Your Techstars Venture Capital Weekly Digest is here! (Issue #48)

January’s funding total topped the previous monthly high of the last two years; July 2020 at $38.5 billion. A larger proportion of dollars in these funding spikes was also invested in late-stage venture capital — around 69 percent — with the lion’s share of capital going to Series C+ and private-equity rounds in venture-backed companies. 

The venture capital industry is as asymmetrical an industry as any; the top 1% to 4% of venture investments usually get the outsized (10x+) returns. This game of home runs leads fund operators to consistently bet on some of the world’s most innovative, and implicitly riskiest,…

The Founder Institute isn’t just trying to help entrepreneurs launch new startups — with its new VC Lab, the accelerator says it’s also hoping to fuel the launch of 1,000 new venture capital funds. FI co-founder Jonathan Greechan described this as an attempt to bring more “alignment” to the startup ecosystem.”

The Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards profiles the industry’s top 50 people who have entered the industry in about the past five years with aplomb and notable success.

To be successful in venture capital, you need to use your experience, intuition and analytical skills to be able to distinguish between real risk and your own prejudice—and you need a dash of luck, too.

In this episode, Beezer shares how the pandemic is affecting Sapphire Partners’ investment strategy. I also share what I’ve been seeing from investing in startups and venture capital funds through our MergeLane fund.

The Biden-Harris Administration should establish a National DeepTech Capital Fund (NDTC Fund) to bridge capital gaps and enable more DeepTech entrepreneurs to bring promising and beneficial technologies to market. Authors: Leslie Jump, Mack Kolarich, and Ellen Brooks Shehata.

The Dovi Frances-led VC and Veev were announced as the first two listings on TASE UP, a new platform in which companies remain private and are not subject to any reporting or prospectus publishing requirements.

A little less than two years ago, when the actor, producer and investor Robert Downey Jr. unveiled his new, sustainability focused initiative called the FootPrint Coalition at Amazon’s re:MARS conference it was little more than a static website and a subscription prompt.

As a Black woman, I’m part of a demographic that’s least likely to successfully raise venture capital. But there are ways to shift that narrative.

Included VC 2021 is now supported by a consortium of 11 partners! We are delighted that HSBC Ventures & M12 - Microsoft’s Venture Fund have joined the family, alongside the inaugural supporters - CREANDUM, daphni, Enern, K FUND, Mangrove Capital Partners, Notion Capital, Seedcamp, Mouro Capital (formerly Santander Innoventures) & Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati…

VCs Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson teach entrepreneurs how to raise venture funding for startups in this free course.

The PROPEL Energy Tech Forum is the premier access-to-capital event that serves as a platform for North America’s most promising energy technology companies to showcase in front of top tier investors and corporate leaders. PROPEL identifies, screens, and presents the highest potential energy technology companies to the petroleum industry’s leading production, service and distribution firms, venture capital funds, corporate strategic funds, and technology scouts.