How startups beat incumbents⚔️, Bootstrapped vs. VC-Backed Startup🤔, Thinking about founder dilution👨💼

Welcome to The VC Corner, your weekly dose of Venture Capital and Startups to keep you up and running! 🚀

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In-Depth Insights 🔍

• What does it take to be a top performing SaaS company? A new report from Dealroom and Flashpoint highlights the revenue figures that top-performing SaaS startups are seeing 📈 [sifted]

• How startups beat incumbents. A startup can beat a large, successful incumbent if it does things the incumbent can not or will not do. Here are those things ⚔️ [Jason Cohen]

• The Series A Crunch or the Seedpocalypse of 2024. 2012 was the year of the Seedpocalypse. Also called the Series A Crunch, a fear gripped Startupland: raising a Series A. Two years later, this indigestible excessive bolus of fundraising rounds hit the Series B market & Series Bs became the most challenging round to raise 📉 [Tomasz Tunguz]

• How many new VC funds does Europe need? There appears to be a marked rise in solo GPs across Europe — but what is driving the trend? 💶 [sifted]
• Say Hello to My New AI Marketer: How Gen AI-Based Software Is Advancing Marketing and Sales 🤖 [a16z]

• The New Code of Law: How AI Will Revolutionize the Legal Sector ⚖️ [Battery Ventures]

• Bootstrapped vs. VC-Backed Startup. How do you decide what is the right path for your startup? 🤔 [Mark Birch]

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Interesting Reports 📊

• Deep Tech - the Opportunity and the Strategies. A perspective for European VCs 🌐 [McKinsey]

• Thinking about founder dilution. How does your ownership in your startup change over time? 👨💼 [Peter Walker , carta]

• Gaming Bluprint 🕹️ [Blume Ventures]

Recently Launched Funds 💸

• Rackhouse Venture Capital, a Menlo Park, CA-based, early-stage, AI-focused venture capital firm, closed Rackhouse Ventures Fund II, at $45M
• MiddleGame Ventures, a Luxembourg-based investment firm focused on fintech startups, raised a new fund targeting early-stage investments in Europe
• Singapore-based Accelerating Asia Ventures has officially opened applications for the 10th Cohort of its flagship accelerator program
• Elsewhere Partners, an Austin, TX-based tech-focused private equity firm, closed Fund III, at $258M
• A*, a San Francisco, CA-based tech venture capital firm, closed its second fund, at $315M
• Tenacious Ventures, a Melbourne, Australia-based agtech venture capital firm, held the first close of its second fund, at $18m

Hottest Deals 💥

• Route, a Lehi, UT-based post-purchase package tracking and protection solution provider, raised $40m in Series C funding round at a $1.4 billion valuation
• Bright Machines, a San Francisco, CA-based company which specializes in intelligent, software-defined manufacturing, raised $126M in Series C funding
• Neustark, a Berne, Switzerland-based carbon removal provider, raised $69M in funding
• SkyCell, a Zug, Switzerland-based technology company empowering the pharmaceutical supply chain, raised $116M in Series D funding
• BillionToOne, a Menlo Park, CA-based precision diagnostics company, raised $130M in Series D funding at an over $1B+ valuation