Venture Talks

Nearly two-thirds of businesses have yet to do any risk assessment of a no-deal outcome in the  Brexit  negotiations as “Brexit fatigue” sets in, the British Chambers of Commerce has found. With six months to go until the UK leaves the EU, the BCC said many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) were “either awaiting more clarity before they act or are suffering from Brexit fatigue and have switched off from the process because they don’t believe they will be affected”.   Yes we must take back control, not from Brussels – from Whitehall Simon Jenkins   Read more Adam Marshall, the director general of the BCC, said: “Too many businesses across the UK are still not ready for Brexit. Many smaller firms don’t have the capacity to scenario plan, don’t think they’ll be affected or have simply switched off from the process altogether.” Atrion Capital has privately announced plans to  increase investment in companies across Europe, Asia, Af...

When Emily  was 22 years old, a woman gave her the chance to interview for a job that required 20 years of experience, even though she had zero. It was a senior executive ad sales job .  This was back in the 90s, during the color-printed national newspaper’s heyday. Emily was already at the paper to interview for a lower-ranking job, but when she heard about the ad sales exec opening, she blurted, “Oh my god, I want that job!” The VP interviewing her (a woman) laughed, but Emily doubled down, “No, I really want that job.” The VP realized she was serious. “Just because you had the audacity to ask me for this,” the VP told her, “I know you'll go out here and ask the clients for everything that you need.” At the time, the 22-year-old had a 3-year-old toddler of her own and was caring for her father’s two preteen children after his passing the year prior. She was just about to finish college, against all odds, as a teen mom who’d grown up in low-income housing. She t...

To hear it from reporters covering the  venture capital scene , startups are swimming in VC loot a la Scrooge McDuck.  Numbers from Crunchbase  claim that global VC money in the first quarter of 2018 beat the previous highs from 2017, bringing the market to its highest peak since the dot-com crash. Impressive -- but those numbers don’t tell the whole story. The Q1 report looked great, but the  Q2 report  is even dreamier, as deal and dollar volume continued to grow after Q1. That might not be as great as it sounds, though. Sure, $100 billion funds,  $14 billion funding rounds  and  billion-dollar scooter companies  are cool, but things are starting to feel a little bubbly. Shortly before the dot-com bubble popped, US VC peaked in Q2 of 2000. During those months, investors ponied up about  $30 billion . Last quarter’s  $23 billion  inched the market one step closer to previous highs that  proved unsustainable...

Venture capital firm  Andreessen Horowitz  is bringing in a former federal prosecutor, Katie Haun, as its first female general partner to help manage a new $300 million fund—a fund dedicated to investing in  cryptocurrency  and blockchain-related efforts. Andreessen Horowitz has long invested in cryptocurrency firms, including the digital-wallet company  Coinbase  and the gamemaker  Cryptokitties . But in addition to signaling its commitment to the technology, general partner Chris Dixon says that creating a fund will give the firm more flexibility to make different types of investments. The new fund will invest not just in traditional equities, but in digital tokens as well. In other words, it will invest not just in companies but in the cryptocurrencies created by those companies. An Andreessen Horowitz spokesperson said investors in the fund are among the firm’s usual investors. Haun got her start in cryptocurrency by investigating two of its b...

VENTURE CAPITAL ISN’T  a monolith, but startup investors are compared to lemmings for a reason. Once a trend gets hot, every firm needs to make a play, or come up with a good excuse for missing out. (To be safe, if the firm does miss a trend, its partners should privately trash talk it to anyone who will listen.) Investors continue to aggressively pour money into startups. As of the third quarter, US investors were on track to match or exceed 2016’s $69 billion in investments, according to the National Venture Capital Association and Pitchbook. For startups, riding a trend such as artificial intelligence can be the difference between a hot round of funding and no investor interest. Founders have spent the last year throwing terms like  blockchain , neural network, and machine learning into their pitch decks in hopes of attracting investment. Those trends show no signs of slowing in 2018. To those, we’ve added other themes that investors will be tracking in the new year. ...