Pre-Money: Apr 22nd, 2024

KPIs

The week’s top performance indicators

Dots & Lines

The week’s top takeaways

• Ibotta some stock: Cash-back shopping app Ibotta went public on Thursday, selling $577M in stock at a $3.2B valuation and climbing 30% - before closing the week worth $2.7B. The company, whose app lets users get cash back from their shopping - as in “I bought a…,” did more than $320M of revenue last year and generated $276M of profits. The new issue - $IBTA - reportedly minted more than 150 millionaires in Denver, which should help their ecosystem if the stock holds up. Though the IPO was a bullish signal, market headwinds continue to make it challenging for private companies to go public. Last’s month’s new entrant Reddit ($RDDT) is down 10% since the IPO, though Astera Labs has managed a small gain.

• Rubrik is up next: Cybersecurity provider Rubrik expects to go public Thursday as $RBRK, raising an expected $713M with a market cap of $5.4B. It’s more of a classic venture-backed company than the last three to IPO, making it likely to provide a more accurate bellwether of Wall Street’s attitude toward such entrants. It’s a high-growth company, with annual recurring revenue (ARR) increasing a reported 50% to $784M from 2022 to 2023, and one that loses money, with $355M in losses last year. The 10-year old business is based in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Rubrik has raised $554B to date - including its 2021 Series E where Microsoft and top VCs invested at a price of $4B. A strong IPO from Rubrik could signal brighter times ahead for the considerable backlog of unicorns awaiting the right moment to go public. And it is likely to further the momentum of the cybersecurity space, which has been buoyed by AI sentiment and heated up in recent quarters.

• Winner take all: Raising a venture fund continues to be challenging in an era of high rates, uncertainty, and in the midst of a waiting game for exits, sales and distributions from the last few vintages. As a result, funds are getting smaller, with Q1’s average at $115M, the smallest in five years. At the same time, round sizes are actually getting bigger, with upticks at all venture stages during the quarter. These trends together point to capital concentration in few winners, and suggest that for this year, at least, the need for capital drastically outstrips its supply. Look for more bootstrapping, more shutdowns and earlier opting for acquisitions across the ecosystem. And for a few perceived top performers to get the bulk of the investor interest and funding.
  
  

  

  Round sizes increased even in the face of limited funding

• SPV Maze: The insatiable demand to invest into top AI companies, any or all of which may prove to be the next Google, is creating an SPV frenzy. SPVs allow many investors to invest under one entity, allowing funds to cram their LPs, friends, and anyone, basically, into a hot company. Often, this happens without the company even having full visibility into who they are letting own their stock. In many cases, investors are forced to pay multiple layers of fees to the multiple managers aggregating their investors in these structures. Reportedly, fund management platform AngelList recently banned multi-layer SPVs in order to protect their investors. When you get access to a seemingly hot deal, or any deal, be sure to have your eyes open to the structure you’re joining and what is under the hood.

Deal Points

A few items of interest

• Payment processor Stripe raised $694M in a secondary tender at a $65B valuation, a 30% hike over its price last year, another hint that fintech is on the uptick

• Spend management fintech Ramp extended its Series D, raising $150M from Khosla and Founder’s Fund at a $7.65B valuation, up from its last raise

• New York and Austin were the biggest growth markets for tech jobs over the past five years, with the Texan capital boasting 180,000 positions and NYC reporting almost 550,000

• HR company Rippling is also getting set to raise an up round, eyeing a $200M raise on a $13.4B valuation

• Always a contrarian to industry trends, powerhouse fund a16z raised another $7.2B to fund growth, gaming, AI and more

• The frenzy to invest in the hottest AI companies has given rise to daisy-chains of Special-Purpose Vehicles (SPV), where the fees on fees stack up high but investors keep piling in

• Tome.ai, an early entrant to the AI party, is laying off 20% of its team as it shifts to enterprise distribution

• TikTok will sue if the unprecedented app ban racing through Congress passes successfully, according to recent reports

• Climate remains top of mind for investors, as another $1.2B was raised by SOSV, Chevron and Wellington

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