment in Cruise Automation – a start-up based in San Francisco whose software helps cars pilot themselves. Six months later, Cruise sold itself to General Motors for about $1 billion. You can read the full article here: http://nyti.ms/2fUvlCf

Forbes is reporting that there are two macro trends occurring within venture capital (VC) which are combining to have a transformative impact. As has been noted repeatedly over the past several years, the VC landscape has morphed into a barbell structure, with lots of small funds on one end and a handful of large, megafunds on the other, with few moderate-sized funds in between. Details: http://bit.ly/2fIcGsi

From Fortune.com, Following Donald Trump’s presidential election victory last Tuesday, a partner at Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm has publicly expressed his fears of a Trump presidency, breaking with the contrarian tech billionaire’s staunch support for the Republican real estate mogul.

Just as Thiel joins Trump’s White House transition team, Bloomberg reports that Geoff Lewis of Founders Fund spoke out against the President-elect, in a blog post published on Sunday titled “Turn On Reality.” Details: http://for.tn/2fqdODh

Sodexo has reported that its profit attributable to equity holds of the parent for fiscal year 2016 declined 9.0 percent to 637 million euros from 700 million euros in the previous year, so says RTT News. Details: http://bit.ly/2fYLhBR

However, a day later, Sodexo announced the launch of Sodexo Ventures, a 50-million euro venture capital fund, whose investments will combine agility and creativity with the Group’s investment capacity, skills and expertise in sectors as varied as Food-Tech, health and wellness, data, mobility and smart buildings.

Sodexo Ventures will invest in start-ups with high growth potential in line with Sodexo’s current or future activities. This investment strategy will allow Sodexo to closely monitor, anticipate and respond to evolutions in its rapidly moving sectors and markets. Details: http://bit.ly/2fYMXeI