Baris Guzel

Autonomous Vehicle (AV) funding is surging, according to PitchBook with Q2 2024 seeing $2.9 billion invested in AV startups - the highest since Q3 2021. While self-driving cars grab headlines, innovative startups are finding unique applications beyond passenger vehicles. Key developments: - Supply chain optimization: Outrider is revolutionizing yard operations with autonomous electric vehicles, addressing a $60 billion market. - Specialized transport: Pyka's autonomous planes for cargo and Gatik's local distribution trucks are gaining traction. - Safety & efficiency: Evitado Technologies automates airside operations, mitigating airport collision risks. Of course, more established companies such as Lyft & Uber are working on AV rideshare integration via partnerships with Waymo, BYD, Zoox, and others. The AV sector is focusing on gradual integration and specific use cases. While concerns about job displacement exist, proponents argue that automation could shift human capital to higher-value roles. What those roles are remains to be seen. As the AV landscape evolves, it's clear that the future of transportation extends far beyond just self-driving cars on city streets. Check out the full article by Nadine Manske here: https://lnkd.in/g3HJXZHc? And access the PitchBook Mobility Tech Report here: https://lnkd.in/g4_xP5pr #VentureCapital #AutonomousDriving #FrontierTech #FutureMobility

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VC world can be cruel and unforgiving. With LPs more and more pushing for distribution and liquidity, fund managers in the mid-tenure of their fund with zero DPI and TVPI around 1.0 would have much more difficulty to raise new fund. The ability to fundraise is one of the crucial indications and validation of the job for VCs. Key highlights from the article below: Thirteen percent of venture General Partners (GPs) no longer plan to raise another fund due to LP pullback. This rate has doubled since H1 2023 when only 6% of GPs had no plans for another fund. Nearly 44% of venture firms surveyed in mid-2023 had previously postponed their fundraising plans due to concerns about overexposure to the asset class. Many emerging managers entered venture capital in 2019 or 2020 when the LP market supported more funds. However, slow exits in the first half of 2024 have led to challenges in raising second funds without significant cash distributions to LPs. Some venture GPs are now actively participating in the secondaries market to demonstrate returns. Despite the challenges, GPs who secured fresh capital remain optimistic. They expect the 2023 and 2024 vintages to be the strongest return years since 2019. 🚀📈 #VC #VentureCapital #Fundraising #LPs #EmergingManagers #TechInvestment #MarketTrends #CountdownCapital #IndustryInsights #JetVentures #JetInvestment‍‍‍‍‍‍

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At our VC firm, we don't just fund companies, we fund your existential crises. Every investment comes with a complimentary philosophy book. #vc #startups #investment

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What Dave McClure is building resonates well what we are doing with our Siena Secondary Fund. Although one focuses on fund stakes and the other company positions, the journey is the same - need to educate the market about what is #VC #secondary and how to benefit from it...

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I'm excited to announce that Canapi Ventures has led OpenYield's seed round. OpenYield is redefining how bonds are traded and who gets to trade them. Despite being one of the largest global asset classes, fixed income has long lagged behind equities in terms of innovation. Outdated systems, fragmented liquidity, and barriers to access have made bond trading inefficient, opaque, and inaccessible to many, particularly retail investors.   OpenYield is changing that. By delivering an equity-like trading experience for bonds, the platform transforms the fixed income market into a space defined by transparency, efficiency, and access. With real-time pricing, seamless execution, and intuitive workflows, OpenYield is making bond trading easier and more effective for institutional players, market makers, and retail investors alike. This progress wouldn’t be possible without the exceptional leadership of Jonathan Birnbaum and Hilton Lipschitz, whose decades of experience in capital markets and fintech have earned them the right to build a category leader in this market. Also hard to believe that meeting Jonathan over 20 years ago led to this partnership today!   For Canapi’s network of financial institution LPs, OpenYield represents an exciting opportunity to enhance wealth platforms, attract new client assets, and deepen advisor relationships. As the competition for wealth clients intensifies, access to efficient fixed income trading will be a critical differentiator, delivering real value for customers and strengthening client loyalty. Thrilled to be partnering with Ben Savage and Ned Daoro at Clocktower Ventures. Shoutout to Harrison Kioko. More thoughts on our investment thesis here:

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At Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference, an engaging discussion shed light on the evolving venture capital (VC) landscape. One of the key takeaways was the underscore of vibrant growth of the VC sector, with the number of firms soaring from 6,000 in 2013 to about 60,000 today. This surge in competition is driving VCs to innovate and refine their fundraising strategies, creating a dynamic environment for investment opportunities. Additionally, the session touched on how family offices provide flexible capital for smaller investments while emphasizing the thorough scrutiny required for larger funds. An emphasis on candid conversations among VCs and limited partners highlighted a commitment to fostering a more collaborative and forward-thinking investment community. Read More Here: https://lnkd.in/gHjJbtr3 Fortune Allie Garfinkle Branded Hospitality Ventures Hospitality Headline Newsletter #VentureCapital #Investment #hospitality #community Clara Shih Paulo Rosado #BrainstormTech Christine Moseley Rick Rose

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Our view on the current venture capital markets. Curious to hear other investors' thoughts but I feel like seed stage valuation, at least in the gaming and entertainment sectors, has finally come down to the pre-covid level. Since February or March this year, we started seeing that the founders are willing to raise a $1-2m seed round at a $10m-ish valuation, not like $4-5m at $20-25m in 2022 and 2023. What are you guys seeing?

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“VC funding is now a rare and expensive commodity, and founders are being encouraged to focus again on business fundamentals and capital efficiency. As a result, Venture Debt is now a topic of discussion in most Board meetings, and almost every Startup that’s raising institutional capital (seed to Series D) is thinking about Venture Debt as a meaningful addition to their capital stack.” These are timely and important conversations to be had by founders, management teams, and early investors. And it’s encouraging to see demand for debt continue to increase. But it’s not hard to see why. What’s happening in the industry now can be attributed to a few factors: ✔ We are experiencing a recalibration from the “easy money” era of high valuations. Many venture equity providers are now essentially hoarding capital and waiting for cap tables to self-correct to reasonable levels. ✔ Equity is expensive, especially for late-stage companies. Venture debt has become a more compelling alternative to equity dilution for companies that want to avoid a down round. ✔ Founders are realizing that venture debt is not rescue financing. Rather, companies with consistent revenue and a clear path to profitability are increasingly seeing debt as a means of propelling further growth. While no one can predict the future, we’re very optimistic about the role that debt can (and will) play for late-stage startups throughout the remainder of the year and beyond.

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Founders, it’s crucial to recognize that Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) serve distinct purposes. PE focuses on optimising established companies for more predictable returns, often bringing in new management, streamlining systems. In contrast, VC invests in high-growth potential startups, supporting founding teams to drive innovation. Aligning with the right investor type is essential, as it will significantly influence your growth strategy and long-term success.  When founders understand these distinctions, they can choose the right partner, setting the stage for sustainable growth and long-term success. #Startups #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #PrivateEquity #BusinessGrowth #Leadership #Investing #ScaleUp #Founders

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2024 Halftime – Complicated VC Landscape… There are two important considerations that will frame the venture capital narrative for the remainder of the year: the elections and financial condition of the country. According to Bank of America, 2024 will see national elections in countries that account for 60% of the global GDP and 40% of the world’s population, with the U.S. election arguably being the most seminal. The U.S. election is in 119 days and our national debt is increasing approximately $1.0 trillion every 100 days… Thoughts on what to expect in 2H24… https://lnkd.in/e-5tAPF6 Flare Capital Partners #digitalhealth

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I recently saw this metric from Carta’s 1Q24 VC Fund Report, which is very concerning. DPI... is nowhere to be found in earlier vintages that probably should start showing DPI. Funding early-stage projects is great, but ultimately, these venture dollars need to exit their investments and pay back their limited partners. That’s where the metric Distributed to Paid-In Capital (DPI) comes in. While managing a fund, we get interim measures during the life of the fund (e.g. IRR, MOIC), but ultimately, “you can’t eat IRR.” If you want to build a lasting venture capital organization, you need to start showing DPI for your fund. Keep in mind that this is traditional VC data from Carta, and is not strictly crypto venture. Crypto venture tends to get liquidity earlier (tokens) and things tend to go parabolic sooner (faster, more unicorns) - but I’d wager that the data here is somewhat similar for Crypto VCs… Not as much DPI as there should be from these earlier vintages. Read the full article, as well as a recap of all the crypto fundraising rounds for August, here: https://lnkd.in/g3eVJ-iF

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Thrilled to welcome embotech to our portfolio! 🚀 Andreas Kyrtatos, Alexander Domahidi, and the talented embotech team are revolutionizing logistics automation with cutting-edge automated driving solutions. Their technology is paving the way for safer, more efficient industrial and logistics operations - an area with massive potential. A big thank you to our co-investors Emerald Technology Ventures and BMW i Ventures for a fantastic collaboration. Looking forward to supporting embotech on this exciting journey! Axel Krieger, Sarah Thieme, Tatiana Gushchina Read more: https://lnkd.in/daES2rsw

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Having multiple VCs to choose from is high class problem to have but nonetheless a real one for some startups! My colleague Taos wrote a super interesting post on the things startups should consider when selecting termsheets and why it is important to be picky, have a read!

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During our Annual Investor Day, we discussed a trend we’ve been observing in the VC market: Funds increasingly using “extra downside protection” to compensate for slow growth & inflated valuations of companies. We’re now starting to see some skeletons come out of the closet (and, ironically, they might be the driving force that will re-open the IPO window). First one out: ServiceTitan https://lnkd.in/eNMuPAe6 ps: despite the compounding IPO ratchet structure, I believe ServiceTitan is a solid company and, at the right price (factoring in all adjustments), it's a great deal!

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Key takeaways from VC Goat - Vinod Khosla podcast. - The firm cares more about working on interesting problems with large technical solutions rather than just maximizing IRR. The team is there because they believe in the mission. - Khosla assumes they've lost the money the day they invest, and then maximizes for the upside opportunity. He calls it "option value investing" rather than IRR investing. - Khosla has contrarian bets in AI (neuro-symbolic computing, probabilistic approaches), biotech, robotics, crypto, and more. - He believes aviation fuels, fusion energy, new transit systems, and other contrarian areas ignored by most investors will be huge opportunities. - Most large innovations come from outsiders, not industry insiders. Khosla looks for founders who can learn a business rapidly rather than have deep domain expertise. The Future Impact of AI - AI will be deflationary and increase productivity growth to 4% annually vs the typical 2% forecast. This will cause great abundance but also increasing income inequality. - Bipedal robots will take over most manufacturing and manual labor jobs within 20-25 years. This will free humans to be more creative and pursue their passions. - Education will shift from job training to creativity. Uniquely human elements like taste and curation will be most valued in an AI-enabled world. https://lnkd.in/gqBsmbks

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Here’s a question investors are often asked: When evaluating early stage companies, how much time do you spend on due diligence around future exits? It’s not surprising we hear this question a lot. Also not surprising: it’s got a wide range of answers depending on the firm. Some don’t spend much time here at all. Others make it a point to put meaningful time in as part of their process. Our current thinking: take the time to do the work on public market comps. At Alpaca VC, we spend significant time understanding how public market investors will  realistically value a business based on margin profile, product, business model & TAM. In short, we want to know: how will this company be valued at scale when we get taken out? Yes, we can acknowledge that the journey toward exit is a windy road and that there may be pivots along the way, but there are still public market companies that have a business model similar to the early stage company you're evaluating. And you can always look at gross profit multiples if you think the margin profile will change over time. So we still do the work on the comps. Quantitative metrics we look at when making the comparison to public market comps include EBITDA multiple, revenue multiple, Gross Profit multiple or all of the above. As part of this process, it’s also important to factor in the public market company’s year-over-year revenue growth as this will also significantly impact the multiple it trades at. Simple example: if you have two public market companies with similar business models and similar margin profiles, but one's growing 100% year over year, and one's growing 50% year over year, then obviously the DCF (discounted cash flow) analysis is going to spit out a very different valuation for the one that's growing faster. Why this matters: When you take all of that information into account as you evaluate an early stage business, you can begin to create a realistic picture of how this company will be valued in the public markets at exit - or how an acquirer will value the company for an acquisition. Strategic acquirers may, of course, pay a premium, but we won’t underwrite for that. This allows us, for example, to form conviction around valuation based on revenue and gross profit predictions. If we think they can do $100M of revenue five years from now, we use this diligence process to form a thesis about whether the characteristics above (product, margin, business model, etc.) will cause the company to be valued at $200M vs. $500M vs. $1B at exit. Curious how other early stage investors think about underwriting an exit and how much time they’re spending on public market comps even though these companies are in their infancy.

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Meet MobilityVC. Back when we started this organization, the transportation landscape looked a tad bit different. But as we grew, and got to better know our LPs, portfolio companies, and the ecosystem at large, we saw they kept coming back for advice on growth, or market analysis, or access to new forms of capital. And so we’ve spent the past few years building out a truly tremendous team that can solve complex problems in the worlds of mobility, automotive and energy. That’s why I’m pleased to reintroduce this amazing organization as MobilityVC, which better captures our expanded capabilities and commitments to our partners. We offer advisory services to private and publicly traded companies – providing targeted transaction support for direct investments, acquisitions, technology licensing and product commercialization. This includes sourcing, due diligence, negotiation, integration and fundraising support. We’ve been successfully running a corporate venture capital program – sources startups, performs diligence and runs POCs on behalf of major OEMs. We have grown our funding capabilities to include SPVs & growth stage capital –  supporting companies as they scale, by establishing dedicated investment vehicles, allowing our LPs additional choice and transparency in their investments. And of course we still proudly invest in early stage investments – MobilityFund II is actively deploying capital into disruptive, seed and pre-seed investments across the mobility and automotive landscape, having just reached its second close milestone thanks to new partners like Jæger Group. I’ve got much more to share on this in the coming weeks and months, but I’m also eager to speak with you on a one-to-one basis. If you’ve got a thorny problem in the world of mobility, we’d love to explore how we can solve it together and accelerate your growth.

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"Embracing the Pivot: How Investors Support Startups in Transition" Exploring the crucial role of adaptability in startups As investors, our role extends beyond funding—we must provide strategic guidance during these pivotal moments. Read more about navigating pivots in today's dynamic startup ecosystem: lool ventures Yaniv Golan Maya Azoulay Dina Walker Lena Young Roy Katzenelson Yair Kfir Maria Osipov

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