It was a busy year for Sequoia Capital: The firm, said to be raising perhaps $9 billion or more for worldwide and U.S.-focused funds, participated in the most venture deals in 2018 and deployed the most capital. The multistage investor put more than $5 billion to work in 173 companies worldwide in the year, according to […]
It seems appropriate that we start off the year looking ahead and asking VCs about the year in review and what predictions they have. Of course, we realize how silly these predictions are. Remember in 2014 when Google Co-Founder Larry Page told Vinod Khosla at a Khosla Ventures summit that we may someday see more part-time […]
As 2018 draws to a close, we thought it would be fun to look back at the biggest stories of the year. Specifically, we wanted to know if readers found any particular topics more compelling than others. When we dove into the analytics for Buyouts, our affiliate publication, we found that scoops about deals accounted […]
Raucous late-year trading led to a pause in the IPO market and new fears of a long-awaited correction in startup valuations. But you wouldn’t know it from the pace of venture investing. U.S. investments, while off from mid-year, appeared as of mid-December to be on target for a still healthy $20-billion-plus fourth quarter. Admittedly, some […]
Venture M&A numbers spiked in 2018, in part thanks to Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub for $7.5 billion. It ranks as the largest VC-backed acquisition of the year, ahead of Celgene‘s $7 billion purchase of Impact Biomedicines. For the full year, 396 VC-backed companies were acquired, with 91 disclosing terms for a combined total of more […]
Venture investors sprinted toward the finish line in 2018, placing nearly $22 billion with startups in the fourth quarter and pushing the year’s investment total above $92 billion six days before Christmas. The year’s result is astonishing for two reasons. It comes as market turmoil spreads through public stocks and it approaches the $100 billion […]
A day after the Boston venture firm Underscore.VC reported in a regulatory document that it had raised more than $132 million for its second fund, the firm said it amended the filing to cap its second fund at an oversubscribed $140 million. At $140 million, the fund is 65 percent larger than its first fund, which […]
Venture fundraising has topped $50 billion this year, setting an 18-year record in the United States and adding to fears the industry is becoming flooded with excess capital. The milestone comes on the heels of a strong fourth quarter with money raised during the period so far at $16.4 billion, according to preliminary data from […]
Paul Asel, NGP Capital On Oct. 9, when Brex announced its $125 million Series C financing, Business Insider proclaimed breathlessly, “credit card startup joins unicorn club months after launching.” Since the term “unicorn” was first applied to technology companies exceeding $1 billion valuations in 2013, a cottage industry has emerged tracking the rise of these […]
By Alex Derber, VCJ Correspondent Across a 15-year career as entrepreneur, fund manager and fund-of-funds investor, all sides of the venture capital table, Luz Ramirez was “pretty much the only woman in all my meetings.” Through her recently launched Red Capital Partners, she’s now taking steps to ensure that women entrepreneurs get the funding and […]