Top 4 Curated VC Picks + Must-Read Top 3 Books for 31Jan2024
🗒️ Bitget Report – Female-Led Blockchain Startups Receive Only Six Percent of Overall Funding
Daily Hodl: Bitget, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange and Web 3.0 company, has released a study analyzing the latest trends in the blockchain startup funding landscape and their influence on gender-based disparity in investment patterns.
The study encompassed two years and relied on both qualitative and quantitative data to give a clear overview of the gap in funding received by male and female-led startups.
The purpose of this research was to highlight existing issues with gender inequality in the industry and give insights into its potential solutions.
🗒️ Biden-Harris Administration Announces $623 Million in Grants to Continue Building Out Electric Vehicle Charging Network
Cleantechnia: Funding Will Deploy Chargers in Communities and Along Major Travel Corridors and Promote American Jobs and Clean Transportation Leadership
The Biden–Harris Administration today announced $623 million in grants to help build out an electric vehicle (EV) charging network across the U.S., which will create American jobs and ensure more drivers can charge their electric vehicles where they live, work, and shop. This is a critical part of the Administration’s goal of building out a convenient, affordable, reliable and made-in-America national network of EV chargers, including at least 500,000 publicly available chargers by 2030 ensuring that EVs are made in America with American workers.
🗒️ VC-backed M&A spoils predictions, falling to decade low
Pitchbook: VCs and market participants have been predicting an uptick in M&A activity for at least six quarters, but their forecasting powers keep failing them.
2023 turned out to be the worst year in a decade for acquisitions of VC-backed companies, according to the Q4 2023 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. Companies purchased nearly 700 startups at a combined value of $26.7 billion, about a quarter of the value sold during the 2021 peak.
🗒️ Why Startups Fail Despite Securing Venture Capital
Inc: It is widely recognized that 90 percent of startups fail. Numerous factors contribute to their downfall, with a significant portion making critical fundraising mistakes. These mistakes result in a failure to attract the much-needed support from potential venture capital investors. However, even among the startups that successfully secure venture capital funding, a substantial number still face challenges in achieving long-term success.
Here are six common pitfalls that arise after a successful fundraising process, and actionable advice to help navigate and overcome these obstacles.
Top 3 book summaries this week 📚
Deep Dive by Rich Horwath
Who does the strategic thinking in your organization? The norm is to assume that senior executives are strategic and lower-level employees are not. But if they are, where do they gain the skills?
Extreme Productivity by Richard Pozen
At some point, we've all asked ourselves "Where can I get more time to do the things I want to do?" The answer, from Robert C. Pozen, is found in his fascinating book Extreme Productivity.
The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon
Surveys suggest that customers place the highest value on salespeople who make them think and who find innovative ways to help their business. Customers expect salespeople to teach them things that they don’t know, and these are the core skills of Challengers—the new type of salespeople we should employ.