Exponent Founders Capital, an early-stage venture firm founded by alumni of startups such as Plaid, Robinhood and Ramp, has closed on $75 million in capital commitments, TechCrunch is the first to report.
The firm, which is emerging from stealth today, raised $50 million for its first fund in November of 2021.
Managing Partners Charley Ma and Mahdi Raza co-founded Exponent after meeting while Ma was leading fintech growth at Plaid, and Raza was leading growth and payments at Robinhood.
Exponent, which focuses on enterprise SaaS, fintech, infrastructure and GTM (go to market) software companies, invested in about 40 startups out of its first fund.
He worked in growth and payments at Robinhood before joining Stytch to lead early growth there.
As 2023 comes to an end, it is only natural to reflect on what happened in the markets we cover.
But when it comes to cannabis, the answer is “not much,” which won’t help cannabis startups that are already facing a challenging funding environment.
Namely, 2023 wasn’t the year that Germany legalized adult recreational cannabis use.
That matters because that’s not what the legal cannabis market once anticipated, and whenever there is misalignment between reality and what investors expected, especially when public companies boosted said expectations, it is rarely good news.
“Companies have spent significant capital in preparation for a sizable commercial market in Germany.
Down under, only 3% of venture capital funding went to all-women-founded teams, and 10% went to teams with at least one woman founder.
In 2021 and 2020, 21% and 25%, respectively, of VC funding in Australia went to startups with at least one woman founder.
A report commissioned by consulting firm the Creative Co-Operative found that in 2021, despite a record increase in VC funding in Australia — about $10 billion — just 0.03% went to Bla(c)k women and women of color founders.
The VC aims to raise another $100 million for its Fund 2 in the spring of 2024.
Beyond just giving women money, Warren and F5 want to create generational change for a billion women across India, Southeast Asia and Australia.
In the past three years, a lot of companies launched DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives, and we even saw a brief period when those promises were fulfilled.
When the market was on the up and up, Black founders, like many other founders out there, were raising record amounts.
But come 2022, the market dipped, interest rates skyrocketed, investments nearly froze, hiring slowed, and widespread layoffs hit everyone.
Today, it almost feels like many of the promises the venture capital industry made in 2020 have gone unfulfilled.
To find out exactly how many kept their word, we checked up on some of those that made commitments to DEI following the BLM protests in 2020.Who kept their word?
Okta, the identity and access management company, is acquiring security firm Spera.
Spera — which my colleague Frederic has covered previously — was co-founded several years ago by entrepreneurs Dor Fledel and Ariel Kadyshevitch.
Spera, which has about 25 employees, had raised $10 million prior to the Okta acquisition.
Okta sees Spera enabling its customers to better assess the security posture of their identity infrastructure as well as their apps and services — and attracting new customers to the Okta platform.
“With Spera, we’ll equip our customers with richer insights and technology to elevate their identity security posture management and quickly identify, detect and remediate risks,” the blog post continues.
The investment is coming by way of Verdane taking a substantial stake Fountain Venture, the investment vehicle controlled by the founder and current chairman of Meltwater, Jørn Lyseggen.
Joakim Kjemperud, a principal at Verdane, said the deal also gives his firm a stake in an HR firm, Jobylon, although Meltwater is by far the bigger asset.
In that context, it’s notable that Verdane opted to invest in Fountain Venture rather than directly in Meltwater.
That will give Verdane not only the stake in Meltwater, but also a stake in Jobylon and whatever else Fountain and Lyseggen find interesting.
Meltwater built AI in-house and has acquired a stream of businesses in an analytics consolidation play.
Seed-stage startups — and their investors — react to higher hurdles for Series A funding Lightspeed Venture Partners is formalizing its scale-up efforts, as other outfits make similar movesThe hurdle for Series A funding is a lot higher than it was a year ago — and investors in seed-stage companies are having to respond.
When the market abruptly turned in the spring of 2022, late-stage companies were the first to feel the pain.
The European venture firm Breega touts its “scaling squad” to help support its many seed bets.
Pear VC, a Bay Area-based seed-stage venture firm, is constantly rolling out new programming aimed at supporting and educating the nascent teams that it backs.
VC heavyweight Lightspeed Venture Partners is also stepping up its game.
Since the company’s earliest days as an MIT spinoff, Boston Dynamics’ systems have always provided entertainment value.
The Nashville-based firm has created theme park and exhibition animatronics for some of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, including Avatar, Jurassic Park, Marvel and Harry Potter.
A huge benefit for Neon/Animax is Boston Dynamics’ ability to produce robust and untethered autonomous systems at scale.
The world of theme park robots has transformed in recent years, with experiences like Disneyland’s Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge exhibiting robots that intermingle with park goers.
“We are thrilled about the collaboration with Neon and Animax for the development of fully untethered entertainment robots,” Boston Dynamics Chief Strategy Officerf Marc Theermann notes in a release.
The new funds come two years after BoxGroup raised $255 million for its fifth early-stage fund and second opportunity fund.
The sixth early-stage fund is almost double the fifth one, Tisch notes.
“For our early-stage fund, we grew, which in this environment, is of note,” Tisch said.
“In fact, it’s a pretty significant growth of the early-stage fund.
Similar to previous funds, Tisch expects to inject capital from the new funds into 40 to 50 new startups, writing check sizes between $500,000 and $1 million.
For a VC firm, the second fund is a make-or-break moment.
First, after raising €225 million for its initial fund ($245 million at today’s exchange rate), Singular managed to raise €400 million for the second fund.
Second, all the investors who participated in the first fund are back as limited partners in the second fund — this is a good signal.
This wasn’t an obvious outcome for the VC firm, as it’s been a wild ride over the past two or three years in venture capital.
Building a big European VC fundUnlike many VC firms based in Paris, Singular has been investing in European startups from day one.
