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.

Important clauses to know when negotiating sales contracts

As a startup, it’s hard to negotiate customer contracts because you’re not yet established or trusted in the marketplace, so customers are taking on the risk. Many founders therefore make the mistake of being overly…

Capital Efficiency: Do Larger Investments Make Better Businesses?

Ignition Financial’s Report looks at how an eventful first half of 2019 has seen some key events that could mark a turning point for the start-up/VC ecosystem as we know it.

Global Fintech Report

A data-driven look at global financial technology investment trends, top deals, active investors, and corporate activity.

How Digital CFOs Are Transforming Finance

CFOs are under the gun. They need to manage the growing burden of regulatory controls while being proactive advisors to the business and ensuring a focus on the bottom line.

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.

What Deep-Tech Start-ups Want from Corporate Partners

Large companies that want to bring deep-tech startups into the fold need to consider carefully the particular needs of these young operations.

Crowdfunding – Caveat Emptor

An interesting perspective on crowdfunding.

16 Things to Get IPO Ready (or Just Build a Really Strong Business)

When should companies go public? The answer is simple: when they’re ready. In fact, to-IPO-or-not-to-IPO is not the right question; the question is how to be ready and ensure that a business is “working”.

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.

Grow fast or die slow: Why unicorns are staying private

Technology companies worth more than $1 billion—and many worth $10 billion—have fewer reasons to go public than they did in the past.

The ‘tech bubble’ puzzle

Public and private capital markets seem to value technology companies differently.

How the payments industry is being disrupted

While McKinsey expect the payments industry to keep growing at a healthy rate, powerful disruptive forces will begin to reshape the global landscape.

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.

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.

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.

UK’s largest tech IPO to date?

The cyber security firm Sophos, today announced plans to IPO on the London Stock Exchange in early July where it will join the FTSE250.

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.

HP and the Case for Corporate Spinoffs

The separation of Hewlett-Packard into two $50 billion-plus companies over the coming year will be a test case in how corporate spinoffs can be orchestrated.

Hedge Funds at the Silicon Valley Gate

Never has techland felt the influence of activist investors so acutely, with a Who’s Who of hedge fund luminaries transforming the investing landscape.