When they first met in 2007, the now brothers-in-law bonded over their passion for venture capital, eventually leading them to invest together from their personal capital.
By 2020, Anderson and Fogelsong decided to take their investing relationship to the next level by launching their first fund with external capital.
That fund, which the firm considers its second vehicle, closed at $91.5 million, well above its initial target of $60 million.
So,they named their firm “Friends & Family Capital” to capture that spirit, their own family connection, and Fogelsong’s roots in a prominent Silicon Valley VC family.
Like its previous fund, Friends & Family’s third fund will be used to invest in “classic B2B enterprise software” companies and hardware businesses with recurring revenue components.
While funding for Italian startups has been growing, the country still ranks eighth in Europe by VC investment, according to Dealroom.
Newly created Italian Founders Fund (IFF) hopes to help with the catching up, both in quantity and in quality.
It will use this geographical flexibility to also back Italian founders operating abroad, as well as foreign startups interested in entering the Italian market.
It will also help that some of its LPs are GPs of foreign funds, and that it plans to back Italian founders with global ambitions.
Global Italian startups include Bending Spoons, the owner of popular apps and services like Evernote and Meetup, which is valued at $2.55 billion.
Metalab goes from quietly building the internet to investing in itNearly 20 years after finding success in helping startups build products, Canadian interface design firm Metalab launches Metalab Ventures to invest in many of those product-led startups.
Then Metalab “lets them loose” to grow, CEO Luke Des Cotes told TechCrunch.
With Metalab Ventures, the venture arm will play the role of a long-term value investor, essentially “putting our money where our mouth is,” Des Cotes said.
When determining who to invest in Metalab Ventures, the process includes getting to know the founders and if the firm can add value.
“We’ve already operated very much like a venture fund,” Des Cotes said.
In a move implying that the launch went well, JFFVentures today unveiled its second fund, JFFVentures Fund II, with a target of $50 million.
So how is JFFVentures Fund II planning to avoid these pitfalls?
Well, Raja says, while the fund is operationally independent from JFF, JFFVentures Fund II will benefit from the wider JFF community, including its connections with government, corporate, education and nonprofit partners.
“We’ve committed in our fund docs that at least 50% of Fund II founders will identify as underrepresented in terms of founder backgrounds,” he said.
Kerszenbaum pointed to JFFVentures’ inaugural fund performance as evidence Fund II can succeed, though.
Wen Hsieh and Haomiao Huang, both Kleiner Perkins investors, left the firm in 2023 to start their own venture capital fund called Matter Venture Partners.
The median venture fund raised that year was around $37 million, according to a PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report.
Matter Venture Partners invests at the large seed rounds, Series A and Series B.
He believes that Matter Venture Partner’s focus on hard tech was the reason for the oversubscription.
We like to fund them and entrepreneurs that contribute to these new innovations.”So far, Matter Venture Partners invested in six companies not made public yet.
Robinhood’s new credit card was revealed Tuesday, and though it’s only available for Robinhood Gold members, the Gold Card does have a feature that’s spurring headlines: the ability to invest cash back bonuses into investments.
But what gives with tech companies getting into the consumer credit game?
You could argue that Robinhood’s choice to offer a card is just an extension of its already-expanding portfolio of financial products.
But Apple also has a card, recall.
And the tech giant is getting deeper into the realm of personal finance as time goes along.
Robinhood’s new credit card goes after Apple Card with ability to invest cash-back perksEight months after acquiring credit card startup X1 for $95 million, Robinhood announced today the launch of its new Gold Card, with a list of features that could even give Apple Card users envy.
Apple, for instance, offers 3% cash back on all purchases made at Apple, and on purchases made at select merchants when using the Apple Card with Apple Pay.
In general, purchases made on Apple Card with Apple Pay earn users 2% back.
It’s why we started Robinhood…” Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev said in a written statement.
“Today’s announcements…bring us one step closer to the goal of giving everyone better access to the financial system.”Robinhood Gold Card, explained:What are the requirements to apply for a Robinhood Gold Card?
Eight months after acquiring credit card startup X1 for $95 million, Robinhood announced today the launch of its new Gold Card, with a list of features that could even give Apple Card users envy.
However, it will only be available for Robinhood Gold members, which costs $5 a month, or $50 annually.
Apple, for instance, offers 3% cash back on all purchases made at Apple, and on purchases made at select merchants when using the Apple Card with Apple Pay.
The new credit card is part of Robinhood’s evolving business model and offerings over the years.
Gold Membership, a requirement to get the Gold Card, increases the eligible match to up to 3% match.
Not a day goes by without some confirmation that deep tech is on the rise in Europe — and that public and private capital investors are here for it.
Latest case in point, OTB Ventures, which closed a $185 million fund to invest in deep tech in Europe that it will mostly deploy at the Series A stage.
OTB’s take on deep tech focuses on four verticals that do sound fairly NATO-compatible: space tech, enterprise automation and AI, cybersecurity and fintech infrastructure.
This means we can’t confirm either whether the funding that went to OTB could also have gone to, say, a French or Austrian deep tech fund.
Like NIF, OTB is headquartered in Amsterdam, and its other office is in Warsaw, where NIF is also planning to have a regional office.
Yi and Shin started Ethos Fund two years ago to bridge opportunities and startup communities between Vietnam and the United States.
They are also investing smaller checks into third culture founders there who fall into categories, including returned Vietnamese diaspora, Vietnamese Americans and expats residing in Vietnam, and subsequently doubling-down with larger checks into validated startups.
“Ethos is called Ethos because we focus on the ethos of the founders,” Yi said.
One of the things Yi noticed about his startups was that they weren’t growing past a certain stage.
Now the pair wants to help startup founders figure those lessons out early.
