Fundraising

Shortly after the COVID pandemic hit, inspiration struck Ryan Abernathey and Joe Hamman. The pair had been watching the “mass mobilization” of the epidemiology research community, Abernathey said. “Joe and I were both thinking at the time, 'We wanted to be part of something with that leve

Venture is back, baby! But not really at the later stages and, oh, also definitely not at the same valuations or cadence as 2021. After more than six months of declining deal counts and venture activity, venture deal pace is starting to pick up again. Multiple investors and lawyers told technewss

Investors think a great deal about a great number of things when considering an investment: How big is the market? How good is the founder-market fit? Is it venture-scale? It’s natural for founders to live and breathe for their customers and product, but the dirty little secret of fundraising

I previously wrote about the “holy trinity” of materials that startups should have in their Series B data room: memo, deck and forecast. These three key documents should do the heavy lifting of capturing attention and communicating information across the partnership with high fidelity.

If you're a renter and you want solar power, you're usually out of luck. For most, the only option is a community solar program, where people subscribe to utility-scale projects, but they're not available everywhere. And given that most renters only stay for a few years, which of them a

There's been a lot of talk about remaking the electric grid in the U.S. and in Europe, preparing it for a tidal wave of intermittent renewable power and instant-on batteries. It's happening in fits and starts, with utilities themselves alternately embracing and pushing back against the new,

Y Combinator said the market downturn was the reason for a smaller summer batch compared to recent cohorts. But does the exclusivity come at the cost of the ecosystem's most diverse talent? These entrepreneurs are young, hungry and represent more than 30 countries, including Italy, Israel and I

To mark down your portfolio or not mark down your portfolio? That is a question many venture capitalists are grappling with right now. But first, what does that mean? VCs keep a running tab of the value of each fund and entire portfolio based on the prior valuations each company raised at. The valu

When I was an early-stage founder, I bristled at the idea of making a five- or even three-year financial projection of my business. I can promise you one thing: It will be dramatically wrong. But as part of your fundraising, you need to make them anyway, and there are a couple of great reasons for

This past year has seen a wholesale shift in how the market feels about fintech. A year ago, nearly every investor had a fintech thesis, companies were racing to go public and investors at nearly every stage of the market were fighting to jam money into the hands of founders. That’s not true

The contracting private tech markets are driving down the pricing and frequency of funding rounds, while inflation cuts into companies' runways, meaning they are able to build less product and acquire fewer users with the money they raised. It's true that VCs are doing more diligence and be

We can't avoid hearing about the economic downturn. With SaaS multiples dropping from record highs, unicorn status — and funding in general — will be harder to come by in the next two years. We are operating in a bear market, which means reduced valuations are the reality of fundraising —

Turning waste into usable products is my jam, so when the Mi Terro team told me what they were working on, I knew I had to write about it. Mi Terro takes agricultural waste and processes it into proteins that can be used as a plastic replacement, fed as food to animals and much more. Back in March

When VCs overlook the U.S. Midwest, it’s not just Chicago they are missing out on. Over time, many cities across the Midwest have been building out bona fide startup ecosystems, as M25’s annual ranking of Midwest startup hubs makes clear. Each year, the Chicago-based VC firm puts togeth