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| 1 | | ff Venture Capital, a New York and Warsaw-based firm, announced the launch of its Red & White fund with ~$64.2M for early-stage startups in Central Europe. The fund's liquidity partner is the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. More: - The fund has a strategic plan of connecting European startups with Japanese corporations to tackle issues including population aging.
- "With Japan, our strategic presence now extends to the world's three largest economies, barring China. That reach means we can source better deals, our portfolio companies can grow faster and we are able to create more exit options," said Mariusz Adamski, partner at ffVC.
- ffVC manages $15B in enterprise value across 90 companies in its funds and has had over 30 exits.
- The venture fund claims its startups are 5x more likely to raise a Series B than the average VC-funded startup.
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What the numbers say: Carta estimates that median daily cash spending capacity for seed, Series A, and Series B startups has declined by 25%, 57%, and 65% YoY, respectively. Carta arrived at the estimates by dividing the median funding round sizes by the median interval between rounds. Since Q2 2022, the funding size has decreased while the latter has increased, causing the plunge in cash spending capacity available to early-stage startups. The median monthly spending capacity for Series A startups has more than halved from $645,000 in Q1 2022 to $273,000 in Q1 2023. Where to see the impact: Raising VC funding in the current environment is challenging, with many having to raise down rounds at reduced valuations or ink deals with terms tipping in investors' favor. To avoid this scenario, several startups are reducing their cash burn rates to increase their cash runway. Startups are focusing on trimming undue expenses by focusing on core activities and positive unit economics, laying off employees, and reducing marketing spend. Relevance: Closely managing monthly burn rates is essential for startups, especially as the fundraising period between rounds has increased. The median time interval between Series A and Series B rounds increased to 714 days in Q1 2023, up from 566 days in Q1 2022. | | | |
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| 3 | | Real estate startup Flyhomes conducted its third round of layoffs in less than 12 months. The firm's headcount now stands at 470 employees, roughly half of its peak workforce strength of over 700. The layoffs were aimed at restructuring the firm towards profitability amid the real estate market downturn due to high mortgage rates. More: - Flyhomes laid off 20% of its workforce during its first round of layoffs in Jul. 2022.
- Five months later, the firm conducted a second round of layoffs.
- The firm did not reveal the exact number of employees that were impacted due to the recent layoffs. However, the job cuts have primarily affected the operations associates and underwriters.
- Flyhomes has raised over $200M in VC funding to date, of which $150M came in through a Series C round in June 2021.
Zoom out: - Per Redfin, new listings and pending home sales were down 23% and 17%, respectively, for the four-week period ending May 28.
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| 4 | | ImmVirX, a biotech startup, raised a $25M Series B to develop oncolytic viral immunotherapies. The round was led by VenturesOnes, with participation from Acorn Capital. More: - The round valued ImmVirX at $75M. The startup's previous round was comprised of $22M led by Acorn.
- ImmVirX was founded by the team that built Viralytics, which was acquired by Merck in June 2018 for $502M.
- The company began its two-part Phase 1 clinical trial of its bio-selected oncolytic virus, IVX037 to measure its activity against late-stage colorectal, gastric, and ovarian cancer.
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| 5 | | Checkout.com, a Stripe competitor in Europe, cut the value of its stock by 15% to a $9.35B valuation. The company had previously been valued at $11B in November. More: - Checkout has seen a 77% decline in its valuation, which reached $40B in January 2022.
- "The tech sector at large has been adversely affected by the macroeconomic environment and rising interest rates," said the startup's chief people officer Kerry Van Voris.
- The company says that it still has healthy growth across volume and revenue globally, and would enable it to grant new equity at a more favorable strike price.
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| 6 | | Israeli database solutions startup Ariga nabbed $18M in fresh funding. Ariga is the developer of the open-source database schema management platform Atlas Cloud and debuted its commercial offering bearing the same name last week. Ariga intends to use the proceeds from the current round to scale operations and expand business reach. More: - Tiger Global and TLV Partners led the funding round, with backing from several undisclosed angel investors.
- Ariga's offering helps organizations to automatically manage and deploy schema changes through code.
- Ariga's products are compatible with open-source databases MySQL and PostgreSQL, DevOps tool Terraform, analytical databases Snowflake and Redshift, and commercial servers Oracle and SQL.
- Ariel Mashraki and Rotem Tamir co-founded the firm in 2021, with the former serving as CEO and the latter as CTO.
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| 7 | | Last week, we asked our startups community, "Have you ever turned down a secure job offer to join or create a startup?" Here are some highlighted responses we received: - Anthony Latona (p/Anthony-Latona), CMO at Redstage, answered, "Over 15 years ago, I received an offer that blew my mind at the time. I had left a company to pursue my startup and about 6 months later they offered me over 3x what my salary previously was to come back. I had to decide whether to continue making $500/week or nearly 7x the income... I decided to turn down the generous offer. I'll never know if it was the right decision or not, but in any case it worked. Never made a fortune, so to speak but it was more fun grinding those years than going corporate. It's not all about the money.
- Finian Sedgwick (p/finian), VP Marketing & Sales at BAXUS, answered, "After almost 11 years in the same global business (unheard of for my generation), I was moving my family from the U.S. to Australia and the company offered me a solid but 'predictable' next step on the corporate ladder. Nothing wrong with the job and the hiring manager was wonderful but I knew I had reached my 'now or never' moment in my career to step out and launch my own business. The catalyst of one major life change gave me the confidence to make another and my own business went from being a pipe dream to a reality while the same time getting fully onboard with an incredibly exciting startup. Couldn't have wished for a better outcome and, as they say, everything happens the way it's supposed to. Grateful for the twists and turns that brought me here but some of the best advice I kept hearing from entrepreneurs that I know across multiple different industries was always about taking that first leap! Community and mentorship are critical to giving you that context."
Join the conversations at Inside.com, and we may shout out your name and business or contact you for more! ⭐️ | | | |
| 8 | | Quick Hits: - Want to invest in one of the Top 5 Fastest Growing Industries in the US? Join R3 Printing as they take on the $18B 3D printing industry.*
- A newly published JPMorgan report found that female founders have to give away 5.3% more equity on average compared to their male counterparts while raising equity funding.
- eBay is partnering with Techstars to launch a 13-week accelerator program, dubbed Techstars Future of E-commerce powered by eBay. Startups selected for the cohort will receive a $20,000 equity investment against a 6% stake and an optional $100,000 convertible note for another 6% stake.
- Lakshay Chauhan and John Alberg co-founded Finpilot, a firm that leverages generative AI to answer questions about businesses based on publicly available filings. Madrona Ventures and Ascend recently invested $500,000 into the startup.
- Digital health startup Kilo Health announced the general availability of its habit-tracking and lifestyle management app Greatness.
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Term of the Day Stocks (equity): Stocks, or equity, are securities that give the holder fractional ownership of the issuing company. Question of the Week Have you ever had to compromise your values for your career? Join the conversation |
INSIDE STARTUPS LEADERBOARD (7 DAYS) |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot.
Nicolas is a Sr. Analyst at Inside, covering startups and transportation trends. He is an avid map maker and data nerd. Nicolas has worked in the shared-scooter space, as well as advised e-bike and moped start-ups. | | This newsletter was edited by Brian Warmoth | |
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