Technology
Kevin Hartz’s A* company raises its second oversubscribed fund in three years
Venture firms are estimated to have raised $9.3 billion in the primary quarter PitchBook datameaning this yr is unlikely to satisfy or exceed 2023’s $81.8 billion figure. While emerging managers are feeling the brunt of the frost in the fundraising market, some emerging VCs like A* have enough name recognition and adequate track record to proceed to achieve success.
A*, led by former Eventbrite founder Kevin Hartz, former Coatue partner Bennett Siegel and former Opendoor and Uber operator Gautam Gupta, has raised $315 million for its oversubscribed Fund II. The company plans to proceed to give attention to leading seed rounds and increasing the share of portfolio corporations in Series A, in addition to make chosen latest investments on the Series B stage.
“We have found that our product market fit is truly in the seed and seed stages, working with founders from zero to one while continuing to support the breakthrough products in our portfolio,” Siegel said. “That’s where we’ve had the most success.”
Zero to One is a reference to the book of the identical title by Peter Thiel. In VC jargon, it means turning a brand new, unproven concept right into a company with a product and customers, versus a startup that imitates or expands on an existing idea.
The fund will proceed to be general in nature and can invest in a wide range of industries. Gupta said they like to search out the suitable founders and follow them into whatever industry they’re expanding into. Right now, which means the company is spending loads of time on artificial intelligence and the resurgence of consumer tech.
“Everything takes care of itself if you support the right people,” Gupta said.
The only noticeable difference between Fund I and Fund II is the vehicle’s LP base. Fund II was obtained entirely from institutional investors, while Fund I used to be supported by many well-known VCs and former operators. Max Levchin, David Sacks and Peter Thiel, formerly of PayPal fame, have backed Fund I, in addition to DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu and Opendoor co-founder and CEO Eric Wu, amongst others.
Switching to institutional investors will not be unusual on the Fund II stage, one other VC firm told me this week, after doing the identical thing. This is because corporations have enough experience to draw institutional investors, and deep-pocketed investors change into essential as corporations look to extend the dimensions of their funds in the long run.
However, A* doesn’t intend to gather as much money as possible. He intentionally kept Fund II only barely above the company’s first fund – Fund I raised $300 million, exceeded its $250 million goal and closed in 2021.
“Fund size is strategy, and strategy is fund size,” Siegel said. “We want to be a partner of choice, but small enough that we can focus on generating incredible returns for our investors. We wanted to focus on mentoring, not just investing large capital funds.”
The company has backed 35 Fund I startups, including fintech startup Ramp, workflow tool Notion and wholesale marketplace Faire, all at Series B or higher. He has also led seed rounds for corporations akin to AI startup EyeTell, recruiting marketplace Paraform, and first care startup Aligned Marketplace. The company also incubated three corporations which can be still under wraps.
The company believes it stands out in a really crowded seed market as a result of its three founding partners and their vast experience in various industries and three different many years.
Hartz’s name recognition in the tech space probably won’t hurt either. Hartz launched and scaled Eventbrite and Xoom through their respective exits before working at Founders Fund and angel investing in corporations akin to Gusto, Pinterest and Reddit. Gupta was the previous CFO of Uber and COO and CFO of OpenDoor. As an investor in Coatue, Siegel backed Peloton, Instacart and DoorDash, amongst others.
The group had known one another for years before they began talking about launching a fund in late 2020. Now they wish to use this latest fund to proceed finding and supporting great early-stage founders in a totally different market than the company originally launched in .
“The challenge of our times is that companies are not dying of starvation, but of indigestion,” Hartz said. “We can really help companies that are hungry for knowledge and want all this help to go from zero to one, where there’s a lot of capital.”
Technology
US medical device giant Artivion says hackers stole files during a cybersecurity incident
Artivion, a medical device company that produces implantable tissue for heart and vascular transplants, says its services have been “disrupted” resulting from a cybersecurity incident.
In 8-K filing In an interview with the SEC on Monday, Georgia-based Artivion, formerly CryoLife, said it became aware of a “cybersecurity incident” that involved the “compromise and encryption” of information on November 21. This suggests that the corporate was attacked by ransomware, but Artivion has not yet confirmed the character of the incident and didn’t immediately reply to TechCrunch’s questions. No major ransomware group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Artivion said it took some systems offline in response to the cyberattack, which the corporate said caused “disruptions to certain ordering and shipping processes.”
Artivion, which reported third-quarter revenue of $95.8 million, said it didn’t expect the incident to have a material impact on the corporate’s funds.
Technology
It’s a Raspberry Pi 5 in a keyboard and it’s called Raspberry Pi 500
Manufacturer of single-board computers Raspberry Pi is updating its cute little computer keyboard device with higher specs. Named Raspberry Pi500This successor to the Raspberry Pi 400 is just as powerful as the present Raspberry Pi flagship, the Raspberry Pi 5. It is on the market for purchase now from Raspberry Pi resellers.
The Raspberry Pi 500 is the simplest method to start with the Raspberry Pi because it’s not as intimidating because the Raspberry Pi 5. When you take a look at the Raspberry Pi 500, you do not see any chipsets or PCBs (printed circuit boards). The Raspberry Pi is totally hidden in the familiar housing, the keyboard.
The idea with the Raspberry Pi 500 is you could connect a mouse and a display and you are able to go. If, for instance, you’ve got a relative who uses a very outdated computer with an outdated version of Windows, the Raspberry Pi 500 can easily replace the old PC tower for many computing tasks.
More importantly, this device brings us back to the roots of the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi computers were originally intended for educational applications. Over time, technology enthusiasts and industrial customers began using single-board computers all over the place. (For example, when you’ve ever been to London Heathrow Airport, all of the departures and arrivals boards are there powered by Raspberry Pi.)
Raspberry Pi 500 draws inspiration from the roots of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a non-profit organization. It’s the right first computer for college. In some ways, it’s a lot better than a Chromebook or iPad because it’s low cost and highly customizable, which inspires creative pondering.
The Raspberry Pi 500 comes with a 32GB SD card that comes pre-installed with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution. It costs $90, which is a slight ($20) price increase over the Raspberry Pi 400.
Only UK and US keyboard variants will probably be available at launch. But versions with French, German, Italian, Japanese, Nordic and Spanish keyboard layouts will probably be available soon. And when you’re in search of a bundle that features all the things you would like, Raspberry Pi also offers a $120 desktop kit that features the Raspberry Pi 500, a mouse, a 27W USB-C power adapter, and a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable.
In other news, Raspberry Pi has announced one other recent thing: the Raspberry Pi monitor. It is a 15.6-inch 1080p monitor that’s priced at $100. Since there are quite a few 1080p portable monitors available on the market, this launch is not as noteworthy because the Pi 500. However, for die-hard Pi fans, there’s now also a Raspberry Pi-branded monitor option available.
Technology
Apple Vision Pro may add support for PlayStation VR controllers
According to Apple, Apple desires to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive for gamers and game developers latest report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
The Vision Pro was presented more as a productivity and media consumption device than a tool geared toward gamers, due partly to its reliance on visual and hand controls moderately than a separate controller.
However, Apple may need gamers if it desires to expand the Vision Pro’s audience, especially since Gurman reports that lower than half one million units have been sold to this point. As such, the corporate has reportedly been in talks with Sony about adding support for PlayStation VR2 handheld controllers, and has also talked to developers about whether they may support the controllers of their games.
Offering more precise control, Apple may also make other forms of software available in Vision Pro, reminiscent of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Photoshop.
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