2025 Startup Funding: A Temp Check on Hot Sectors, Investor Moods, and the IPO Thaw

Remember the rollercoaster of SaaS funding? The dizzying highs, the sudden drops? Well, grab your thermometer – it’s 2025, and we’re taking the temperature of the startup funding scene. Is it a feverish boom again, or a lingering chill? The answer, as you’ll see, is a bit more nuanced, a careful warming trend with some…

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Founder Friday: What Does CB Insights’ Tech Valuations Report 2022 Recap Tell Us?

Have you seen the CB Insights Tech Valuations Report recapping 2022? If not, you need to (it is free to download). Here were some things we took away from it… If anything, the CB Insights report shows there is no universal truth on valuations and available capital. There are subsets in every series that are…

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Founder Friday: Top US Incubators & Accelerators in the US

Many startups’ paths start with being part of an incubator or accelerator. There are great resources like the post MassChallenge published, Accelerators vs Incubators: How to Choose the Right One, that helps outline the difference between the two. Today, however, we will focus on a list of resources to help identify the key players in…

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Founder Friday: Debt Financing vs. Equity Financing

On August 17, PitchBook published the article “Venture lending flourishes amid VC funding pullback.” In that piece, PitchBook discusses the increased interest by startups in venture debt to solve growing capital needs instead of doing another equity round where they would have to sell shares at lower valuations. They also highlight how players like Blackstone are entering the venture…

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Founder Friday: Raising Capital in a Tight Market

If you follow startups and VC deal flow, it’s hard not to read something on money getting tighter, startup layoffs, etc. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t funding available, but it does mean that there will be greater scrutiny as to what VC firms choose to invest in. So how do founders navigate raising capital…

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Founder Friday: Growth vs. Profitability

MRR, ARR, churn, etc. You need to know your numbers. When times aren’t as tight, you might see more emphasis on revenue vs. profitability as startups scale. But, in 2022 and the near term, profitability is vital for startups hoping to lure investment dollars. Hockey stick revenue growth is the goal for every startup. One…

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Founder Friday: What Cap Tables Tell Investors (SVB)

If you’re a founder and haven’t read Silicon Valley Bank‘s “How to Tell the Story of Your Startup’s Cap Table,” you need to pause and look at this 5-minute read. Why? Well, here are a few high-level points they expand on… Your cap table has signals of interest to investors (ex., when you seek financing, hiring, or…

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Founder Friday: Are biotech startups a bull or a bear?

We do a lot tied to supporting digital health startups, so keeping up with what’s happening related to healthcare startup transactions is second nature. If you missed it this week, Crunchbase posted, “Which Startup Sectors Are The Bulls And Bears In 2022’s Sluggish VC Market?.” The article identified three sectors as bulls and three as bears related…

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Founder Friday: Sequoia Capital “Adapting to Endure” – It’s time to embrace the muck

You can’t be in the tech arena and not know who Sequoia Capital is. From its first investment in Atari to some of its notable investments in names like Apple, Google, Cisco, Uber, Nvidia, Airbnb, Zoom, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram, Palo Alto Networks, ServiceNow, Unity Technologies, YouTube, 23andMe, Instacart, Klarna, Snowflake, Stripe, WhatsApp, Tumblr, UiPath, BitClout, Bolt, FTX, and Wiz.…

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Founder Friday: Mental Health Unicorns

Earlier this week, we shared a list of 55 Mental Health Resources for People of Color. If you spend much time online, it’s hard to miss the increased awareness of mental health. We thought we’d use this Founder Friday installment to look at the mental health startup ecosystem. Seven. By the end of 2021, there had been seven mental…

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