Top 4 Curated Venture Capital Weekly Update for Nov 9, 2022 💰
🗒️ Binance to acquire FTX: implications for games and esports
Venturebeat: Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has released a letter of intent to acquire the assets of fellow exchange, FTX. While cryptocurrency, Web3 and gaming have a similar audience, FTX has several direct (and flashy) ties to gaming.
1) Hey all: I have a few announcements to make.
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) November 8, 2022
Things have come full circle, and https://t.co/DWPOotRHcX’s first, and last, investors are the same: we have come to an agreement on a strategic transaction with Binance for https://t.co/DWPOotRHcX (pending DD etc.).
🗒️ Laid off from your tech job? Day One wants to give you $100,000 to start a company
Techcrunch: Day One Ventures, a venture firm launched in 2018 with a pitch to combine venture capital acumen with marketing and communications support, has launched a program aimed explicitly at those impacted by tech layoffs this year.
The program, titled “Funded Not Fired,” will write $100,000 checks into 20 startup teams by the end of the year. Top businesses from the cohort will then get follow-up capital from Day One Ventures commitment to lead their pre-seed round with a $1 million check. In total, the firm is allocating at least $5 million from its $52.5 million fund to back founders spinning out of turbulent startups.
🗒️ Crypto Venture Capital Investment Slowed Further in October: JPMorgan
Coindesk: October data showed a continued deceleration in the pace of crypto venture capital investment to under $1 billion a month, JPMorgan said in a research report last Thursday.
The downtrend began last May following the Terra collapse, said the report authors led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, and the weak October numbers suggest more than just a seasonal summer slowdown.
The current level of venture capital investment of $500 million to $1 billion per month gives an annual rate of almost $10 billion, which is less than one-third of last year’s pace, they wrote.
Panigirtzoglou called it a worrying development as it shows an unwillingness by venture capital funds to deploy capital in the digital assets sector. He believes it increases the likelihood that the current weakness in cryptocurrency markets may be here for some time.
He also said other metrics such as sluggish bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) exchange-traded-fund flows point to persistent weakness.
🗒️ Brooklyn Nets owners will invest up to $6 million in BIPOC startups in 2023 with launch of huge new business accelerator
Fortune: Clara Wu Tsai, co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets, launched the largest business accelerator for minority founders of early-stage startups on Monday.
Named BK-XL, the accelerator will invest up to $500,000 to 12 startups led by Black, Indigenous and other minority founders in 2023.
“Capital is one of the biggest impediments to wealth-building, particularly for BIPOC entrepreneurs,” Wu Tsai told The Associated Press in an interview. “We thought that investing in this segment was how we could create wealth, not only for the entrepreneurs, but also through all the different jobs that they are going to create.”
Increasing investments of venture capital in startups run by minority founders became a priority for many during the racial reckoning that followed the police killing of George Floyd. According to Crunchbase, only 2.4% of all U.S. venture capital raised between 2015 to 2020 was allocated to startups with Black or Latinx founders. Funding to Black entrepreneurs quadrupled in the first half of 2021 to $1.8 billion. However, investments to minority founders this year have dropped steeply.