At TechCrunch Disrupt, insights into key trends in venture capital

Published September 20, 2019

At TechCrunch Disrupt, the original tech startup conference, venture capitalists remain amongst the premier guests.

VCs are responsible for helping startups — the focus of the three-day event — get off the ground, and, as such, they are often the most familiar with trends in the startup ecosystem, ready to deliver insights, anecdotes and advice to our audience of entrepreneurs, investors, operators, managers and more.

In the first half of 2019, VCs spent $66 billion purchasing equity in promising upstarts, according to the latest data from PitchBook. At that pace, VC spending could surpass $100 billion for the second year in a row. We plan to welcome a slew of investors to TechCrunch Disrupt to discuss this major feat and the investing trends that have paved the way for recording funding.

Mega-funds and the promise of unicorn initial public offerings continue to drive investment. SoftBank, of course, began raising its second Vision Fund this year, a vehicle expected to exceed $100 billion. Meanwhile, more traditional VC outfits revisited limited partners to stay competitive with the Japanese telecom giant. Andreessen Horowitz, for example, collected $2.75 billion for two new funds earlier this year. We’ll have a16z general partners Chris Dixon, Angela Strange and Andrew Chen at Disrupt for insight into the firm’s latest activity.

At the early-stage, the fight for seed deals continued, with larger funds moving downstream to muscle their way into seed and Series A financings. Pre-seed has risen to prominence, with new funds from Afore Capital and Bee Partners helping to legitimize the stage. Bolstering the early-stage further, Y Combinator admitted more than 400 companies across its two most recent batches,

We’ll welcome pre-seed and seed investor Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures and Redpoint Ventures general partner Annie Kadavy to give founders tips on how to raise VC. Plus, Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel and Ali Rowghani, the CEO of YC’s Continuity Fund, which invests in and advises growth-stage startups, will join us on the Disrupt Extra Crunch stage ready with tips on how to get accepted to the respected accelerator.

Moreover, activity in high-growth sectors, particularly enterprise SaaS, has permitted a series of outsized rounds across all stages of financing. Speaking on this trend, we’ll have AppDynamics founder and Unusual Ventures co-founder Jyoti Bansal and Battery Ventures general partner Neeraj Agrawal in conversation with TechCrunch’s enterprise reporter Ron Miller.

We would be remiss not to analyze activity on Wall Street in 2019, too. As top venture funds refueled with new capital, Silicon Valley’s favorite unicorns completed highly anticipated IPOs, a critical step toward bringing a much needed bout of liquidity to their investors. Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Zoom, PagerDuty, Slack and several others went public this year, and other well-financed companies, including Peloton, Postmates and WeWork, have completed paperwork for upcoming public listings. To detail this year’s venture activity and IPO extravaganza, David Krane, CEO and managing partner of Uber and Slack investor GV, will be on deck, as will Sequoia general partner Jess Lee, Floodgate’s Ann Miura-Ko and Aspect Ventures’ Theresia Gouw.

There’s more where that came from. In addition to the VCs already named, Disrupt attendees can expect to hear from Bessemer Venture Partners’ Tess Hatch, who will provide her expertise on the growing “space economy.” Forerunner Ventures’ Eurie Kim will give the Extra Crunch Stage audience tips on building a subscription product, Mithril Capital’s Ajay Royan will explore opportunities in the medical robotics field and SOSV’s Arvind Gupta will dive deep into the cutting-edge world of health tech and more.

Disrupt SF runs October 2-4 at the Moscone Center in the heart of San Francisco. Passes are available here.

SoFi founder Mike Cagney is back with a new startup and $50 million in funding

Published April 30, 2018

Mike Cagney, who was ousted last summer from the lending company he founded, is back with a new startup and a whole lot of funding from at least one of his previous investors.

According to a new report in Bloomberg, Cagney, who earlier this year formed a new lending startup called Figure, has raised $50 million to grow the company, which plans to use the blockchain to facilitate loan approvals in minutes instead of days.

According to the company’s site, its lending products will include home equity lines of credit, home improvement loans and home buy-lease back offerings for retirement.

The round was led by DCM Ventures and Ribbit Capital and included participation from Mithril Capital Management, Cagney confirmed to Bloomberg.

Ribbit Capital in Palo Alto, Calif., has been leading investments in the world of fintech and digital currencies since its founding nearly six years ago. Others of its many bets include the online consumer lending company Affirm, and Point, a startup that buys equity in U.S. homes.

Mithril, co-founded by Peter Thiel, prides itself on funding companies that take time to build, with funds that have longer investing timelines than do most traditional venture vehicles.

The cross-border firm DCM Ventures, meanwhile, is perhaps the most interesting participant in this round. The reason: Back in 2012, DCM began investing in Social Finance, or SoFi, the company that Cagney founded previously.

It isn’t uncommon for VCs to invest in founders with whom they’ve worked before, of course. And SoFi has grown by leaps and bounds since its August 2011 launch. Though it initially focused on refinancing student loans, today it provides personal and mortgage loans and wealth management services, and it appears to be pushing further into other bank-like services.

But Cagney was forced out of the company last summer, not long after a sexual harassment lawsuit was filed by a former employee who claimed he’d witnessed female employees being harassed by managers and was fired after he reported it.

Another former employer who’d been stationed at SoFi’s office in Healdsburg, Calif., told The New York Times that her work environment had been akin to a “frat house,” with employees “having sex in their cars and in the parking lot.” That same story, based on conversations with 30 then-current and former employees, also reported that Cagney himself had raised questions with staff because of his own behavior, including bragging about his sexual conquests.

Evidently, DCM and Figure’s other backers were able to brush aside concerns about anything of the sort happening again at Figure. (We’ve reached out to Cagney and Figure’s investors for more information.)

Employees are also flocking for Figure with the belief, ostensibly, that Cagney is well-positioned to create another financial services juggernaut. According to Bloomberg, the company has already quietly assembled a team of 56 people. Among its new hires is the former chief risk officer of LendingHome, Cynthia Chen, and the former chief legal counsel of PeerStreet, Sara Priola.

Tokyo-based Sansan Scores $16.9M To Help Companies Wrangle Business Cards

Published January 12, 2016

shutterstock business cards Tokyo-based Sansan has raised a $16.9 million Series C to help companies store and manage information scanned from business cards. The funding, which brings Sansan’s total funding so far to $35.8 million, was led by DCM Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures (the investment arm of the enterprise software company), and Nissay Capital. Read More