Last month, I came across a Twitter thread by Elizabeth Yin, co-founder and general partner at Hustle Capital.
Some trends in VC right now – it's an interesting time of bifurcation and money:
1) At the early stages (call it pre-A or the whole "seed range"), I'm seeing lots of bifurcation. On one hand, in the Silicon Valley, for some founders, it's never been an easier time to raise.
“It’s an interesting time of bifurcation and money,” she wrote. “On one hand, in the Silicon Valley, for some founders, it’s never been an easier time to raise…For non-pedigreed founders, if you are running a SaaS company & have some rev traction, [it’s] also pretty easy to raise.”
But not so fast: “Even in the Bay Area, if you don’t check said boxes above, it is HARD. Outside the SF Area, even harder.”
In addition to editing Extra Crunch, I also manage guest posts, which means I’m always looking for distinctive voices to share with our readers. As soon as I finished her thread, I DMed Elizabeth and asked if she’d be willing to synthesize it into a column for TechCrunch.
This week, we ran her column, along with an extended Q&A she did with Alex Wilhelm. Their conversation presents a well-informed view of the current landscape, so I hope you’ll read, share and add your own perspectives in the comments.
In the third of seven posts in a series of stories about virtual worlds, we imagine what the experience of these new social environments will feel like.
“The multiverse generation of virtual worlds will make social connection the centerpiece even further, with broader scope of social interactions and less emphasis on one specific format or scenario,” writes Eric Peckham, our media reporter.
“When I was a founder many years ago, I felt like I heard constantly conflicting advice and opinions on raising money for my startup. It was hard to understand what was going on and what I should actually do.
Many years later, now as a VC, it turned out that most of the things you hear people say about fundraising are generally true and generally good pieces of advice. All at the same time. Even when these ideas conflict. How is that possible?”
In a report cataloging data about autonomous vehicle testing, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles announced that companies performing on-road testing drove more than 2.87 million autonomous miles last year.
That represents an increase of 40%, but the overall data “shows either stunning progress or stagnation,” writes Kirsten Korosec, since some companies have gone out of business, scaled back their testing or moved out of state.
Image Credits: Photo by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images for Los Angeles Times Food Bowl / Getty Images
It was a brutal week in the markets, which is why many were surprised when delivery service DoorDash announced that it had confidentially filed for an IPO.
As the company is already valued at $13 billion, Alex Wilhelm studied DoorDash’s financial history to give readers some context for its S-1 and “better understand its IPO prep.”
To help us understand the direct effect COVID-19 is having on public markets, Alex Wilhelm looked at the latest news from Microsoft, Booking Holdings (parent company of Bookings.com) and Nutanix.
His conclusion was somewhat startling in its implications: “Anything related to travel, China-built hardware, or selling into countries that are undergoing coronavirus-led quarantines appear to be at risk.”
Image Credits: Photo by Lance Grandahl on Unsplash / (Image has been modified)
In “a quick hit” that ran on Thursday afternoon, Alex looked at Q4 results from three SaaS players to get a sense of why each company went up in value during a week that can legitimately be described as “an epic selloff.”
In part four of our series, Eric Peckham asserts that for technical and cultural reasons, multiverse virtual worlds are about to go massively mainstream.
With advances like hardware improvements and 4G/5G, “virtual worlds will become substantially more popular as social hangout spots, particularly as the developers behind them allow for simple socializing and creative expression to take center stage.”
If you’ve received an email with a “Sent via Superhuman iOS" signature, does that mean the sender is cooler than you? Perhaps so; CEO and founder Rahul Vohra told reporter Lucas Matney that the waitlist for his lightning-fast, invitation-only app has more than 275,000 people.
To learn more about his growth and product strategies — and the dedicated $7 million angel fund he recently launched with friend Todd Goldberg — read this Extra Crunch interview.
Backed by Marc Andreessen and Stripe, Pioneer, the “startup generator” founded by former YC partner Daniel Gross, aims to cultivate entrepreneurs who live outside Silicon Valley’s startup ecosystem. Founders who are selected get to know their advisors and each other via video chat.
“It’s kind of funny,” said Gross. “Human bonding happens when there’s another direct task going on, right?”
In light of this week’s stock market selloff and coronavirus headlines, you might not have heard that longtime Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned, effective immediately.
As Parks Chairman Bob Chapek steps up and becomes chief executive, Anthony Ha looks at the moves that shaped Iger’s legacy, including a series of acquisitions, IP strategies and other bets that “seemed to pay off most impressively and consistently.”
Image Credits: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg / Getty Images
The stock market lost more than $3 trillion in value in the last several days, but “we're still in warm waters as far as tech valuations go,” wrote Alex Wilhelm, noting that cloud and SaaS stocks have fallen back to prices seen in summer 2019.
There’s plenty of bad news, however — in February 2019, there were 999 equity-only recorded private investments, but this year, there were just 461 for the same time period.
In the fifth entry in our seven-part series, Eric Peckham envisions the ascendance of a new social frontier: immersive virtual worlds where users can play, socialize and transact — both with each other and with the companies that create these platforms.
“Virtual worlds are all about participation in building things and pursuing adventures — and that necessitates commerce,” he writes.
In today’s recap of all things app: a game that lets players simulate the spread of a global pandemic was pulled from the Chinese App Store, Instagram’s CEO spills the tea on why there’s no iPad experience, a look at TikTok influencers who make as much as “$175K per post and much more news.
