Will start with the Good news. According to Tomasz Tunguz the fundraising scene has become extremely sophisticated “along three dimensions: diversity of product offering, pricing sophistication, and efficiency of investment processes.” The types of rounds and ways to raise them has become more science than art. Five flavors of seed, wide range of A, B and C rounds with a wide array of sources – “Founders can raise $7M Series As and $15M Series As. Would you like a series A from a generalist fund or a specialist fund? Founders can raise a $15M Series B or a $200M Series B. Would you like that Series B from an opportunity fund, an SPV funded by direct LP investment or from a third part?” The options of IPO, ICO, secondary markets, venture debt – for businesses with the right indicators neither valuation nor money is going to be a problem, according to TomTunguz all indications are that 2019 will be a strong fundraising market.
A write up in the subscriber only online magazine The-Ken in India ran a piece today on the return of Tiger Global with a new head, Scott Shleifer, after the departure of its legendary head Lee Fixel, with the size and speed of his bets matching that of Fixel who reached out and invested in India’s Flipkart $10million when the entire e commerce market was estimated to be about $30mn. Scott Shleifer apparently has invested $150M in 3 months in a bunch of startups. The difference however is that unlike Fixel, Scott is focused on B2B companies.
The flip side – the first Canadian SVB Startup Survey reported that 8 out of 10 founders in Canada (which was included in this study for the first time, besides US, UK and China) are finding fundraising challenging despite The MoneyTree Report by PwC Canada and CB Insights showing substantial year on year growth in the Canadian VC investment in th Tech ecosystem to $4.6B CAD across 471 deals from $3.4B CAD across 361 deals. For India, the 3rd largest Startup Eco System in the world the INNOVEN capital had similar findings “…74% respondents had a favourable experience (v/s 54% in 2017) but 46% believe fund raising environment in 2019 will be more challenging”
I will do a more detailed piece on these reports covering 5 countries between the SVB CB Insights report and the Innoven capital on the Indian startup scene.
Links to all the referred articles:
The Fundraising Environment in 2019 – Three Major Shifts https://bit.ly/2PYGHGS
2019 Sartup Outlook Report https://bit.ly/2wxCd0X
Will Tiger Global 2.0 herald a new dawn for Indian SaaS startups https://bit.ly/2YZNwv2
InnoVen Capital India: Startup Outlook Report – 2019 https://bit.ly/2KmcUY0
