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| |  Image Credits: MicroStockHub / Getty Images | | Earlier this week, we asked eight venture capitalists who invest in fintech to share their impressions about how the industry has shifted in recent weeks. In a follow up, seven VCs agreed to share their predictions of things to come: - Matt Harris, Bain Capital Ventures
- Charles Birnbaum, Bessemer Venture Partners
- Jackson Gates, Manresa Ventures
- Rob Moffat, Balderton Capital
- Brendan Dickinson, Canaan
- Yann Ranchere, Anthemis
- Cherry Miao, Accel
These Extra Crunch VC surveys are more than just Q&As — our reporters use the intelligence and insight gleaned from the responses to originate stories that dig even deeper to the trends and facts we uncover. Please join us next week for two Extra Crunch Live sessions: on Tuesday, we’re hosting Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor of Kapor Capital, and on Thursday, April 30, Mark Cuban will join our virtual speaker series. Thanks for reading, and have an excellent weekend. Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Steve Jennings / Getty Images (Image has been modified) | | “I’m an extrovert, so I definitely get energy from meeting people in-person,” said Nicole Quinn, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Parters who’s invested in Calm, Rothy’s and Cameo. Last week, LVP announced that it had closed on $4.2 billion in new capital across three funds, so Lucas Matney interviewed Quinn about where she’s looking to invest, her changing schedule and who she’s talking to these days. Read more | | | |
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| |  Image Credits: STR / Getty Images | | After a slowdown prompted by the COVID-19 outbreak, new VC deals have started to pick up in China. The 2003 SARS pandemic helped spur the launches of Taobao and e-commerce giant JD.com, so we examined five cohorts that have closed the most deals in China, as they may predict the post-pandemic environment. Read more | | | |
| |  | | Join TechCrunch reporter Megan Rose Dickey on Tuesday, April 28 for an upcoming edition of Extra Crunch Live, our new virtual speaker series. Her guests will be Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor, founding partners of Kapor Capital who will discuss how startups should approach this ever-changing new reality and strategies for promoting diversity and inclusion. Audience members will be able to ask questions, but only Extra Crunch members can join the conversation — sign up here to reserve a spot. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Tek Image Science Photo Library / Getty Images | | Incoming CrowdStrike CTO Michael Sentonas spoke to security reporter Zack Whittaker about the challenges he’s faced since stepping into the role two months ago. He’s working extended hours to manage teams spread across Europe and the U.S. from his home in Australia in the midst of a global pandemic, but “in some respects things have been business as usual,” says Sentonas. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Getty Images | | Senior Editor Alex Wilhelm unpacked data from Silicon Valley’s Q1 2020 venture market and found that “January was great” and “February was good,” but “March was a mess.” Data from Fenwick and West show that deal volume was down considerably after a January that saw "the largest number of venture financings in a single month in at least five years." Read more | | | |
| |  | | The COVID-19 pandemic has made some companies more relevant than ever, but many startups are laying off staff, paring back on marketing and taking other steps to conserve precious cash. Cowboy Ventures founder and managing partner Aileen Lee and partner Ted Wang joined Jordan Crook for an Extra Crunch Live session this week that addressed scenario planning, whether to apply for a PPP loan and other issues that are top of mind for founders these days. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: SUSANA BATES / AFP / Getty Images | | Buying a 9.99% stake in India's Reliance Jio Platform gives Facebook a major boost in the world’s second-largest internet market and presents a threat to major players in e-commerce and payments, reports Manish Singh. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Brian Ach / Getty Images | | Magic Leap this week laid off nearly 1,000 employees — half of its workforce — and announced it would drop its consumer offerings to focus on enterprise customers. There’s been plenty of hype in AR/VR, but the technology is difficult and expensive to produce. Magic Leap was a driving force when it came to building a developer ecosystem for this frontier technology: what happens to the industry if it can’t execute a dramatic turnaround? Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: picture alliance / Getty Images | | History indicates that early-stage investing is resilient when public and private markets are volatile — angel and seed activity increased 34% during the last recession. Given how much dry powder VCs have in reserve, we analyzed recent early-stage deals to identify six potential investment trends that may persist after the crisis has passed. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: taseffski / Getty Images | | Jeff Bezos has announced plans to test every Amazon employee for the novel coronavirus, a proposal that pits public safety against personal privacy. Reporter Brian Heater spoke to an employment law attorney about the latest updates from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding workplace testing for COVID-19. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Richard Drury / Getty Images | | Investors will always want to invest in growing companies that solve intractable problems, but the COVID-19 pandemic has reset expectations across the board. In this guest post, several VCs talk about how founders should plan their next raise “in terms of timing, valuation and amounts.” Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: picture alliance / Getty Images | | “In dollar terms, Q1 2020 was good for Europe,” but “in deal terms it was weak,” reports Alex Wilhelm, who rolled up his sleeves and got elbow-deep in a grip of data covering the first three months of the year. The second and third quarters are expected to be even worse, “and with deal volume already behind, little ground will be made up,” he concludes. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: ChristianChan / Shutterstock | | Bessemer Venture Partners released its 2020 cloud report this week, so Alex Wilhelm chewed over six metrics BVP used to define success and analyzed its cloud startup scorecard. “Bessemer's cloud and SaaS exits include Twilio, Shopify, PagerDuty, Box, and a few others, so they're worth listening to at least a little on the topic,” he writes. Read more | | | |
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