Top 4 Curated Venture Capital Weekly Update for Nov 9, 2022 ๐Ÿ’ฐ

๐Ÿ—’๏ธ Binance to acquire FTX: implications for games and esports

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

Venturebeat: Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has released a letter of intent to acquire the assets of fellow exchange, FTX. While cryptocurrency, Web3 and gaming have a similar audience, FTX has several direct (and flashy) ties to gaming.

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๐Ÿ—’๏ธ Laid off from your tech job? Day One wants to give you $100,000 to start a company

Photo by Julee Juu on Unsplash

Techcrunch: Day One Ventures, a venture firm launched in 2018 with a pitch to combine venture capital acumen with marketing and communications support, has launched a program aimed explicitly at those impacted by tech layoffs this year.

The program, titled โ€œFunded Not Fired,โ€ will write $100,000 checks into 20 startup teams by the end of the year. Top businesses from the cohort will then get follow-up capital from Day One Ventures commitment to lead their pre-seed round with a $1 million check. In total, the firm is allocating at least $5 million from its $52.5 million fund to back founders spinning out of turbulent startups.


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๐Ÿ—’๏ธ Crypto Venture Capital Investment Slowed Further in October: JPMorgan

Photo by Jong Marshes on Unsplash

Coindesk: October data showed a continued deceleration in the pace of crypto venture capital investment to under $1 billion a month, JPMorgan said in a research report last Thursday.

The downtrend began last May following the Terra collapse, said the report authors led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, and the weak October numbers suggest more than just a seasonal summer slowdown.

The current level of venture capital investment of $500 million to $1 billion per month gives an annual rate of almost $10 billion, which is less than one-third of last yearโ€™s pace, they wrote.

Panigirtzoglou called it a worrying development as it shows an unwillingness by venture capital funds to deploy capital in the digital assets sector. He believes it increases the likelihood that the current weakness in cryptocurrency markets may be here for some time.

He also said other metrics such as sluggish bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) exchange-traded-fund flows point to persistent weakness.

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๐Ÿ—’๏ธ Brooklyn Nets owners will invest up to $6 million in BIPOC startups in 2023 with launch of huge new business accelerator

In this photo photo provided by DKC News, Clara Wu Tsai, co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets, stands in front of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn borough of New York in 2021.IVY NEWMAN/DKC NEWS VIA AP

Fortune: Clara Wu Tsai, co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets, launched the largest business accelerator for minority founders of early-stage startups on Monday.

Named BK-XL, the accelerator will invest up to $500,000 to 12 startups led by Black, Indigenous and other minority founders in 2023.

โ€œCapital is one of the biggest impediments to wealth-building, particularly for BIPOC entrepreneurs,โ€ Wu Tsai told The Associated Press in an interview. โ€œWe thought that investing in this segment was how we could create wealth, not only for the entrepreneurs, but also through all the different jobs that they are going to create.โ€

Increasing investments of venture capital in startups run by minority founders became a priority for many during the racial reckoning that followed the police killing of George Floyd. According to Crunchbase, only 2.4% of all U.S. venture capital raised between 2015 to 2020 was allocated to startups with Black or Latinx founders. Funding to Black entrepreneurs quadrupled in the first half of 2021 to $1.8 billion. However, investments to minority founders this year have dropped steeply.

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