When it comes to news items that we love at TechCrunch, IPOs rank pretty darn high.
Another great newsy bit that comes along less frequently than we’d like is a startup buying another startup.
These deals are often very interesting as they either bring a gob of talent, or technology to an already growing company, potentially accelerating it.
So it was with joy that the Equity Podcast crew dug into Automattic buying Beeper for $125 million.
But certainly we are an ocean or two away from the heady days we saw back in 2021.
Cendana, Kline Hill have a fresh $105M to buy stakes in seed VC funds from LPs looking to sellIf you ask investors to name the biggest challenge for venture capital today, you’ll likely get a near-unanimous answer: lack of liquidity.
Cash-hungry venture investors, whether VCs themselves or their limited partners are increasingly looking to sell their illiquid positions to secondary buyers.
“We simply passed the hat around to our existing LPS at Kline Hill and Cendana,” said Kim.
It then passes these opportunities to Kline Hill, which values, underwrites and negotiates the transaction price.
Traditional secondary investors, such as Lexington Partners and Blackstone, recently raised their largest secondary funds ever.
How PayJoy built a $300M business by letting the underserved use their smartphones as collateral for loansLerato Motloung is a mother of two who works in a supermarket in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Then, in February 2024, she saw a sign about PayJoy, a startup that offers lending to the underserved in emerging markets.
Motloung is one of millions of customers that San Francisco–based PayJoy has helped since its 2015 inception.
And, unlike other startups offering loans to the underserved, it’s doing so in a way that’s not predatory, it says.
Last September, PayJoy announced that it had secured $150 million in Series C equity funding and $210 million in debt financing.
Guesty — which has built a platform for accommodation managers to manage all aspects of their business on platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo and directly to travellers — has raised $130 million.
Guesty’s close competitor Hostaway raised $175 million in May last year (its first ever big funding round).
And Mews, which like Guesty builds SaaS but for hoteliers, raised $110 million at a $1.2 billion valuation last month (March 2024).
First of all, Guesty wants to continue expanding its existing platform for current customers.
Third of all, Soto said that Guesty wants to consider more acquisitions.
Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV) plans to back up to 21 growth-stage companies across the continent after closing its first fund at $60 million.
The pan-African VC hit the milestone following fresh backing from Nigeria’s SCM Capital formerly Sterling Capital Markets Limited, and the only non-Japanese investor.
Verod-Kepple is the latest African VC to get capitalized, amid an ongoing investment downturn, allowing it to provide much-needed capital to series A and B startups even as local capital pools for growth-stage companies remain limited.
We think there’s still a need for more growth stage capital with locally based investors,” she said.
How VKAV makes investmentsThe VKAV fund backs startups that are building infrastructure for the digital economy, solving inefficiencies encountered by businesses, and market creators for the emerging consumer population.
It last raised a $50M Series C funding round in 2021.
TransferGo claims the new investment doubles its valuation to around $600M, from the $200M-$300M Dealroom valued it at back in September 2021.
We achieved sustainability of the business and became profitable and we still have proceeds from the last funding round.
We don’t need external capital to grow.”However, he saw the opportunity to raise funding from Asia to expand there.
“We are still taking customers from incumbents: 75% come from cash, banks, and Western Union — that’s still the gorilla in the room.”He puts TransferGo’s growth down to focusing on the consumer experience.
Sprinto, a security compliance and risk platform, has raised a $20 million Series B round to build more automation into its compliance management platform and widen its customer base to include the wide gamut of companies that operate digitally but aren’t tech-first.
Sprinto is working to automate this aspect of security compliance management, which involves vendor risk management, vulnerability assessment, access control, evidence collection and other filing tasks.
Sprinto uses a mix of AI, GPTs and its own internal large language model to offer efficiencies in compliance management.
The market for automated compliance management solutions already has players such as Vanta and Drata, which Sprinto considers its key competitors.
However, Redekar said Sprinto primarily focuses on automating the entire compliance management process and helping businesses build trust.
The United States Department of Commerce Monday proposed investing as much as $6.6 billion to fund a third Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) fab in Arizona.
The move represents a broader push to bring more manufacturing to the U.S., but unspoken in the fanfare around today’s announcement is the potential escalation of tensions with China.
TSMC Arizona — the subsidiary behind the proposed construction — has stated that it will build the facility before the end of the decade.
The United States and allies would be at a massive disadvantage should China seize control of Taiwan and its manufacturing capabilities.
For all the money the United States government continues to invest, Intel is simply playing catch-up to TSMC’s multiyear technological head start.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Monday show, where we dig into the weekend and take a peek at the week that is to come.
Now that we are finally past Y Combinator’s demo day — though our Friday show is worth listening if you haven’t had a chance yet — we can dive into the latest news.
So, this morning on Equity Monday we got into the chance that the United States might pass a real data privacy law.
There’s movement to report, but we’re still very, very far from anything becoming law.
Model N, a platform used by companies such as Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and AMD to automate decisions related to pricing, incentives, and compliance, is going private in a $1.25 billion deal.
Vista Equity Partners is doling out $30 per share in the all-cash transaction, representing a 12% premium on Friday’s closing price, and 16% on its 30-day average.
Founded in 1999, Model N’s software integrates with various data sources and internal systems to help companies analyze trends, pricing efficacy, market demand, and more.
The platform is typically used in industries such as pharmaceuticals and life sciences, where there may be complex pricing structures, and where regulatory or market changes can impact business.
However, its valuation has generally hovered below the $1 billion market for the past six months, sparking Vista Equity Partners into action today.
