Fall's Top Stories: Wet Powder, Data on the IPO Market, and a Revamped VC Directory
Also: 'Tidal wave' of down rounds. Profiles of Melanie Perkins, Andrew Bialecki, and Mira Murati
We’re well into fall and investors are back at work after a slow summer. With debates on the direction of the economy and many recent funds likely underperforming, the general approach in the industry right now is “wait and see.”
That doesn’t apply quite as much to the AI sector, which is why we’re holding a 2nd Cerebral Valley AI Summit on November 15. Reid Hoffman, Mustafa Suleyman, Vinod Khosla, and many more are speaking. You can see the speaker list on our website.
Applications to this invite-only event will close Monday, October 16. You can apply here.
In the meantime, here’s a roundup of some of our top stories from the last few months.
P.S. I’m on my honeymoon right now in Japan. If you need anything while I’m away, you should email my Chief of Staff Riley.
This is the first installment in our updated venture capital directory. We look at some of the most important venture capital firms and give Newcomer subscribers a snapshot of the key details — who, how much money $$$, the key deals driving past and future returns, and any scuttlebutt that we might have on them.
This installment covers Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer, Greylock, Accel, and NEA.
With Instacart, Arm, and Klaviyo filing to go public, there’s cautious excitement in the air. At a hoped-for $52 billion valuation, Arm could be the largest IPO of the year.
Given the acute interest among venture capitalists and startup founders for a read on the IPO market, I had our data whiz Wenqi Shao whip up some charts and tables on the state of the IPO and M&A market. We’ve pulled together the reported and rumored IPO pipeline, data on the slowdown in IPOs, a comparison of DoorDash and Instacart’s valuations, a review of declining bank fees, and more.
After this story was posted, each of the highlighted companies completed their IPO. Instacart priced their shares at $30 and are trading at $24.66 at time of publication. Klayvio priced at $30 and are trading at $33.78. Arm priced at $51 and are trading at $54.25.
A running question in this newsletter for the past year has been how much dry powder is there out there, really? Venture capital firms raised humongous funds — but how quickly would they deploy them?
Benchmark’s Bill Gurley argued convincingly this week that just because venture capital firms have raised big funds doesn’t mean they feel that much pressure to actually deploy them.
In any just world, Chamath Palihapitiya would be ashamed of himself.
He lent his reputation to a slew of companies going public via his special purpose acquisition companies. He was the ruinous SPAC king.
Now, almost a year after calling two SPACs quits, he’s still in denial that he was the pied piper who enticed retail investors into betting on speculative, money-losing companies.
He’s like a bully who stole someone’s lunch money and then says “stop crying about it” — except it’s for all the world to see.
Palihapitiya is dunking on people who say that they lost money because of him.
I brought two top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs working on extending lifespans on the Newcomer podcast this week.
One of them is trying to help people live longer. The other, their dogs.
James Peyer, the CEO of Cambrian Bio, is acquiring majority stakes in drugs that could combat a particular illness while showing promise for broader use among healthy humans. Meanwhile, Celine Halioua, the CEO of Loyal, is developing drugs to make dogs live longer.
Check Out the Semafor Tech Newsletter
My friend Reed Albergotti over at Semafor Tech writes a twice weekly newsletter on the people, the money, and the ideas at the center of the new era.
He keeps a finger on the pulse of the shifting dynamics and the new ideas that just might be crazy enough to change the industry as we know it.
Newcomer readers will enjoy his work. You can sign up for the newsletter here.