The Corporate Venture Capital-as-a-Service Influencer

How to write a Business Plan

 

Source : Maddyness

@AXASeedFactory gets a new #logo

Crowdfunding and Venture Funding: More Alike Than You Think - NYTimes.com

Hug wants to raise $34,000 to build an app and sensor band that wraps round your water bottle to track daily hydration. Van Eko is targeting €150,000 (about $200,000) for an eco-friendly electric scooter made of hemp fibers. PetTunes is seeking $196,000 to build a personal music player that optimizes sound frequency for dog and cat ears.

A catchy, even irrelevant idea is seemingly all an aspiring entrepreneur needs these days to raise money on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter — a point driven home this summer when a Columbus, Ohio, developer, Zack Brown, raised $55,492 to make a potato salad.

Now, researchers are tapping into the growing data on crowdfunding to take stock of the phenomenon. A central question: Do crowds — driven by a herd mentality, crowd euphoria or sheer silliness — gravitate toward funding seemingly irrelevant ideas? Or can crowds make rational funding decisions and, better yet, exceed venture capital investors and other traditional gatekeepers in identifying promising projects?

A recent academic study explored those questions by looking at theater projects on Kickstarter. In that study, researchers tracked 120 theater-related campaigns on Kickstarter between May 2009 and June 2012 that aimed to raise at least $10,000. Researchers also asked 30 professionals, all with experience in evaluating applications for grant-making organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts, to evaluate those same campaigns.

Their findings: Crowds and experts agreed substantially on what makes promising theater. Where crowds and experts disagreed, crowds were generally more willing to fund projects. Yet projects picked only by the crowd were as likely to deliver on budget — and achieve commercial success and positive critical acclaim — as projects favored by experts. The crowd, in effect, picked strong projects that experts might not have recognized.

“The crowd is often thought as being crazy. There was a sense that they would back musicals about Internet cats, and experts would back serious work,” said Ethan R. Mollick an assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “It turns out the crowd does consider the quality of projects and outcomes pretty well.”

One reason crowds might do as well, or even better, at picking promising projects is that they tend to be more diverse and might avoid, for example, some of the gender biases that have long directed the bulk of the venture capital funding to male entrepreneurs.

Two recent studies of Kickstarter projects have found that crowndfunding is indeed opening entrepreneurship and investing to more women. A recent study of 16,000 Kickstarter projects, by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found that female investors were more likely to invest in female entrepreneurs, and that these female entrepreneurs enjoyed higher rates of success in reaching their funding goals.

Another stu

via bits.blogs.nytimes.com

The top #CVC (Corporate Venture Capital): co-investments & exits

TOP 25 CVC Funds

 

 

Top Tech CVC Co-Invests

 

TOP VC EXITS 

 

How to make a valuation of a startup | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

How VCs Use Content Marketing to Connect With Communities

Research from Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC) reveals that in 2013, US venture capitalists committed $29.4 billion to 3,995 deals, with investments in internet-specific companies reaching the highest total since 2001.

The idea is simple. Venture capitalists fund projects that demonstrate a high probability of success. These investments represent the next generation of technologies and grow to become the next Facebooks and Googles of the world.

But money represents only part of the story. The VC ecosystem is driven by a strong sense of value, as well as a mission to fund projects with the potential to make the world better for consumers.

But these stories are often lost — buried beneath the ‘numbers’ story. As business consultant and author Dorie Clark writes in a recent Forbes article, “that’s not exactly surprising.”

She explains that historically, the venture capital industry has perceived marketing beyond public relations as unnecessary. But now, content marketing and brand storytelling have become critical to the VC ecosystem.

Building a higher impact brand

“Content marketing for VCs is one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen in the industry over the last 18 years,” says Phil Sanderson, managing director at IDG Ventures in San Francisco, which focuses on media technology and information technology investments.

“I don’t really call it content marketing,” he explains. “Venture capital is a services business — we work for our entrepreneurs and limited partner investors.

“If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re talking to a VC with whom you’re considering a five-year partnership, you’re going to check out their blog and Twitter to see what they’re all about.”

In the last year, Sanderson and his IDG Ventures partner Alex Rosen have launched personal blogs as a platform for reaching and educating entrepreneurs in a personal way to provide education about and transparency into venture capital in the IT, gaming and media industries.

Rosen blogs at The Empiricist VC and Sanderson blogs at SanFranciscoVC. Their personal blogs are aggregated into a joint blog on IDG’s website.

“A lot of companies that I deal with will end up selling to a CIO,” says Rosen. “I’ve built a large and interesting network of CIOs that range from Wall Street to CPG to tech companies – and we’ll often invite a dozen at a time to participate on panels at events.”

After these events, Rosen will frequently write a blog post as a recap to share his lessons learned and to connect his audience of entrepreneurs with information that is otherwise rare.

via thenextweb.com

Everyone should become an #entrepreneur

How to build #board decks for #startups by @NextViewVC

Board Deck Templates for Startups from NextView Ventures

Market Data Isn't Free - & Other Lessons FinTech Startups Learn the Hard Way - Wall Street & Technology

The current business of financial technology highly resembles a gold rush, and Stephane Dubois, CEO and founder of the cloud-based market data provider firm Xignite, says he is providing the shovels.

The digital revolution is hitting every industry, from Uber on taxis to Airbnb on hospitality, he said in a recent webcast. Great industry giants cannot escape the impacts of industry upstarts, and none is more aware than financial services, particularly in the realm of wealth management where online firms like Betterment and Wealthfront are making their mark on incumbent wealth and brokerage firms. "They are gathering footholds, and some of these guys will break through into the market," says Dubois.

Bill Doyle, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, notes that consumers have a growing interest in online advice, and a recent study showed a 50% rise in just the last three years of consumers who said that online financial advice is just as good as in-person advice. With findings like these, it's no wonder venture capitalists are pouring money into the digital financial advice startup market.

New companies are largely targeting the relatively underserved millennial generation, a market that expects a high level of automation and readily available information on any and all devices. So a company can't expect to move from startup to critical player if it can't provide instant access to the breadth and depth of data its customers want.

Therein lies a critical problem that Dubois has seen many companies tackle from the wrong angle. Xignite provides financial market data to more than a thousand innovative companies from its platform in the AWS cloud, and, over the years, it has grown to be a cult favorite among FinTech startups, a development that has transformed its role from pure supplier to something of a mentor.

A lot of smart, young people are coming into the market to reinvent finance, and they can be easily derailed by decisions around market data, Dubois explains. "If you are in a FinTech business, chances are you will need some market data -- it is the lifeblood of FinTech." Many, however, can't afford to pay extreme prices for loads of data.

"We find often that people come to us not really understanding this world of market data," he says. "They want to create a new business, they want to create a new model, but they don't really know what they want and what they need… This often leads to poor decisions, which can contribute to making the company fail."

His advice for FinTech revolutionaries breaks down to four key points:

1. Understand what you're getting into. "I think the first thing you want to do to succeed is to educate yourself, or work with someone who can educate you." Complex processes like setting up exchange agreements are not for the faint of heart.
2. Market data is not free. A lot of millennial entrepreneurs are used to seeing this data for free because it is public on Yahoo Finance and Google, but it's not

via www.wallstreetandtech.com

Bauer Media Group lance son fonds d’investissements pour les start-up IT

Le groupe allemand Bauer Media Group vient de créer un nouveau fonds de capital-investissement, Bauer Venture Partners, destiné à financer des start-up européennes dans l’univers du digital.

Ce nouveau fonds, présidé par Thomas Preuss, précédemment partenaire au sein du fonds d’investissement early-stage Neuhaus Partners, est doté d’un budget de 100 millions d’euros sur dix ans.

Le groupe médias Bauer Media Group détient plus de 300 magazines (FHM, Grazia,…) 15 pays, sans oublier les sites Web, chaînes de télévisions et stations de radio.

Micro VC Rising: Analyzing Trends and the Top Investors in the Micro VC Ecosystem

Venture capital funding is on a tear so far in 2014 – hitting a U.S. quarterly high in Q1 of this year that has not been seen since Q3 2000. And it’s not just high-profile, well-established venture firms wheeling and dealing.

Over the past several years, one of the most significant trends in venture has been the rise of smaller, micro VCs. And they’re being spawned at a rapid rate with almost half of the VC funds raised in the last 6 months being those with < $50M AUM. Of course, there are some elder statesmen in the micro VC game and some of them have already notched some impressive exits.  The AUM level that defines a micro-VC is open for debate with some drawing the line at $75 or even a $100 million.  In addition with some firms having raised multiple funds, there are micro VCs that, in aggregate, have more than the threshholds one might set. AUM levels aside, micro VCs are focused on the earliest stage opportunities generally investing first at the Seed stage.

This analysis puts the rise of micro VCs in context – breaking down both macro-level funding trends and firm-level insights. The full list of micro VCs used in this analysis are listed at the bottom of this brief.  The report is broken down into sections as below:

• Early-stage financing trends among micro VCs
• Micro VC deal size trends
• The sub-industries micro VCs invest in most
• The most active micro VCs
• Analyzing the follow-on rates of micro VCs
• Which micro VCs have the strongest network?

Early-stage financing trends among micro VCs

With more micro VCs investing, early-stage deal and dollars involving micro VC firms in Q1 2014 hit $627M across 242 deals globally. Of note, early-stage funding participation by micro VCs has expanded markedly from just a couple years ago. Compared to Q1 2011, micro VC early-stage funding increased 77% while deal activity grew 64%.

Micro VC deal sizes tick up

Interestingly,  the average and median early-stage deal sizes with participation from micro VCs have risen since 2011 (in line with the uptick in seed VC deal sizes overall). In Q1 2014, average early-stage micro VC deal size hit its highest level in three years, bumping up to $3.4M. Median micro VC deal sizes have trended above $1.5M in each of the last three quarters.

Ad, sales & marketing tech and BI & analytics are hottest among micro VCs

At the sector level, Internet and mobile dominate micro VC investments – capturing 85% of unique company investments by micro VCs since 2011. And within the Internet sector, Advertising, Sales & Marketing tech and Business Intelligence, Analytics & Performance Mgmt saw the highest percentage of deals among sub-industries. eCommerce marketplaces and apparel & accessories firms also ranked highly, with ed tech rounding out the top 5 most popular markets for micro VC investments over the period.  The focus on capital efficient technology sectors makes se

via www.cbinsights.com

The Top Micro-VCs For Startups With Series A Aspirations

Which micro-VCs are able to get their seed investments to Series A quickest and help them raise the most cash? (and avoid tech orphan status)

We analyzed micro-VC-backed companies that received a seed round and went on to raise Series A financing. Of the micro VCs that had 10+ investments make it to the A round, we found that:

• Red Swan Ventures’ companies raised the highest median Series A rounds after their seed investment
• ENIAC Ventures’ portfolio companies raised Series A rounds the fastest post-seed financing.

The full analysis below:

Red Swan Ventures & CrunchFund median Series A rounds are $7M+

As we previously mentioned, Red Swan Ventures, who’s portfolio includes Oscar Health and Harry’s Razor Company, both of which raised super-sized series A’s at $80M and $75M respectively, held the highest median series A at $7.5M. CrunchFund came in second, with a median series A of $7M, with six of their portfolio companies raising $10M+ series A’s including DigitalOcean’s $35M round of financing.

ENIAC Ventures’ companies get to Series A fastest

ENIAC Ventures portfolio cos average the fastest time to a series A investment, with only 295 days on average from seed to series A. Red Swan came in second on this measure.

The scatter plot below highlights each investor included in this analysis with average # of days from seed to series A vs. median series A funding raised. The top left quadrant of the chart features investors whose investments raise over $5.5M series A rounds less than 425 days after their seed round – in other words, they raise the most in terms of absolute dollars of funding and so quickest.

This quadrant (highlighted in the chart below) includes Red Swan Ventures, ENIAC Ventures, Baseline Ventures, CrunchFund, SV Angel, and Felicis Ventures. Some of their notable seed investments below:

• ENIAC Ventures – TapCommerce, Boxed, OnSwipe
• Red Swan Ventures – Oscar Health, Harry’s Razor Company, The Bouqs
• Baseline Ventures – Instagram, TaskRabbit, Formspring.me
• CrunchFund – DigitalOcean, SmartThings,

via www.cbinsights.com

Which Startups Acquire the Most Startups?

Data analytics and software company Palantir Technologies commands a $9B valuation in the private markets but has shown little interest in making acquisitions – until now. In the last week of July, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm announced the acquisitions of two seed VC-backed startups – social polling startup Poptip and mobile app development startup Propeller.

So we wondered how Palantir’s recent acquisition uptick compared against the acquisition activity of other highly-valued private startups. And based on CB Insights data, it’s apparent that a number of unicorns-in-waiting are becoming increasingly acquisitive.

First, which startup companies are we evaluating?

The chart below highlights the 10 most highly-valued U.S.-based venture-backed companies based on valuations fetched in the private markets. This list is led by Uber, which recently raised funding at an $18.2B valuation. While Snapchat is only rumored to be raising at a $10B valuation, the company was also included for the purposes of this analysis.

In terms of acquisition activity, Dropbox has been far and away the most acquisitive disclosing 18 different acquisitions to-date mostly around mobile software. The cloud storage firm has been on a summer M&A binge. Most recently Dropbox acquired eCommerce analytics firm Predictive Edge Technologies, which appears to be an acqui-hire. In June, Dropbox acquired three other startups including Parastructure, Droptalk and MobileSpan, respectively.

After Dropbox, AirBnB, Pinterest and Square have been most acquisitive with each having disclosed six, five and five acquisitions respectively. Among the most expensive acquisitions by the potential unicorns was Jawbone’s acquisition of BodyMedia, a wearable tech company, as well as Mailbox which was acquired by Dropbox.  Both deals were rumored to be valued at around $100 million. On an unrelated note, Mailbox has performed well against a crop of VC-backed email apps that have sprouted up suggesting that Dropbox may have made a smart move with this deal.

Notably, Uber has not disclosed any acquisitions despite intense competition in the ride-sharing market and the company’s own moves into adjacent areas. While there has been

via www.cbinsights.com

Union Square Ventures Teardown

Twitter, Tumblr, and Zynga all count NY-based Union Square Ventures as an early investor. The NY-based firm has recorded some of venture’s biggest wins in recent years. Given its fund size, it is probably the best best pound-for-pound venture capital fund out there having shown a prescient ability (much like larger peer Sequoia Capital) of getting into big exits early.

Led by a team of five partners including prominent VC investor and blogger Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures (USV) raised over $330M for a pair of new funds in January. We dive into the firm as part of our teardown of Union Square Ventures

Notes:

1. Where’s the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform’s Investor Analytics tool.
2. What’s a Teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous. We’re trying to understand a firm and what makes it tick by analyzing data around their financing strategy, investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates and more.

Specifically, we’ll discuss USV’s recent strategies and activity that have helped shape the firm including:

• Recent financing activity
• Recent exit activity
• Fund history
• Notable partners
• Industry focus and strategy
• Geographic strategy
• Stage strategy
• New vs. follow-on investments
• Deal size
• Investment syndicate

via www.cbinsights.com

Bilan levée de fonds startup - juillet 2014 - frenchfunding

Bilan levée de fonds startup juillet 2014

3 août 2014/0 Commentaires/dans levées de fonds, témoignages et analyses /par paolettipatrick@gmail.com

via frenchfunding.fr

Here's how to find out if your cloud startup has product-market fit | VentureBeat | Cloud | by Sean Jacobsohn, Emergence Capital

When I talk to entrepreneurs who are developing cloud solutions for business, I am regularly asked about how to define product-market fit for business cloud companies. The ability to identify if you have product-market fit is imperative to the success of your company, and the sooner you can identify which state you are in, the faster you can lay the groundwork to move to the next level.

I put a short quiz together to help you define how close you are to achieving product-market fit. Wherever you fall in terms of product stage, it’s important to recognize where your company is and make those critical adjustments that will drive growth.

Select the answers below that best describe your company.

1. Diversity of customers: how many customers do you have that you DID NOT KNOW before starting the company?

a) All my customers are fellow startups in my incubator class. I’m really excited that over 30 percent of the class are customers.

b) All my customers are other tech companies in Silicon Valley. I’m a customer of some of their products, and they are customers of my product.

c) My customers span the country and they responded quickly to our cold calls. They seem to have a strong need for my solution. We got their attention really quickly as they were searching for a solution to the problem.

2. Engagement: How core is your product to your customer’s business? How much pain would they experience if the product is removed? Will they care if your site goes down?

a) The users of my product log in once every month or two for 10 minutes at a time, and it’s really helpful in those quick sporadic bursts.

b) The users of my product use it several times a month. In some periods there’s high engagement, and in some periods they don’t need the product.

c) The users of my product use it daily to get their job done. If we removed the product, they would suffer a major loss in productivity.

3. Churn: Are you measuring churn, and what is the rate at which you are losing customers?

a) We have not really started measuring churn yet, though we estimate about 4 percent per month in churn, which equates to about half of our customers stopped using our product over the last 12 months. We need to determine why we are losing customers and are assessing our pricing, service, competition, uptime, etc.

b) We are experiencing 2 percent month dollar churn, which equates to 24 percent a year. We just hired a head of customer success, who will help us get to under 10 percent over the next year, while customers are actively giving us unsolicited feedback on how to improve the product.

c) We are experiencing 0.5 percent monthly dollar churn, which is about 6 percent a year. We have a well oiled customer success organization and look at our metrics daily.

4. Commitment level: Do you have customers on pilot programs?

a) My customers have committed to three-month pilots, and they say they will consider long-term agreements after the pilots are completed. I know they are testing other products in the same market, too. Fortunately these are paid pilots. For instance, a Fortune 500 company is paying us $5,000 for the pilot.

b) My customers are committing to my product on a month-to-month basis. We are starting to talk to them about committing to an annual contract.

c) My customers have committed to one-to-three-year deals. Several Fortune 500 companies have committed to six-figure annual deals.

6. Word of mouth and virality: How are you acquiring new customers?

a) All of our sales require outbound cold calling, and we are paying for leads.

b) Our sales are mixed between outbound cold calling and inbound leads. People are starting to search for solutions in my market.

via venturebeat.com

The Most Active Venture Capital Firms in H1 2014 - Silicon Valley, New York & Massachusetts

Venture capital financing activity picked up in a huge way in 2014 – to the tune of $23.87B across 1854 deals in the first six months of the year. While mega-rounds and billion-dollar valuations captured the headlines, there were also a number of venture capital firms that got extremely busy in the first half of 2014 with a select few participating in more than 50 deals over the period.

We compiled the most active venture capital firms in H1 2014 and then broke down the investor activity league tables for the top 3 hubs for venture capital – Silicon Valley, New York and Massachusetts over the same period.

The data below.

The Most Active Venture Capital Firms in H1 2014

New Enterprise Associates led all venture capital or corporate venture capital investors by U.S. deals in H1 2014. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers got busy in the first half of 2014 as well – completing over 50 deals including to Duolingo, Tradesy and recently acquired RelateIQ among others.

The top 5 most active firms were rounded out by Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and 500 Startups.

The Most Active Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firms

Peeling back the venture capital data by region, we see that Andreessen Horowitz narrowly beats out New Enterprise Associates and Google Ventures, for the top spot in the Valley. Bay Area investments by Andreessen Horowitz in the first half of 2014 include Tanium, Okta and Optimizely. NEA deals in the area include Ravel Law, Aerospike and Mulesoft, while Google Ventures has invested in companies including Secret, URX, Cloudera and Medium. 500 Startups and Kleiner Perkins have also been highly active investors in Valley-based startups since the start of the year.

The Most Active New York Venture Capital Firms

In Q2 2014, New York saw venture capital  investors deploy over $1B to startups in the area as Q2 funding and deal levels grew 36% and 9% on a sequential basis. Newly rebranded Lerer Hippeau Ventures topped the most active venture firms in New York in the first half of 2014, followed closely by fellow New York-based fund RRE Ventures. Nearly all of Lerer Hippeau’s New York-headquartered investments in H1 2014 came at the seed or Series A stages including Confide, Fundera, and Distractify. RRE investments over the period include Noom,

via www.cbinsights.com

New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers were the most active venture capital firms in a blowout first half of 2014 for VC funding.

Seed Venture Casualties? 1686 Pre-Series A Companies at Risk of Being Orphaned (Have Raised a Total of $1.06 Billion)

There are 1686 tech companies who have raised a seed or angel round but who have not yet raised a Series A follow-on round of financing (or seed extension). In total, these 1686 companies have raised total funding greater than $1 billion ($1.06B to be exact).

So yes – there are many potential tech seed orphans, and yes, the Series A Crunch is alive and well. Of course, the topic which was a hot-button issue 1.5 years ago has taken a back seat to billion dollar valuations and bubble chatter. But the phenomena persists as seed funds (micro VCs) continue to be spawned at a rapid pace, and there continue to be too many seed-backed companies and not enough Series A funding.

It’s all natural and expected, of course. Just startup Darwinism at its finest.

This analysis digs into these potential tech orphans. For background, these potential orphans are companies who raised a seed round more than 13 months ago (but after Jan 2011). 13 months is the average time between seed and Series A per our prior research.

All 1686 companies in this analysis are potential orphans, but it is, of course, worth noting that not all of these firms will be orphaned and die.

• Some will still raise follow-on financing
• Some will be acqui-hired
• Some may have built cash flow generating businesses but are no longer investor-backable (too small or have gotten the patronizing lifestyle business tag)
• And of course, some will die

The data is below.

Lots of Social companies among the potential orphans

Of all sub-industries, Social startups were most prevalent among tech orphans. 96 social companies are on the list (having raised a total of $50 million).  Rounding out the top three sub-industries were Advertising, Sales, and Marketing, with over $45M raised across 79 companies, and Business Intelligence & Analytics with over $37M raised across 72 companies.

Below are the top sub-industries on CB Insights for tech orphans.

Texas has the highest tech orphan percentage

California led all states in total number of potential Tech Seed Orphans, with 597. New York (236), Massachusetts (83), Texas (68), and Pennsylvania (64) rounded out the top 5 on a total deals basis.

While California clearly had the highest number of potential Seed Orphans which is only natural given the market’s size, their potential orphan rate (potential orphans/total pre-series A deals = potential orphan rate) was not the worst and stood at 41%. Of states with over 50 deals in that same time frame, Texas, saw the highest rate with a 58% orphan rate.

On the other side of the spectrum, Colorado and Virginia had the lowest potential orphan rates for stat

via www.cbinsights.com

As funding hits quarterly highs, what types of companies aren't raising series A rounds and are potentially becoming Seed Orphans?

COLLABORATIVE FINANCE: Democratizing Finance, Money & Banking

Collaborative Finance: Democratizing Finance, Money and Banking from Collaborative Lab

Collaborative Finance: By the People, For the People | Collaborative ConsumptionCollaborative Consumption

I was invited to speak at World Council for Credit Unions this week on how technology is enabling a new generation of person-to –person and crowd–driven funding, lending, currency and investment services that will decentralize and democratize finance, money and banking. Think: Funding Circle, Bitcoin, Lending Club, Kickstarter, IndieGogo, Seedrs, CircleUp, GoFundMe, CurrencyFair, Transferwise, Zopa, MPesa and hundreds more.

It is a subject I am passionate about. How can we shift banking back to being a trusted pillar of society? How can we create monetary systems where the real benefits flow back to individuals, not the big financial mega stores? How can we create financial access to underserved communities?

An interesting challenge for credit unions is the values that have typically differentiated them from traditional banks -empowerment, transparency, access and community – are at the core of many new platforms and services emerging. So maintaining relevance and growth, particularly with younger members is a pressing challenge.

I was overwhelmed by the audience response (thank you WCUC delegates!). Here are some of the key points I covered as well as resources to address many of the questions asked:

Four Disruption Drivers
I first identified the four root causes of disruption that are transforming different industries.

Financial services are affected by all of the drivers and that is why I put the sector at the highest risk of disruption by the collaborative economy.

• It is rife with middlemen and has too many retail branches—both

via www.collaborativeconsumption.com