Y Combinator: Is Y Combinator seriously disrupting the VC industry or has it just found itself a niche. Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages: Amazon.fr: Carlota Perez, Chris Freeman: Livres anglais et étrangers. Harvard Referencing Generator | We love referencing! SuperAngel/VC Smackdown? Really? - Anything's Possible. Investor Nomenclature and the Venture Spiral. The press loves the term Super Angels.
They use it at almost every opportunity they get and sometimes even when they don’t have the right opportunity for it. In my view the terminology being used for early stage investors by the press and the media is not as clear as it should be. I’ve talked about this on several occasions when I’ve been at conference and on panels, but I figured it would make sense to do a post explaining my taxonomy of the early-stage investing world. Friends and Family: Or sometimes referred to as the 3Fs for Friends, Family and Fools. Incubators and Accelerators: Incubators and accelerators have to a large extent replaced the funding from friends and family. The incubators invest usually for an equity stake and buy equity at a extremely low valuation (for example, 7% for $15,000, which implies a pre-money valuation of less than $200,000).
Angels: Angels are individual investors, who are investing their own capital and doing so on a part-time basis. What were the most significant (>$250m) tech exits in Europe in the past 3 years? And who were some of the main investors. SCVNGR Raises $15 Million At $100MM Valuation. Location based game SCVNGR has raised another $15 million in a funding round led by European VC firm Balderton Capital, with participation from previous investors Google Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.
As part of the deal Balderton partner Barry Maloney will be joining the company’s board. This brings SCVNGR’s total funding to nearly $20 million after a $4 million round in December 2009 (and some seed funding before that). That’s a lot of money for the still-young startup, and we’re hearing from one source that this most recent round was raised at a valuation of just over $100 million.
Impressive. SCVNGR is a location-based service, but it differs from apps like Foursquare and Facebook Places because it puts a much bigger emphasis on gaming (yes, Foursquare has points and badges, but its gaming mechanics really aren’t very fleshed out). SCVNGR caters to local businesses and chains alike, and it’s had brands like American Eagle and Coca Cola running campaigns using the service.
Le bilan du capital risque français en 2009 - Journal du Net e-B. Chronic Under-financing of EU Start-ups Driven by Mindset. I've read and written about it many times but I think there is one thing which is never loudly spoken about when comparing the EU to Silicon Valley (or the US in general). I decided to make a blog post out of this since my answer over on Quora to a similar question seems to have quite a bit of resonance: "Differences in Entrepreneurial Mindset between the US and Europe".
I personally believe that one of the major drawbacks to venture capital in Europe is chronic under-financing and people skirt around this issue. It's a bit disconcerting to see how often reams of arguments are given for Europe's lag in comparison to the US when it's so clear that companies are drip fed money. We keep hearing about lean start-ups and how much costs have dropped when launching and growing a business. This I believe also comes down to mindset. It's clear to me though that the Tier-1 VC's have realized this in the EU.
What does this all boil down to? Year-End VC Report Shows Strength of Internet & Early Stage Investment. Mass. pension discloses PE/VC fund performance data - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blog. Most public pension systems do not disclose performance data from the venture capital and private equity funds in which they have invested.
The few that deviate from that norm -- CalPERS, CalSTRS, Oregon, etc. -- take great pains to remind viewers that the so-called "J-curve" skews returns for immature funds. After all, the internal rate of return (IRR) of a fund raised in 2009 means about as much as a football team's pre-season record. Perhaps the best compromise, therefore, comes from the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board (PRIM). The system is transparent in releasing fund-specific IRRs, but also respects reputations by withholding data on funds raised within the past five years. Now I certainly have some quibbles with the PRIM process, including the lack of cash-in/cash-out data and the requirement that IRRs only be marked to December 31 of the prior year.
Here is all the data, net of fees: Like this: Like Loading... Levchin and Gurley Say That Next Big Company Will Capture The Interest Graph. Yesterday, at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco, Googler and PayPal founder Max Levchin and Benchmark GP Bill Gurley discussed “game-changing technology” and the future of the Web. Emblematic of today’s mindset, they attacked this rather large topic by comparing the strengths and objectives of Google and Facebook, using the latter’s jaw-dropping stats (500+ million users, 1 in every 13 people on Earth logs into Facebook each day) and its promotion of the social graph as a measure of what’s to come.
Levchin said that Facebook is fast becoming the new social white pages, i.e. when you don’t know where someone is on the Web, you go to Facebook to find and connect with them. But, in addition to that, he says, the social networking giant is really “the rich white pages,” where you not only locate someone but have the added benefit of finding out what they like, what they read, what their favorite movies are, and so on. Saul Klein Interview. European VCs—Stop Chasing Billion-Dollar Pipe Dreams - Tech Europe.
This is a guest post by James Mawson, the founder of data and publishing company Global Corporate Venturing. Europe’s venture capital industry is in a slump and should concentrate on the area in which it has shown consistent success: building solid, mid-sized companies worth a bit more than $100 million, rather than chasing billion-dollar pipe dreams. The reason for the slump? Poor overall performance. While a handful of firms have delivered strong returns to investors, the average VC returned -1.3% last year and scraped a miserable 1.6% over the decade, according to the industry’s trade body, the European Private Equity & Venture Capital Association.
Even the Bank of England paying 0.5% interest would deliver more than that over a decade. Admittedly the figures are somewhat skewed as the best VCs do not report their figures to the trade body but nevertheless investors have taken note. VC funding drying up It is not all gloom. The IPO market is pretty well dead. Most venture capital funds lose money - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blog. There is some good news and some bad news in venture capital performance data, released earlier today by Cambridge Associates.
The research firm reports that one-year returns from U.S. venture capital rose from 6.4% at the end of Q2 2010 to 8.2% by the end of Q3 2010, based on data from nearly 1,300 funds raised between 1981 and 2010. This reflects public equity market value increases during the time period, and also an increase in VC-backed IPO and M&A activity. There also was a small improvement in three-year returns, albeit from -2.7% at the end of Q2 to -2.06% at the end of Q3 2010 (note: venture capital return data is always reported on a lag). So far, so good. The problem is that venture capital is a long-term asset class. Cambridge reports that 10-year returns fell from a miserable -4.2% to a downright horrid -4.64% over the relevant period.
Even worse is the vintage-year data, which tracks VC fund performance based on the year in which the fund was raised. Like this: