2021 was a spectacular year for the American venture capital ecosystem, with VC
investments, fundraising and exits all setting new highs. That according to the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, the self-described definitive review of the U.S. venture capital ecosystem. Nevertheless, it is difficult to predict how 2022 will turn out for the VC industry,
This past June, autonomous vehicle technology startup Zoox agreed to be acquired by
Amazon for a whopping $1.3 billion. Time for the common stockholders to pop the champagne, right? Not exactly, according to a complaint filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery by two common stockholders. Although many details have been redacted from the public
The corporate spectacle better known as The We Company IPO officially and mercifully came
to an end September 30 when The We Company (“We Co.”), the corporate parent of WeWork, requested that the Securities and Exchange Commission consent to the withdrawal of We Co.’s registration statement because it “no longer wishes to conduct a public
Lyft, Inc. last week completed its highly anticipated initial public offering, raising over $2.3 billion at a valuation of approximately $25 billion, and turning its co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer into near billionaires on paper. But that’s not the only reason they’re smiling. Despite owning only 7% of the outstanding pre-IPO shares, Green and
2018 was a historically good year for venture capital in the United States in terms of dollars invested by VC funds in U.S.
companies, dollars raised by VC funds and dollar value of exits by VC-backed companies, according to the Venture Monitor for Q4 2018 published by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. VC
Dual or multi-class capitalization structures generally allow companies to sell large amounts of shares to the public while maintaining control in the hands of the founders and early investors. Popularized by the Google IPO in 2004, weighted voting rights have since been featured in the high profile IPOs of LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Facebook, Fitbit and
On March 22, the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Securities, and Investment of the Financial Services Committee conducted a hearing entitled “The JOBS Act at Five: Examining Its Impact and Ensuring the Competitiveness of the U.S. Capital Markets”, focusing on the impact of the JOBS Act on the U.S. capital markets and its effect on capital
The just completed IPO of Snap Inc. has received enormous buzz and plenty of press coverage, mostly about its eye-popping valuation and offering proceeds, the big winners among the founders and early investors and the millennials who bought shares. But not nearly as much attention has been given to Snap’s tri-class capital structure
2016 turned out to be a terrible year for IPOs, both in terms of number of deals and aggregate proceeds.
According to Renaissance Capital’s U.S. IPO Market 2016 Annual Review, only 105 companies went public on U.S. exchanges in 2016, raising only $19 billion in aggregate proceeds. The deal count of 105 IPOs was
The market for venture backed IPOs in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2015 was the weakest in two years, both in terms of number of deals and aggregate proceeds, according to pre-IPO institutional research firm Renaissance Capital, as well as a separate exit poll report by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture