Andreessen Horowitz (or a16z, as it’s sometimes called) announced today that it has raised $1.5 billion for its Fund III. The venture capital firm has now raised a total of $2.7 billion since its founding in June 2009.
Since Marc and I founded Andreessen Horowitz three years ago, we have raised $2.7 billion. That statement begs a few questions. The two most obvious are:
Why did such a new venture capital firm raise so much money?
How did such a new venture capital firm raise so much money?
And for the answer to those questions, read the post above, since it isn’t very condensable into a soundbite.
• Apple reclaimed the title of the world’s most valuable company $415B vs Exxon Mobil’s $413B (Yahoo Finance)
• The $97.6 billion in cash that $AAPL has is higher than the market value of 448 of the companies in the S&P 500. (Capital IQ)
• This was the 2nd highest profit quarter of any company ever. ExxonMobil’s Q3 08 profit of $14.8 billion needed $147 barrel oil and $140 billion in revenue. (WSJ)
• Sales rose 73% to $46.3 billion — so much for the law of big numbers working against them (CNN/Money)
• In 2009, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007 and 2008 combined. In 2010, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007, 2008, and 2009 combined. Last year, Apple sold 93.1 million iPhones, slightly more than it did in in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined (Matt Richman)
• Apple’s profit of $13.1 billion was equal to their revenue in Q4 2010
• If Apple was a country, its market cap would make it 29th biggest nation, its annual revenue would make it the 52nd, its cash position 66th, and its earnings 79th, in terms of GDP (Global Macro Monitor)
• Apple’s profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google’s entire revenue ($10.6 billion)
• Apple has now sold 315 million iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices running its iOS software (CNN/Money)
• Google would activate 59,653,187 Android-based devices during Apple’s fourth calendar quarter. Apple has said that iPod touch sales make up more than half of all iPod sales. That means Apple sold at least 7.7 million iPod touches. And that number, plus 37.04 million iPhones and 15.43 million iPads, means iOS outsold Android last quarter. (Matt Richman)
• Apple sold three times as many iPads as Amazon sold Kindle Fires (Tech Crunch)
Credit: Barry Ritholtz
If anyone wants to dilute majority stake in a revenue earning online bus booking site please get in touch vikaschandrashah@yahoo.com .Acquirer wants the target entrepreneur to continue run the business.Acquirer has other bigger plans to club bus booking with airline tickets and prepaid mode of selling.
Is there anyone in the startup community in gurgaon - having co-working space for a 2-5 member team? Couldnt get much information elsewhere, but hoping to get a response on venturewoods. You can reach me at theravishankar@gmail.com.
Thanks a ton and a wish a very happy new year 2012 for the startup community!!
Canaan is pleased to announce its ninth fund - a $600M global early stage tech oriented fund. We will continue to invest in healthcare and IT, and across US, Israel and India. Details here.
Happy 2012 to all readers. 2011 has been an eventful year for venture capital in India - perhaps a record year in terms of overall volume of financing. More importantly, traditional growth equity firms stepped in and provided later stage support to venture backed companies, which augers well for entrepreneurs and venture industry. While in the middle of the year, valuations, especially in ecommerce were beginning to look heady, over past 90 days we have seen some sense return - in the long term, thats good news. Predicting a year out is always tough, but seems like venture capital is getting its roots entrenched - hoping for a great year 2012.
2011 was actually a bit of a disappointment on the exit front. Public markets were choppy throughout the year in India, and globally in the latter half. We track a pipeline of a dozen plus venture backed companies (largely internet related), which could be half a billion or more in value - however, the primary exit theme for most of those is IPOs. So 2012 outlook might again be driven more by health of the markets, than by availability of a good pipeline. Investors may start thinking about diversifying their exit options - both in internet companies where traditional thought in India has been around IPOs (for lack of M&A market), but also in terms of looking at investment areas where the dependency on IPOs is lesser (good old outsourcing).
In terms of themes, 2011 was clearly the year of ecommerce. Interestingly, every year over past 5-6 years has had a “never before, never after” flavor to it - 2006 (Mobile VAS), 2007 (Education, Real estate), 2008 (Healthcare, Retail), 2009 (Microfinance), 2010 (Rural, Agri) and so on. Not many themes have continued the momentum - I do hope ecommerce does. And for 2012, may be we will be back to Mobile VAS (yes, times are changing there), or may be finally Enterprise/SMB software. Any bets?
One element that has continued to keep the confidence going around is increasing quality and quantity of startup entrepreneurs. Here’s wishing 2012 continues to build on that!
LightSpeed Ventures (http://www.lightspeedvp.com/) is awarding a Grant of 2.5L Each for two of the graduates of the TSC Resident Programme. Over the past six months two teams have graduated successfully, building teams, building that initial social proof and model, and already eliciting interest in fund raising.Out of the Collaboration between The Startup Centre and Lightspeed Ventures, there is a grant of 2.5L being provided for these two teams.
They are already off on their way. The Grant should help these teams to push forward on making a dent in the universe.
Cost of the Resident Programme for six months for two founding team members : Rs. 60,000
TSC Resident Grant: Rs. 2.5L (Approx $5000)
The Experience, Mentorship and Getting them through the valley of death: Priceless.
The Third Edition of In50hrs is here. December 9 - 11, 2011
In50Hrs is a Weekend Hackathon where people with Ideas, Developers, and Designers get together to give life to ideas and have working prototypes before the weekend is out, present it to a room full of like-minded folks, and perhaps pave the way for the beginning of a new product.
How often have you pondered on ideas, but are a bit scared to quit your day job to pursue it? Or to find a team and see if the machinery and chemistry between you works well? Or a student with amazing ideas, but scared to sit out of placements? Well, an in50hrs weekend is a risk-free way to figure if there are legs to that idea, and if at all its worth taking a leap over it.
The Third Edition of the event is slated to be on the dates of 9th - 11th December in Chennai.
If you already are aware of What In50hrs is about, Click on Register to save yourself a seat.
If you’d like to know more, then there are a few things you can do:
Canaan hosted an angel investor roundtable on sidelines of Nasscom Emerge event in Bangalore last month. Key observations:
Financing pyramid and implications: It seems that angels perceive an increasing cycle to get to next round of (VC) financing.This is increasing the load on angel investors, as well as potentially increasing the risk. Some angel investors are beginning to look at “high velocity” as a key parameter for investing in startups - this refers to startups which can fail fast, or scale rapidly.
Mentoring skills: There was a distinct feeling that quality of mentoring needs to be improved. There might be an opportunity to put in place structured mentoring training to enable some of this. Besides the process skills around mentoring, domain expertise and go-to-market assistance were outlined as key areas. Finally, “VC literacy” of angel investors and mentors is an important area to focus on.
Startup selection: In terms of domains, it was pointed out that SMB adoption in India is still slow and might not be a fertile ground for fast growth startups. In terms of entrepreneurs, angels/mentors tended to prefer younger, malleable entrepreneurs with high energy. Note that this could be a selection bias in the group, because we have separately heard about preference for experienced entrepreneurs with solid execution track record.
In terms of ecosystem enabler, key areas that were highlighted were customer meets, angel liquidity initiatives, availability of working capital, and marketing/pr resources/platforms specifically for startups.
What do entrepreneurs feel about angel ecosystem and what would make more startups succeed?
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