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Venture Capital News
Guardian
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188
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Frasers Group criticises management of Mulberry after ditching takeover plans
- Frasers Group criticises management of Mulberry after ditching takeover plans
- Frasers Group, Mulberry's second-largest shareholder, has criticized the management of Mulberry and walked away from its attempts to take over the luxury handbag maker after a series of rejected offers.
- Mulberry's largest shareholder, Challice, holding a 56% stake, had previously stated no interest in selling its shares, thus blocking any deal.
- Frasers Group offered £111m bid, which was rejected by Mulberry's board, leading Frasers Group to criticize the governance and financial position of Mulberry.
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Saastr
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381
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5 Interesting Learnings from Palantir at $2.7 Billion in ARR
- Palantir has grown its annual recurring revenue (ARR) to $2.7 billion, with a growth rate of 27% and re-acceleration.
- The company has a 22% free-cash margin and has achieved profitability on a GAAP basis.
- Palantir has witnessed a 41% increase in customer count, with a significant shift towards commercial customers.
- With several multi-million dollar deals and a focus on AI-driven solutions, Palantir has positioned itself as a high-value SaaS and Cloud stock.
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Medium
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368
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Breaking Into Venture Capital: Understanding the Different Roles and Career Paths
- Breaking into venture capital (VC) can feel overwhelming, especially since there are so many different roles beyond just investing.
- Investment roles involve identifying, evaluating, and managing potential investments.
- Platform and operations roles focus on helping portfolio companies grow and succeed beyond the initial investment.
- Marketing and communications teams play a critical role in managing the firm's brand and ensuring its thought leadership stands out.
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Saastr
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100
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Approaching Half a Million Customers: How to Win in SMB with BILL CEO and Founder René Lacerte
- BILL CEO and Founder René Lacerte talked about winning in SMBs and how Bill managed to achieve 80% gross margins. He emphasized on knowing your why, why are you doing what you're doing and maintaining HARD goals (heartfelt, animated, required, and difficult) as your motivation. He shared that customers aren't asking for AI, they're asking for moving money faster, creating a specific workflow, and insights and forecasting so they can be strategic. There is more stabilization in the wait-and-see economy as per Lacerte and investing for growth has been pretty flat year over year for SMBs.
- BILL provides great value to customers and is more immune to some effects when 'cheap.' The mobile phone user has the highest NPS in BILL as it's super simple and easy. Selling to multiple stakeholders in SMBs is challenging. René suggests focusing on all stakeholders vs just the contract signer.
- BILL is unique because it centralizes the money, creates a moat around network members with its payment capabilities and connects your documents, employees, suppliers, and every part of the transaction.
- BILL aimed to create a category around financial operations for SMBs and succeeded, reaching around $1.3B in revenue. LTV continues to grow, and people tend to stay for a long time. Customer attraction is easier when you fill a need that nobody else is filling. The first 90 days have higher attrition rates.
- BILL's core customers are around 6 million businesses with employees, but it can continue to add more customers and products into financial operations that expand the TAM. Bill has created a second act with its acquisition of Divvy, a Leader in Spend Management for SMBs in 2021.
- René believes that fundamental technologies become fundamental, not because of hype, and AI will be a more integrated part of all of BILL's platforms. They make five million predictions daily using AI on all documents coming in, helping customers move money faster and be strategic about their spending.
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Medium
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166
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No more blockchain on SF & LA tech weeks
- The SF and LA Tech Weeks in October showed a significant decline in interest and discussion about blockchain technology.
- VCs are now more focused on AI projects and finding it challenging to fund blockchain initiatives.
- This presents an opportunity for genuine blockchain enthusiasts to focus on innovative solutions without the hype.
- The intersection of blockchain and AI still garners some attention despite the overall shift in focus.
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10 Likes
Medium
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162
Image Credit: Medium
Patient Capital 101 breach
- In a study assessing the 'patience' of capital for Indian product startups versus services startups, it was found that early-stage valuations of product (SaaS) startups closely follow those of service startups, which is not ideal.
- Product startups typically require higher patience due to upfront investments in human and research capital, but in India, valuations rely heavily on customer acquisition KPIs, similar to service startups.
- The close correlation between Indian product (SaaS) and service startups suggests a potential shortfall in early-stage valuations compared to more developed ecosystems like the US.
- Further normalization may be needed to account for market access differences, quality of human capital, cost of capital, and other factors.
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Underscore
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267
Image Credit: Underscore
Why We Invested in Hue: Powering the Future of Video Commerce
- Hue is a company that helps brands and retailers to embed authentic short-form video reviews on their e-commerce websites to give customers confidence to add products to cart.
- The company is leading the way in creating a new category within the e-commerce space — authentic and diversified short-form video reviews — which is poised for massive growth.
- The founders, who met at Harvard Business School and bring a unique blend of backgrounds in tech, beauty, and marketing, have the perfect combination of attributes, expertise, and lived experiences.
- Hue's product improves the customer experience by helping customers to discover products and brands with accurate and trustworthy product recommendations that are not just text but rich videos.
- The company estimates the opportunity to be at least $750M in the enterprise market, $3.5B in the mid-market, and $50B in the SMB market for consumer products.
- The Hue team has brought on and benefitted from two Underscore Core Partners and three Hue champions as advisors to achieve customer-centric growth.
- Hue strategically partnered with the world’s largest clean beauty retailer Credo Beauty and Lawless Beauty to onboard an impressive roaster of beauty brands and deliver improved customer experiences to its customers.
- One of its customers, Live Tinted, drove a 45% increase in conversions with Hue customer video reviews.
- With a new infusion of capital, Hue is growing fast to meet the demand of new brand and retailer partners across categories.
- Hue aims to expand the engineering team and strengthen its AI algorithm.
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16 Likes
Medium
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122
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Nordic Tech #3 — The Sky’s the Limit for AirForestry — Literally
- AirForestry has developed the world’s first aerial forestry technology using electric drones to thin forests from above, reducing environmental impact and CO2 emissions.
- The transition from diesel-driven machinery to electric drones helps counter the 10 megatons of CO2 emitted annually by the forestry industry and promotes the absorption of more CO2 through carbon sequestration.
- AirForestry offers economic advantages by reducing infrastructure investments, operating costs, and labor-intensive workflows. It also improves safety in an industry with a high fatality rate.
- The company is well-positioned to capitalize on the local market in Sweden and meet the increasing demand for sustainable forest management, supported by the EU Forest Strategy for 2030.
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7 Likes
Guardian
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386
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UK watchdog formally investigates Carlsberg’s £3.3bn takeover of Britvic
- The UK's competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has launched a formal investigation into Carlsberg's £3.3bn takeover of Britvic.
- The CMA has set a deadline of 18 December for the first phase of the investigation.
- Carlsberg has stated that the deal would create a beverage "powerhouse" by combining Britvic's soft drinks products with Carlsberg's beer offering.
- The CMA will decide after the initial investigation whether to conduct an in-depth phase 2 investigation or approve the deal.
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Eu-Startups
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35
Celebrate Europe’s best innovators at the Innovation Radar Prize 2024 in Lisbon
- The Innovation Radar Prize 2024 will be held in Lisbon, Portugal on 11 November 2024.
- The event celebrates and empowers EU-funded startups across three key innovation categories.
- In addition to a pitch competition, there will be insightful panel discussions and fireside chats on topics like AI's impact on venture capital markets and the EU's AI Act.
- Participants will have the opportunity to connect with Europe's innovation leaders and explore potential partnerships.
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2 Likes
Medium
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421
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The Hidden Layer of Innovation: Value-Seeking Experiments
- Untethered projects, known as "value-seeking experiments," represent a hidden layer of the innovation ecosystem, says a TechCrunch op-ed. These projects bridge the gap between R&D and company building by focusing solely on creating value unencumbered by the pressures of developing new technologies or achieving commercial success. By isolating the notion of value creation from other parts of innovation and business building, creators can focus on a fundamental question: what truly matters to people?
- The value-seeking experiment concept fills gaps in classic innovation models that center on research and development and start-up creation and set out to achieve commercial success. Value-seeking experiments face a fundamental question that those models lack: what truly matters to people?
- With an ability to distinguish between 0 to 1 and 1 to n companies, value-seeking experiments facilitate creators to focus on the novel and intuitive value that satisfies the social needs of users. More significantly, they force value measurement and offer resources for becoming valuable creators by setting fundamental abilities that include imagination and empathy. Importantly, such experiments increase the odds of generating the next Google.
- The article suggests that the next world-changing innovation might not be born in a lab or pitch meeting. Instead, such innovations might happen in a dorm room, garage, or coffee shop where someone is tinkering with new ways to create value for the world.
- The author suggests creating more spaces to allow more value-seeking experiments. This allows more people to engage in them and taps into human inventiveness and creativity while focusing on creating value without the encumbrances of commercial success.
- To grow, the Builder Circle focuses on creating spaces for creativity, experiments, and collaborations, shielding members from the risks and sacrifices frequently encountered in commercialization. It aims to create value without the usual bottlenecks of capital, intellectual property, and company culture.
- Value-creating experiments usually remain invisible and lie beneath the startup successes that one often hears about. By creating these experiments and nurturing them, we can bring to fruition the next game-changing idea, strengthening innovation, and the world economy.
- To encourage more people to engage in these valuable experiments and become valuable creators, we need to continue to foster the qualities of imagination and empathy. Making newer technologies readily available to those with a passion for experimentation is imperative for turning groundbreaking ideas into viable commercial endeavors.
- The article points out that by only focusing on research and development and start-ups creation, one misses out on the crucial element that underlies exceptional breakthroughs; the value-seeking experiments.
- The author concludes that by tapping into the human inventiveness and creativity that value-seeking experiments offer and creating more spaces for them, we can generate the next Google, Facebook, or Apple without the encumbrance of commercial success.
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25 Likes
Saastr
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87
Image Credit: Saastr
Dear SaaStr: What Should You Expect From a Co-Founder?
- A co-founder should be a true partner who is committed, reliable, and brings unique strengths to the table.
- Their commitment should be evident in their dedication and ability to carry the weight during tough times.
- They should excel in areas where you may be lacking or take ownership of important functions.
- Ultimately, a co-founder's equity should be valuable and their commitment should be unwavering for the partnership to succeed.
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5 Likes
Siliconangle
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719
Image Credit: Siliconangle
Agentic AI startup CrewAI closes $18M funding round
- Agentic AI startup CrewAI has closed an $18 million funding round to support its growth efforts.
- The funding was raised through a seed investment led by boldstart ventures and a Series A raise led by Insight Partners.
- CrewAI has developed an open-source framework that simplifies the building of AI agents and enables them to collaborate on complex tasks.
- The startup's paid offering, CrewAI Enterprise, provides a no-code interface and templates for building AI agents, along with features for running them in production.
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8 Likes
Insider
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364
Image Credit: Insider
Legal tech startup Genie AI just raised $17.8 million from Google and Khosla Ventures using this 13-slide deck
- Legal tech startup Genie AI has secured a $17.8 million Series A funding from Google and Khosla Ventures.
- Genie AI offers an AI editing platform that allows lawyers to turn around a contract in minutes.
- The platform aims to help businesses reduce costs and accelerate deal closures.
- Genie AI plans to expand in the US and further develop its agentic AI capabilities.
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21 Likes
Medium
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223
Image Credit: Medium
Weave VC Announces Final Closing of $6M Inaugural Fund to Support Pre-Seed Founders in Western…
- Weave VC announces the final closing of its $6M inaugural fund to support pre-seed founders in Western Canada.
- The fund targets B2B software and deep tech companies raising their first $500K-$1.5M.
- Weave VC has partnered with nine B2B software and deep tech businesses across various sectors.
- Their goal is to fill the gap in early-stage risk capital in Western Canada by fostering local technology firms and supporting their growth.
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13 Likes
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