January, 2023

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Charting a Course: Building a Winning VC Fund Strategy [Part II]

The Seraf Compass

In Part I of this article we discussed several key concepts of fund investment strategy and how funds are categorized, whether it be by industry, geography, stage, specialty (e.g. social impact, corporate, etc.) or some other criteria. Now let's take a closer look at capital allocation strategy and the life cycle of a venture fund.

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The Startup M&A Market Fell 94% Year over Year - But One Segment is Thriving

Tomasz Tunguz

The US startup M&A market in Q4 2022 was one of the quietest in the last 20 years. It rivals the dotcom bust & Global Financial Crisis for its paucity. In percentage terms, last quarter dropped the most since 2000, falling 94% year-over-year. US venture-backed M&A fell from $34.6b in Q4 2021 to a paltry $2.1b in Q4 2022. The total quantity of acquisitions demonstrated greater resilience shrinking by 56%, while the median acquisition value tumbled from $81m to $22m (-72%).

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EO Members Share Entrepreneurial Trends for the New Year

Entrepreneurs' Organization

We asked EO members to look ahead in 2023 and identify trends they see for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship overall. We asked them to share the skills, mindset or tools that entrepreneurs would be wise to adopt to meet the moment. Here’s what they shared. Video pitching. I see an uptick in pitching via pre-recorded video. We used Loom to pre-record our pitch and share it with potential investors.

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Machine Learning and Schools

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I read last week that the NYC Department of Education has banned ChatGPT from its networks and devices. I understand that reaction and mentioned the issues that AI/ML create for educators in a post a few weeks ago. I attended a dinner this past week with USV portfolio founders and one who works in education told us that ChatGPT has effectively ended the essay as a way for teachers to assess student progress.

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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I Finally Figured Out Why Investors Won’t Invest in Solo Founders

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Hint: It’s the same reason most founders prefer working by themselves Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook »

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More Trending

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Does everyone want to be a landlord, or what?

TechCrunch

Welcome to The Interchange ! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon.

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From Startup Failure to Venture Capital Success - Azriel Nicdao’s Journey

Jason Malki

Azriel Nicdao otherwise known as (A.Z.) who is a junior investor in the Venture Capital industry. A.Z. believes that entrepreneurship empowers economies, connects communities, and empowers individuals to do the unthinkable. A.Z. is a previous founder in the financial technology space and has a trackrecord of supporting founders even at the earliest stages.

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How Versatile VC collaborates with other investors

David Teten VC

In my meetings with family offices, VCs, and others, a frequent topic is how we collaborate with other investors. Here’s a summary of how we do that: – Other investors are frequently coinvestors/ followon investors in our portfolio. Join our AngelList Syndicate here. – We’ve published extensive research on how to build an investment management firm.

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What Will Happen In 2023

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I want to focus this post on the macro environment for tech, startups, web3, and climate because that is where my head is at right now. I believe that sometime in the first half of 2023, the central banks around the world will start backing off the tightening that they have been engaged in as inflation continues to ease and the economy continues to cool.

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Statement of Cash Flows vs. Cash Flow Statement

Speaker: Wayne Spivak - President and Chief Financial Officer of SBA * Consulting LTD, Industry Writer, and Public Speaker

The old adages that "cash is king" and "you can’t spend profits" still hold true today. But however well-known these sayings might be, it requires a change in mindset to properly implement a cash flow management system that predicts your business's runaway as accurately as possible. Key to this new mindset is understanding the difference between the Statement of Cash Flows, a historical look at the source and uses of cash, and the Cash Flow Statement, which uses transaction history and forward-l

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Investing in Seidr

Andreessen Horowitz

We’re thrilled to announce that Andreessen Horowitz is leading the seed investment in Seidr AB who are building the next generation of midcore cross-play games. Based in Stockholm, a hotbed of games innovation, Seidr’s founding team are Adam Schaub … The post Investing in Seidr appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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23 Profitable Recession-Proof Business Ideas

OkDork

Starting a business during a recession might seem like the WORST possible idea. But that's exactly how everyone else feels. So not only is there less competition for new businesses right now, but some sectors can even thrive since others are trying to just save cash. I put together a list of 23 recession-proof business ideas you can start today to make at least an extra thousand bucks a month and potentially much more.

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone joins board of audiovisual startup Chroma

TechCrunch

Chroma , a startup working to build a new type of audiovisual entertainment specifically for mobile devices, is now adding a Twitter co-founder to its board. The company announced today that Twitter and Medium co-founder Biz Stone, previously an angel investor in Chroma alongside Pinterest’s founders, will join the company’s board of directors to contribute his expertise in areas like design, product development, filmmaking, and scaling brands.

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Learnings of a CEO: Snapdocs’ Aaron King on navigating market cycles

Y Combinator

Welcome to the fourth edition of Learnings of a CEO. You can read previous editions here. Snapdocs is the leading digital closing platform for the mortgage industry. Today, the company touches 25% of all US real estate transactions and is valued at $1.5B. Founder and CEO Aaron King and his team have expertly navigated fundraising and market cycles. We sat down with Aaron to hear his insight into getting a business up and running with minimal outside funding and building through volatile market c

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How to Avoid the Pain and Cost of PCI Compliance While Optimizing Payments

Speaker: P. Andrew Sjogren, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Very Good Security, Matt Doka, Co-Founder and CTO of Fivestars, and Steve Andrews, President & CEO of the Western Bankers Association 

PCI compliance can feel challenging and sometimes the result feels like you are optimizing more for security and compliance than you are for business outcomes. The key is to take the right strategy to PCI compliance that gets you both. In this webinar, we have a great set of panelists who will take you through how Zero Data strategies can be used as part of a well-rounded compliance and security approach, and get you to market much sooner by also allowing for payment optimization.

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What it takes to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle not a job. Dont expect to make $1 million easily

Founder Bounty

Startups are hard. I have been through techstars and know just how hard it is to create one. So many thinks can go wrong and you have to be aware of the risks before you venture into the journey. Its not for everyone and takes a certain type of person to build a business from scratch. So why is it so hard? Its hard because so many things can go wrong down the line which you cannot see.

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The Cleanse

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I’ve never done a cleanse. But many of my friends and family members have done them. There are various flavors of cleanses but the basic idea is you cut back your consumption of food and drink and replace it with mostly liquid nutrition for anywhere from a day to a month. I believe the most common lengths are in and around one week. As I understand it, the theory behind the cleanse is it helps your body eliminate all sorts of toxins that build up over time from a poor diet and other unheal

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Investing in Cygnvs

Andreessen Horowitz

Cyber incidents have reached a crisis level over the past decade. In 2021, the U.S. saw 1,862 data compromises , affecting nearly 300 million people (a nearly 100% increase from five years ago). Cybersecurity practitioners no longer wonder if they … The post Investing in Cygnvs appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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RFQ | E3 Durham Hispanic Outreach, Navigation, and Support

Forward Cities

Overview. Timeline: Jan 17, 2023 - Nov 30, 2023. Budget: $20,000 - $25,000. E3 Durham (E3D) is a SBA grant funded program designed to help underserved and under-connected entrepreneurs to equitably start, grow, and scale businesses. In order to effectively reach all entrepreneurs in the service region, a Hispanic outreach contractor is being sought out for translation and interpretation services.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

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Fintech predictions and opportunities for 2023

TechCrunch

Victoria Treyger. Contributor. Share on Twitter. Victoria Treyger is a managing director at Felicis Ventures. It’s been quite an eventful year. Fintech has fallen a long way from the highs of 2021, and while 2022 was largely about the reset of the funding environment, 2023 is going to be a year of recalibration for fintech companies. The great news is that large enterprise and midmarket companies care more than ever about bottom-line impact.

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How to Build a Business AI Won’t Kill Overnight

Entrepreneur's Handbook

A sea of VC-backed founders are about to find their “8+ figure” startups wiped out in seconds; here’s how to avoid that fate.

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What Steps that do you need to start a business from a techstars COO in 2023

Founder Bounty

So that you know we are legit our author of this article has his biography to show he has build and raised capital and been through top tier accelerators and is trying to help show steps from years of trying failing and building businesses and finally building europes first ondemand fuel business and lot of capital for it. Biography: Vlad Kozul Vlad started his career in finance having done a bachelor’s at Cass business school in London and a master’s at ESCP in Paris specializing

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How Layoffs in Startupland Differ Between B2B & B2C Companies

Tomasz Tunguz

The current wave of layoffs, a difficult component of the innovation boom/bust cycle, differs from the previous years’ dynamics. B2B companies have reduced headcount to a greater extent than at any time since 2020. In the last three years, B2C startups’ ratio of layoffs have dwarfed B2B layoffs. In 2020, B2C companies cut 8.8x the number of B2B employees. 3.8x in 2021, & 6.9x in 2022.

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The Startup Funding Gap

This resource discusses the gap between early funding from friends/family and the more substantial rounds from angel groups and VCs. Why does this gap exist and what can be done about it?

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Investing in PLAI Labs

Andreessen Horowitz

Within every era of technology, the most talented entrepreneurs have taken unsolved problems and open questions and turned them into businesses. In the early 2000s, the biggest open questions were social: how do you take a read-only interface and allow … The post Investing in PLAI Labs appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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The YC Founder Directory (+ New Company Content)

Y Combinator

The YC community is approaching 10,000 founders. Looking at this powerful network, we see people from all different backgrounds – each with a unique journey to entrepreneurship. Today, we are releasing a public YC Founder Directory , a companion to the YC Startup Directory. For prospective founders who are looking for inspiring leaders, here is a way to discover founders who have had experiences that reflect your own and learn more about their founder journey.

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This startup hopes to take on Canva, raising a $11.6M Series A for its design platform

TechCrunch

Despite Canva being worth in the region of $26 billion, it appears startups feel there is still plenty to be mined from this ;easy-to-use design platform’ arena. Admittedly, Professional Adobe tools remain fiddly for most people. Perhaps that’s why Berlin-based startup Kittl has now raised an €10.8 million ($11.6 million) Series A for its design platform which it claims allow people to “easily turn ideas into graphic products”.

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18 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Starting a Business from Scratch

Startup Blogpost

From keeping your mental game strong to getting a mentor to help make decisions, here are 18 responses to the question “What is one thing you wish someone told you about starting a business from scratch?” Keep Your Mental Game Strong Be Prepared For a Long Term Commitment Think of the Cash! Research Social Branding Before Purchasing URL The People You Connect With Are What Really Counts Everything Takes Time Have a Good Marketing Plan You Can Not Be Everything for Everybody Your Star

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ABM Evolution: How Top Marketers Are Using Account-Based Strategies

In times of economic uncertainty, account-based strategies are essential. According to several business analysts and practitioners, ABM is a necessity for creating more predictable revenue. Research shows that nearly three-quarters of marketers (74%) already have the resources needed to build successful ABM programs.