Category: Corporate Finance

VC Alternatives Needed

It’s time for more alternatives to venture capital cash, argues the Omidyar Network’s Sarah Drinkwater — and for more startups focused on making positive contributions to the world.

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Mrs Wordsmith’s words weave £2m funding story

There’s not many tech firms where the star player on the team is its art director, but such is the case with reassuringly named London-based edtech startup Mrs Wordsmith, whose cast includes Craig Kellman, the award-winning artist behind a vast cast of characters including those from Dreamworks’ blockbusters Madagascar and Hotel Transylvania.

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Welcome to the New Era of Commerce

Just as “social networking” is a bland term that doesn’t really capture the layers of what happens underneath (and on top of) social networking platforms, “crowdfunding” is a broader phenomenon than what the term and tools implies.

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The Real Data on Equity Crowdfunding Performance

Crowdfunding is a key growth area for the funding of small and medium sized enterprises in the UK.

Access to capital has traditionally been an extremely difficult challenge for start-up companies to face. Even with a large number of angel investors in the UK market, achieving a fully funded investment round was time consuming, clunky and often the result of luck, as opposed to access to the right people. Crowdfunding has revolutionised that process.

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Making Sense of Dell + EMC + VMware

Dell recently announced an agreement to acquire EMC – and with it, control of VMware – in a deal valued at $67 billion.

While analyses of the deal so far have been devoted to the implications for the computing, storage, and networking industries or financing of the transaction, analyzing these threads together reveals a far more interesting story.

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Herds of starving unicorns…

The Wall Street Journal has reported that tech companies made up only 11% of year-to-date IPOs, the lowest percentage since 2008. Amazingly – or rather disturbingly depending on your viewpoint – VC investors now have at least 117 companies valued at US$1Bn or more (ie the Unicorns), and the investors may be facing an IPO market that will not allow them to cash out.

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If you can’t beat them, buy them

What do a Braille printer made out of Lego and a drone that helps farmers monitor crops have to do with chipmaking?

The Economist examines how fear of being displaced by startups is turning firms into venture capitalists.

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Where European Investors Hesitate, US Investors See Opportunity

Exclusive data released today by Go4Venture Advisers, a London-based investment banking boutique specialising in tech M&A and financing rounds, has revealed the dramatic rise of US investment into European tech companies over the last five years, demonstrating the coming of age of Europe’s tech scene and the increasing internationalisation of venture and growth funding.

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