🗒️ 11 podcasts that busy venture capitalists and founders say they trust right now
Business Insider: Global venture-capital funding in 2022 may have dipped 35% from 2021, according to a report by analytics company CB Insights, but VCs are still eager to make deals.
It's a tough market right now, though, and investors need reliable insights, news, and information to spot opportunities and avoid making the wrong moves.
Podcasts can help. Here are 11 great options, recommended by VCs, founders, CEOs, and other industry insiders.
🗒️ The slow-burn standardization of venture capital
Techcrunch: It took me a while, but I’m realizing that my startup love language is discussing any attempts to standardize the opaque and often informal world of venture capital. The clear tension is what entices me: How do you automate a process such as writing checks, which requires human buy-in and the art of trust in a way that leaves both parties happy.
There are funds that invest entirely based on data. Or tools that help startups see all their financing options at the drop of a profile. Or, as I covered this week, a tool for startups that lets companies simultaneously blast out the same application — or pitch — to multiple angel and pre-seed investors.
The tool, started by pre-seed firm Afore Capital, is based on Common App, which sends one application to multiple colleges and universities. Afore’s take on the idea is to help founders rapidly pitch expert investors while also helping those investors get differentiated deal flow on a consistent basis. While it appears to be a low-stakes instrument — free for both parties to use — ease can sometimes come with a side of questions. Is Afore being too altruistic and sharing its intel? Does a blast offer the same signal as a warm intro?
🗒️ Venture capital has lots of dry powder in 2023
Axios: Last year was a record year for venture capital fundraising, but some investors are warning that big “dry powder” figures are an illusion, and won’t translate into much startup investment in a year that's already off to a rocky start.
Why it matters: Whether VCs are willing to back companies in 2023 could spell life or death for certain cash-hungry startups.
The big picture: In 2022, VCs raised a grand total of $162.6 billion across 769 funds in fresh capital, per PitchBook’s latest data. That followed 2021’s own venture fundraising record of $154.1 billion.
🗒️ CAKE VENTURES, FOUNDED BY MONIQUE WOODARD, DEBUTS FIRST FUND
Black Enterprise: Cake Ventures, a pre-seed and seed venture capital firm, today announced its debut fund ($17 million) backed by prominent investors including Pivotal Ventures (a Melinda French Gates company), Cendana Ventures, Screendoor, Plexo Capital, Foundry Group, and Bank of America.
Founded by Monique Woodard, Cake Ventures is one of the few venture capital firms with an investment thesis focused on demographic change for consumers, including published research that surfaces a new way of thinking about what comes next in technology, according to a press release.
Cake Ventures is focused on identifying companies that address the consumer and enterprise needs of three key markets:
- The aging population – whose size and spending power has created unique needs across categories like care and aging in place, preventative health, and late-life financial services.
- The billion dollar female economy – driven by the increased spending power of women in which companies with a significant female user base will return billions of dollars across categories like direct-to- consumer, women’s health, and the many ways women save, spend, and invest money.
- The shift to majority-minority – where Asian, Black, and Latino people become the majority in the United States and represent the changing technology consumption habits and direct influence on internet culture, which in turn impacts social connections, financial empowerment, and the future of work.
