Mid-decade venture returns retreated through the first quarter of this year in an early-stage-focused portfolio at California State Teachers’ Retirement System. Eleven of the 14 funds with vintages of 2004 and 2005 saw their IRRs decline during the 12 months ended in March, according to a recent performance report. The three that did improve all […]
Osmo, maker of augmented reality iPad games for children, has raised $24 million in funding with the aim of helping to build the next big thing in children’s entertainment. The Palo Alto, California-based company raised the latest funding from Mattel, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Collab+Sesame, the early-stage venture firm formed by Collaborative Fund and Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit […]
Venture-backed M&A spiked in November, with the combined value reaching nearly $2.6 billion, boosted by Salesforce‘s fifth acquisition of the year. The total represents nearly seven times the $362 million aggregate of October. A total of 22 U.S.-based VC-backed companies were acquired in November, with six disclosing their financial details, compared with October’s 18 venture-backed acquisitions, three with […]
Alex Derber, VCJ Correspondent As head of venture at European Investment Fund, Matthias Ummenhofer had a bird’s eye view of the European VC sector, in which his then-employer was (and still is) the single biggest investor of European venture funds and startups. Ummenhofer saw a critical mass of tech companies at or approaching growth stage, […]
A pair of funds from Longitude Capital has taken the top spots in a late-decade venture portfolio at Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association. The funds, one from 2008 and the other vintage 2013, reflect the upswing life-sciences investing has seen in recent years. Both saw significant improvement in the 24 months ended in December 2015. The […]
Well, so much for momentum. Zero U.S.-based VC-backed companies went public on the NYSE and Nasdaq exchanges in November. That’s not too surprising. The market for new issues typically slows down at the calendar year’s end. In 2015, five venture-backed companies debuted on U.S. exchanges in November and only one IPO’d in December, according to […]
Portag3Ventures, a fintech fund launched in October by Canadian holding company Power Corp, is led by an executive who knows a thing or two about disrupting the financial world. Adam Felesky, Portag3’s president and managing partner, spent much of his career in the exchange-traded-funds business. He likens the public-market experience of ETFs to today’s fintech startups, whose innovations reflect a new source of challenge and opportunity to traditional financial services providers.
Bullpen Capital has raised a $75 million third fund with institutional backers playing a bigger role. The oversubscribed fund is a substantial step up from the firm’s $31 million second fund in 2013 and allows Bullpen to put more money to work in its post-seed deals. An initial check can now be about $1 million […]
The IPO market is suddenly warming up, but entrepreneurs don’t yet “feel the burn.” Unlike the last IPO boomlet two years ago, entrepreneurs don’t aspire in the same way today to a stock market listing with its challenges of quarterly earnings, audit requirements and slim analyst coverage. With all the capital in the private market, […]
Enthusiasm grows for a big 2017, but the market could remain selective and low volume for some time