After taking five consecutive business days off my work laptop - and yelling at my personal laptop while losing games on Dominion online - I'm back. I missed you. And while The Exchange's regular columns were down this week (Friday aside, which you can read here), there's still a lot to talk about.
First, a new website. If you click here, you'll be taken to a sortable list (spreadsheet? Database?) Of startups with black founders. Dubbed The Black Founder List, it's a great resource and tool.
For people like me with a research and reporting focus, the selectability of the list of companies founded by black entrepreneurs by gender, stage and market focus is amazing. And, for investors, it should provide potential business flow. Do you write a lot of Series C checks? The Black Founder List includes 23 Series B startups with black founders. Or if you prefer Series D controls, there are 11 Series C startups with black founders to check out.
Who writes the most checks to black founders? Among the top names are M25, a Midwestern VC group, Techstars Boston, and a number of Angels.
The website was compiled more or less by the same team that ProWellTech highlighted earlier this year, when their black founders data collection work was more of a spreadsheet than an app. Then, indicate your thanks for the new resource a Yonas Beshawred, Sefanit Tades, James Norman and Hans Yadav.
The Black Founder List also has a submit data button, so if you notice a missing name, add it. I want the dataset to be as robust as possible, as I believe it will prove to be a great resource for reporting. And public figures like this avoid some excuses from the investor class.
Market Notes
- I missed a lot this week that I was looking forward to, including the Asana and Palantir IPOs. For more complete thoughts, go here. The summaries follow:
- Asana's direct listing and subsequent valuation and implied revenue multiples make direct listing a win for the company and model. If other SaaS companies have the ability to raise large funds ahead of debut, perhaps direct listing isn't as dead as it seemed a few months ago when SPACs stole the spotlight and most companies were pursuing traditional IPOs regardless.
- Palantir's direct listing didn't feel hot until it dropped some strong revenue indications. With that, its direct listing has fared well despite its cosmically comical voting structure. Watching the Palantir leadership try to suppress public input while still providing a thin veneer of democracy made me think more of Russia or Texas than of a functioning democratic system.
- Looking ahead, Airbnb is said to be seeking $ 3 billion for its IPO. Airbnb had to make a lot of expensive money when its business collapsed in the early days of COVID. He wanted to run the list. It will now be making a ton of cash during its debut.
- Good. More capital> less capital.
- Staying on our late stage topic, when I left, Root was rumored to be pursuing an IPO, and when I returned, Roblox is now also inclined to conspire with public markets. (Root's IPO in the wake of Lemonade's successful debut made sense. Insurtech is hot.)
- The news shouldn't come as a surprise; Roblox's model has found prestige among young players and has found a great way to make money at the same time. With a mix of Lego and video game design and Minecraft, perhaps it's no surprise that the company is doing well.
- Reuters reports that Roblox could be worth $ 4 billion when it goes public. I believe it.
- Datto is going public. Ron and Danny have the details here.
- And I chatted with some Accel investors, the juicy pieces you can find from here.
Various and various
- Draper Esprit, a European-focused venture capital fund operating on the London Stock Exchange, raised £ 110 million this week. Esprit is a fun shop to follow (I met its resident James since the LSE days), because it is more transparent than most venture capital firms than you are familiar with thanks to its structure.
- According to the company's statement, its share sale was "oversubscribed". Tech.eu has more.
- Mobile app spend increased to $ 29.3 billion in the third quarter, driven by 36.5 billion installs for SensorTower. Revenue increased 32% year-on-year.
- Uber sold Uber Freight worth $ 500 million to a PE company.
- As noted, tech stocks had a bad September, but how much it might surprise you.
- And I covered Noyo's A series before I left, with the post coming out on Monday.
- In short, Noyo is doing the hard work to create APIs to connect the world of health insurance. It is a huge and difficult task.
- The $ 12.5 million was "led by Costanoa Ventures and Spark Capital. Previous investors Core Innovation Capital, Garuda Ventures, Webb Investment Network, Precursor Ventures and Homebrew have increased their investments in the new round. "
- (I can't shake the thought that there is something in the midst of the boom of no-code / low-code and startups offering more products via API instead of managed services. And please don't say mashups, there are. we went that phrase back centuries ago.)
- Missed the window to officially comment on the Coinbase culture fuss - the Equity crew talked about it while I was AFK - so I'll just stick with it share this thread like my $ 0.02.
- Also, read this from Eileen Burbidge on ProWellTech about the same topic. All right.
Regular morning exchange columns return Monday morning. It's good to be back.
By the way, ProWellTech Sessions: Mobility is coming next week. I'm going! To help you get there, here's a 50% discount code to get full access to the event. Or, if it's your jam, this code will give you free access to expo and breakout sessions.
Chat soon,