Although entrepreneurs and venture investors typically drive the negotiation of the term sheet for a venture financing, once the term sheet is executed, the commercial parties (especially those who have not been through the process many times) often feel sidelined in the ensuing process to close and uncomfortable with their lack of visibility into and control over the timeline. Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to provide a high-level overview of a standard venture financing timeline.
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SVB’s Annual Startup Outlook Report
As a Valentine’s Day gift to the community, Silicon Valley Bank issued its eighth annual Startup Outlook Report, resulting from a survey of nearly 950 technology and healthcare executives in startups, most based in the US, with additional input from businesses with primary operations in the UK and China. SVB’s survey asked entrepreneurs for their views on access to capital, hiring, general business conditions, public policy issues and other factors relevant to their businesses. Nearly all of the survey respondents were privately held companies, with the majority in the
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Corporate Venture Capital Compensation Snapshot
For some time now, corporate venture capital (CVC) has been a significant part of the funding ecosystem. According to Pitchbook, in 2016 alone over $20 billion was invested in 745 US venture deals in which CVC participated. CVC is not a new phenomenon. In a post in April 2016, Pitchbook, noted that since the beginning of 2010, $125.57 billion has been invested in rounds involving CVCs. Over the past few years, much attention has been paid to the large investment amounts coming from CVCs and the growing
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So Your Fund Wants to Invest in Canada, Eh?
Despite a recent cooling in the overall investment climate, the number of active U.S. venture investors in Canada has more than doubled over the past five years. This migration north coincides with a climb in overall venture investment activity in Canada, increasingly challenging pricing on U.S.-based deals and a lower Canadian dollar, which depreciated extensively over the same period. According to PitchBook, more than one-third of all venture-backed deals in Canada in 2015 involved foreign capital, and the number of deals that U.S. firms have participated in have more than tripled over the past five years from 44 in 2010 to 143 in 2015.
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2013 annual venture investment dollars rise 7%
According to the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), venture capitalists invested $29.4 billion in 3,995 deals in 2013, an increase of 7% in dollars and a 4% increase in deal volume over 2012 levels. The full Q4 and FY 2013 investing trends are available here.
A couple of interesting highlights for 2013:
- Internet-specific companies captured $7.1 billion, marking the highest level of Internet investment since 2001.
- Investments into the software industry also reached their highest level since 2000 with $11.0 billion flowing
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Recent Venture Capital Trends: CB Insights Q2 2013 Data
CB Insights has published summary data regarding recent venture capital trends, together with a full report available to paid subscribers. In terms of investments by VCs, the report indicates that US$7.0B was invested in 807 deals in the second quarter of 2013, representing a small increase in dollars invested (versus US$6.9B in first quarter) but a decrease in the number of deals of approximately 4%. The chart below shows quarterly dollars invested and deal volume going back to fourth quarter of 2010. See the full release by CB Insights
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From MSFT to VC: Ted Kummert
CONTRIBUTED BY
Megan Muir
@megan_muir
Q&A: Why this former Microsoft exec wanted to become a venture capitalist Ted Kummert announced on February 5th that he would be leaving his longtime position as a Microsoft executive to take a new role at venture capital firm, Madrona Venture Group. In this Q&A with John Cook of Geekwire, he answers questions about his experience and what caused him to take the leap into VC. “I…look forward to spending time, more broadly, across the Madrona portfolio of companies. I don’t tend to
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Mary Meeker – Forbes.com Interview and Profile
Eric Savitz of Forbes has a lengthy interview with Mary Meeker up on the Forbes.com site, a companion piece to his profile of Ms. Meeker in the August 6 print edition (which you can read online here). In the interview, she talks about venture capital, her work investing a $1 billion tech growth fund for Kleiner Perkins (half of which has been deployed to date), the influential reports she produced as an early Internet analyst, and some of the companies that interest her now. She is someone who has
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VC Funding Levels Highest Since 2001 – Q2 2012 Report
CB Insights released their Q2 2012 Quarterly VC Report today, showing $8.1B was invested in 812 deals, the highest funding level since 2001. One interesting trend in Q2 this is year is that 20% of the VC deals were for “seed” round investments (very early stage deals, usually with relatively small investment amounts). The mobile and Internet sectors were very strong, including a bump in photo and video related companies (perhaps post-Instagram excitement). And on a local note, Washington State had its highest quarter in over a year, with dollars
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UW Tech MBA Venture Capital Investment Competition
This weekend I spent a day with Rebecca Lovell (on right in photo) and a group of 60+ University of Washington Technology Management MBA students who were doing their final project prior to graduating – a venture capital investment competition. The Tech Management MBA is designed specifically for technology industry professionals and the venture capital competition (with Rebecca teaching) was a component added recently to give them some exposure to entrepreneurs in fund-raising mode and to give them a better understanding of the issues early stage tech investors consider. Although the students were only playing at being VCs, they did so with four real startups, giving the entrepreneurs a half day of practice pitching their companies and answering questions a potential investor might ask. 
The four companies that took time out of their busy startup schedules to present to the students were:
- Relaborate, makers of software to simplify the process of creating quality content for business blogs;
- SkyFu, with tools and data to assist a business with online reputation management;
- Saltbox, creators of a sales force communication and learning application; and
- Booktrope, with a book publishing model that offers more support than self-publishing.
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