Ascend Venture Capital

While many VCs pursue a generalist strategy, other contenders, particularly emerging managers and micro-venture capitalists,?have employed a thematic strategy with even greater success - In fact, when we dived into the comparison, we found that thematic?investment strategies tend to outperform by an alpha of 1% to 2.5%! Our new Ascend Venture Capital whitepaper details these findings, as well as how to craft a venture capital asset allocation for diversified returns. Download it here! https://lnkd.in/eF95wdZv #venturecapital #allocation #diversification #investment #strategy

I'm so proud and inspired by how Kaito Cunningham ?, Jason Chong and Alexander Wu brought Utopia to the finish line alongside Coinbase. We started Utopia with a really big mission to change the way that money moved through the world in favor of people rather than institutions. I believe that vision just got a lot more possible with Utopia alongside Coinbase. Really thankful for the investors, team members, and customers who took a bet on us. https://lnkd.in/ggDbnwhz

In a stablecoin payments move, Coinbase has acqui-hired the Utopia Labs team. Utopia Labs was backed by investors including Paradigm and Coinbase.

Founders - use our current benchmark data to help raise your next VC round. Broken out into 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles so you can place your fundraise within the broad current market. ???????????????????? ? All numbers in the chart below are post-money valuations for primary rounds in Q3 2024. ? Solid growth in Seed and Series A valuations from Q2. ???????? ???????????? ? All numbers reflect the total amount raised in a given round. ? Rounds have gotten larger at the 50th pct over the past year. ???????????????? ? Percentages in the chart reflect the total equity sold to investors in the round. For SAFE rounds, it reflects the expected ownership at conversion given the valuation cap. ? Dilution is calculated for each round independently - so you can't just read across the median valuation and round size to get the dilution figure! Other people will have different definitions of "pre-seed" - I get it! Amount raised in a SAFE round is the biggest determinant of the valuation cap. Also good to note that some of the pre-seed raises will probably end up raising more money on the same valuation cap. That part of the market is tricky. ?????? ???????????? ???? ???????? ?????????? ???? 1. Okay quarter. $20B invested into Carta startups, little less than Q2, little more than Q1. 2. Down rounds still hovering around 20% of all rounds. Still more kludge to work through from the boom times. 3. Dilution continues to center around 20% in Seed and Series A. 4. Time between rounds notched down for Seed to A, but up for A to B. Still good to plan for longer than you expect. 5. M&A bounceback? 170 companies acquired last quarter, the highest since 2022. Our full State of Private Markets report for Q3 is now live. Link in comments for the full report. If you want this graphic for your industry, give me shout that out in the comments below. Here's to a strong fundraising close & a better 2025! If you’d like more of our data in your inbox, subscribe today: https://lnkd.in/gNa_Dk-F

InvestMidwest, a premier conference in the Midwest, is accepting early decision applications beginning November 20th! Ideal candidates are seeking Seed through Series A round funding, are doing business in or plan to do business in the Midwest, and are in the AgriFood, MedTech, or DigitalTech industries. Our DigitalTech emphasis areas this year are?Digital Health, Supply Chain, B2B SaaS, Cyber Security, FinTech, DeepTech and Geospatial Technologies. Early decision applications open November 20th and close December 20th. Questions? Feel free to reach out IM Executive Director?Claire Kinlaw, or check out?www.investmidwest.org?for more info

I wanted to share the announcement of our acquisition of Centauri Home Insurance, which has officially been approved. This strategic move enhances our Lilypad property insurance offerings and allows us to provide coverage for homeowners and commercial property owners from Florida to Hawaii, and many states in between. With this acquisition, Arbol is expanding its suite of parametric products, including parametric reinsurance, enabling us to better serve vulnerable coastal communities and close the climate coverage gap in climate-stressed areas. Thanks to the tireless efforts of a world class team, Arbol is on track for record revenues and significant growth in our full-time equivalent (FTE) workforce. Our team is rapidly expanding as we continue to add new positions across sales, distribution, and product development, with further growth planned in the coming months. This investment in talent is crucial as we aim to enhance our service offerings and meet the increasing demand for our innovative solutions. Please check out our jobs board and consider joining our dedicated team as we navigate the complexities of a changing climate and drive sustainable growth for Arbol. Thank you for your unwavering support, and stay tuned for more updates as we continue this exciting journey together! https://lnkd.in/epYrihGE #arbol #insurance #property #climaterisk #florida #louisiana #hawaii

?? What is Telecom-as-a-Service (TaaS)? ?? The telecom industry is evolving, and Telecom-as-a-Service (TaaS) is leading the charge. TaaS offers a cloud-based, flexible and scalable telecom delivery model, transforming how businesses, brands and individuals access and deploy telecom services. ?? ?? TaaS democratizes and simplifies telecom, offering a customized, on-demand solution that allows businesses to leverage telecom services like any modern SaaS solution - no telecom expertise required. Curious about TaaS and its benefits? Check out our blog where we take a deep dive into the exciting new world of Telecom-as-a-Service and explore what it means for the future of telecom ? ?? https://lnkd.in/euHjxaEJ #Telecom #TaaS #CloudSolutions #Innovation #TechTransformation #Tech

Thrilled to say Cased is open for business. We’ve been working hard to build a modern devops & deployments platform, and it’s now live to all. While experimenting with all sorts of AI-focused production tooling, we ended up building the kind of platform we’d always hoped for. Cased is developer-friendly devops for fast-moving teams. Branch deploys, anomaly intelligence, with AI integrated from the start—so *anyone* can use the same kind of powerful workflows we used to build and ship GitHub. Plus we want to finally put to bed the idea that devops tools can’t just look great. Sign-up, book a demo, check out docs at cased.com. Here’s a short video about it all:

DM us if you would like to learn more about how to use less bridging with your #blockchain or how to enhance the features and flexibility of NFTs with our technology. Jay Smith Paul Snow Frank Leonard

LEND A HAND: Friends, Applied Bioplastics was nominated as one of Trellis’s 25 Climate Tech Startups to Watch in 2024! There’s an online voting competition, so please visit the link below and VOTE for Applied Bioplastics by clicking the "thumbs up" button! 15 seconds, we promise https://lnkd.in/gFpma8w8