Applied AI Digest 33

 


The latest Data, Insights, and Inspiration about Applied AI

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Investing in AI offers more rewards than risks

By 2018, robots will supervise more than 3 million human workers; by 2020, smart machines will be a top investment priority for more than 30 percent of CIOs. Read more.

The Next Wave of Deep Learning Applications

In the last two weeks alone we have seen research that breaks new ground in each of the following domains via neural networks and advanced machine learning frameworks. Read more.

Ten Myths About Machine Learning

Machine learning used to take place behind the scenes: Amazon mined your clicks and purchases for recommendations, Google mined your searches for ad placement, and Facebook mined your social network to choose which posts to show you. Read more.

Artificial Intelligence Software Is Booming. But Why Now?

It’s all very exciting, the way great possibilities are, and clearly full of great buzzwords and slogans. But will other companies see any value in all this or understand if A.I. has value for them? Read more.

Air freights, drones, and the Internet of Things: what is the future of the supply chain?

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the global supply chain hasn’t really changed all that much. Products are made from raw materials in factories, shipped off somewhere else (either by land or sea), stored in a warehouse, and then distributed to retailers. Read more.

Federal Automated Vehicles Policy

 

 

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Applied AI Digest is a weekly email curated by Luigi Congedo and the BootstrapLabs team to share the latest insights and innovations happening in the field of Artificial Intelligence. 


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Venture Capital Industry: At the Dawn of a New Era

2015 has been a banner year for BootstrapLabs. During the past 12 months, we led our first Series A round in an exciting FinTech company, all our portfolio companies raised follow-on funding at higher valuation and we continued to expand our Expert in Residence team to support our portfolio companies.

We believe that technology is a driving force for positive change in the global economy, in society in general, and our daily lives in particular. We continue to be impressed by the talent and passion our founders demonstrate every day and look forward to continuing investing in disruptive technology companies that can transform the way we live, the way we work, and the way we connect with the world around us.

Many believe private companies are overvalued, while others think the next tech bubble is coming. At the same time we see that seed stage investments, where BootstrapLabs focuses, are more vibrant and exciting than ever (e.g., a $25K seed stage investment in Uber would be worth ~ $125M at the $40B valuation mark; even if you assume that Uber is worth $1B, it would still be an investment worth ~ $3M, or 125x the invested amount).

BootstrapLabs is “deep in the stack” alongside its founders day after day, driving the venture market momentum forward. Our global innovation discovery network, combined with our Silicon Valley investment and execution model, provides us with a unique vantage point on what is happening in every corner of the world. Here is what we are observing:

The HOT tech industry is attracting new, mostly late stage, institutional investors that need to invest tens of millions per deal to move the needle.

In 2015, over 566 deals were financed by investment banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, asset managers, and others, while 78% of the deals over $1 Billion have been lead (read priced) by non-VC investors.

Rounds into Tech Companies

Rounds into Tech Companies

Late stage deals are becoming more competitive and less price sensitive due to a combination of i) pent-up demand driven by lower public market returns and the relative rarity of such high growth private technology companies and ii) more financial engineering and deal structuring that aims at lowering the risk for investors, independent of valuation paid (e.g. preferences, ratchets, dividends, etc.) Arguably, these higher valuations are behaving more like “out-of-the-money strike prices” of call options rather than rational valuations driven by operational and technological performance. The chart below outline the dramatic increase in valuation in the later stage as well as the larger amount of money invested by these non-VC investors.

late stage private company median valuation

late stage private company median valuation

Median round size for mid & late stage startup rounds by investor type

Median round size for mid & late stage startup rounds by investor type

There are also NEW sources of capital targeting the Tech Industry via Equity Crowdfunding and platforms that are driving retail investors into the venture market.

Global Equity crowdfunding amount

Global Equity crowdfunding amount

As these platform emerge and private companies can do “public offering of private equity”, secondary market for private equity trading/exchange will gain momentum and importance. One big signal of such trend was the recent acquisition of SecondMarket, the leader in the space by Nasdaq.

Why are non-VCs investing in the tech space?

Startups are staying private longer prior to IPOs today, which means that private investors are making the most of the value from their investment during the pre-IPO period. Traditional public investors, like hedge funds and mutual funds, are starting to realize that in order to capture more value they have to move earlier in the game and start investing in pre-IPO rounds (Private IPOs). See this prior post from Ben Levy, Co-Founder of BootstrapLabs on How to Milk a Unicorn…

Also, traditional VCs have realized that they have to invest earlier in the cycle in order to maximize their investments and not become irrelevant themselves in a world that is changing fast.

Value is Captured Earlier

Because it takes a lot less capital and people to build a proven and scalable product/model, early stage investment has become the most important and possibly the most lucrative part of the value creation chain in our opinion.

late stage valuation

late stage valuation

Later, Access is King

Late stage investors will only succeed if i) they can identify outliers early and ii) they can win a seat at the table during the next fundraising round (hint: money is not enough)

These structural changes, combined with deregulation, have created a once in a lifetime opportunity to form and scale new ventures, as well as new VC firms to finance them. As shown by this recent research report published by Cambridge Associate, more than ever before in the history of the Venture Capital industry, newly formed VC firms have been able to invest and capture some of the top performing startups.

Yet, the opportunities for individual investors remains limited as the industry is shifting to a new model/structure. Similar to the situation with established VCs and hot startups, an individual investor better gain access to future hot new VC funds/managers now, because the best performing funds will have limited access for existing LPs and possibly no access for non-existing LPs in their future funds.

Quality vs Quantity

The number of startups created each year has exploded and will continue to grow quickly as the cost of building technology companies has decreased by at least 10x in the last 20 years, and success stories continue to be blasted across the media as a source of inspiration and validation. The problem will be to identify the good startups as the noise level continues to rise.

Early stage growth no longer signals long term success and the ability to iterate, build and improve your product has become one of the most valuable success skills in the tech space. At BootstrapLabs we excel at finding top talent, bringing them to the best ecosystem (Silicon Valley) and supporting them in their full-cycle “build-measure-learn” iterations.

Innovation is a constant requirement for corporations to remain relevant and it is a pillar of subsistence for our society. Tech innovation will continue to grow and generate outlier returns for the best VCs (and their investors) in the industry. As someone recently mentioned to us “VC is at a dawn of a new era”. Just look at these numbers:

  • 3.6 Billion unique mobile subscribers in 2014
  • 2+ Billion people connected on major social media networks (1.4B FB, 250M TW, 300M LNKD, 300M Instagram)
  • 120x faster online speed (6.7 Mbps US average today)
  • 243 million machine-to-machine connections
  • 50 Billion connected devices by 2020
  • $1.7 Trillion e-commerce spend

The total of all the Unicorn valuations today is worth about half the value of Apple. Some of them will go public, some will be acquired. Apple could actually acquire most of the Unicorns and still have billions in its bank account to spare.

The slow growth in the number of IPOs is a consequence of a historical switch and the growing importance of innovation. Companies need to invest most of their cash flow in innovation, while public market investors expect short term revenue first. Many startups are building for long term success, and if they go public too early they will be unable to maximize their innovation or opportunity. As Marc Andreessen said during a recent interview: “It’s not a tech bubble, it`s a tech bust”… many of the innovation and technology companies are still undervalued and we are strongly optimistic about the great future in front of us”. So is BootstrapLabs!

Venture Capital Disrupts Itself: Breaking the Concentration Curse

Please note this is a short version of the Venture Capital Disrupts Itself: Breaking the Concentration Curse report published by the Cambridge Associates. At the end of this blog post you can find the link to access to the original file.


 

Venture Capital Disrupts Itself: Breaking the Concentration Curse

The Old Wives Tale … Conventional investor wisdom holds that a concentrated number of certain venture firms invest in a concentrated number of companies that then account for a majority of venture capital value creation in any given year. Therefore, LPs seeking compelling venture capital returns should only commit to a handful of franchise managers. And those are precisely the managers that do not offer access. Thus, LPs are “cursed” and will never experience the differentiated return pattern offered by venture capital exposure.

Is Flawed. As the venture capital industry and technology markets have evolved and matured, however, more managers are creating significant investment value for LPs, with value increasingly created through companies located outside the United States and across a range of subsectors. Specifically, our analysis of the top 100 venture investments as measured by value creation (i.e., total gains) per year from 1995 through 2012, an 18-year period, demonstrated:

  • an average of 83 companies each year account for value creation in the top 100 investments in the asset class for each year;
  • in the post-1999 (i.e., post-bubble) period, the majority of the value creation in the top 100 each year has, on average, been generated by deals outside the top 10 deals;
  • an average of 61 firms account for value creation in the top 100 investments in venture capital per year; and
  • the composition of the firms participating in this level of value creation has changed, with new and emerging firms consistently accounting for 40%–70% of the value creation in the top 100 over the past 10 years.

In short, the widely held belief that 90% of venture industry performance is generated by just the top 10 firms (which our analysis shows was somewhat relevant pre-2000) is a catchy but unsupported claim that may lead investors to miss attractive opportunities with managers that can provide exposure to substantial value creation.

You can access the full Cambridge Associates report here.

AngelList: The World’s First On Demand VC-as-a-Service Platform

beGobal Panel with Kevin Laws1

[Disclaimer: BootstrapLabs is an investor in AngelList and we have two syndicates, BootstrapLabs Syndicate and BootstrapLabs A+ Syndicate with Gil Penchina]

Last week I had the good fortune to find myself interviewing Kevin Laws, the COO of AngelList just a few days after they had launched a series of announcements that sent tremors through the entire startup and venture investment ecosystems:

  • Launched CSC Upshot: a new $400M seed fund dedicated mostly to early stage startups and syndicated deals on AngelList; which comes in addition to the existing Maiden Lane’s $25M fund launched in April 2014
  • Opened-up its backend infrastructure to offer “SPV as a Service” for angels and VCs interested in capturing pro-rata and/or additional carry on their best deals, across stages
  • Pushed its iOS App for its “joblist” marketplace

First of all, let’s briefly cover what came out of my fireside chat:

BL_KL_beGlobal_2015

  • AngelList is trying hard to stay in love with the problem they set out to solve when they first launched: “How do we help founders (globally) focus on what matters most, which is building their company and products, and spend less time fundraising?” You can sense that they have made this problem a core value at AngelList.
  • We argued that cross-border angel investing would not be possible without online platforms like AngelList, bringing both sides together (founders and angels), yet maybe more importantly without a trust & expertise based syndication model that aligns everyone’s interest, removes significant friction in the decision process (“emotional friction”) and ultimately building technology and processes to close the transactions (“physical friction”). Among the new stats shared by Kevin during our talk, he said that 10% of the capital invested online on AngelList was from outside Silicon Valley, while only 3% of completed fundraising online was for companies outside of the US. The new fund will definitely give a huge boost to the foreign capital percentage number above, unless they classify it as a US fund, event though it is backed 100% by Chinese capital.
  • Kevin placed the number of startups on AngelList at approximately 300,000 with  30,000 or 10% of them being in fundraising mode at any one time. In one sense, the odds of being “discovered” on AngelList are much better than they were in the Apple Store as of June 2015. There were over 1.5M apps, but the syndication of your round by a well known angel investor in Silicon Valley remains your best shot to stand out (kind of your equivalent to being featured by “Apple” in the store). The interesting bit for me was that this was still holding true for foreign companies trying to fundraise on AngelList. Kevin used the example of Descomplica, a Brazilian online education startup that raised $5M in February 2014 from Social+Capital, and used a syndicate led by my friend Lee Jacobs, a local angel investor with ties to Brazil, to ignite the fundraising on AngelList. Lee was also the very first to do a syndicate on AngelList so he gets pioneers’ points in my book :). Kevin also makes a very important point on the video below…you can invest anywhere but you might not be able to get your money back everywhere! Let us not forget that over 80% of technology M&A deals happen in Silicon Valley (buyer or seller is located there) and the last time I checked, corporate sales were responsible for 95% of the return of capital for VCs.

You can find a “meerkat” version of the interview here for now and I will upload a professional version from beGlobal as soon as it becomes available.

Now on with my two cents on their recent announcements:

CSC UPSHOT FUND

Some dubbed it the world’s largest seed fund and it sure is an impressive amount, but read the fine print. You realize that the investment thesis is broader…you are talking about investing in top startups (based on their metrics and syndicate leads) not just in Silicon Valley, but globally with the ability to do pro-rata and access later stage opportunities too (which are now facilitated even further due to their new SPV product). As I mentioned on stage, it takes a “Chinese billionaire” to have the humility to say “I do not have access to Silicon Valley deal flow, nor may I have the skills to vet it, but I sure can get some of the smartest people in the business to discover, vet, and syndicate some of their best deals for me, as well as secure access to follow-on funding via pro-rata rights and SPVs.” I am convinced that many institutions and family offices that invest in venture have been asking themselves why they did not think of it before, how maybe they just needed a lead to follow.

 

FREE ONLINE SPVs FOR ANGELS & VCs SYNDICATING LATER STAGE ROUNDS

This part did not grab the headlines, but this is probably the submerged part of the iceberg in my own opinion. By opening up its backend infrastructure and making these online SPVs free for Angels and VCs ($10K admin fee is spread among the LPs and AngelList does not charge any carry), AngelList is getting 3 very significant benefits:

  • they are getting all the LP contacts
  • they are accelerating the growth of their funds under management, and  
  • last but not least, they are capturing performance and return data at the source

This is by far the most significant announcement AngelList made that day for the future of AngelList.


“JOBLIST” iOS APP

If fundraising is among the top pain point of founders, recruiting talent is probably way up there as well, so it is only natural that AngelList spends a significant amount of time and capital improving its job marketplace product. It will also over time become a very strong competitive advantage and barrier to entry as “startup” skills and know-how are in very high demand across the world. There is also a very natural and synergistic relationship between fundraising and hiring since most $ startups raise goes to hiring more talent!

At BootstrapLabs we ask all our portfolio companies to create and maintain an up to date AngelList profile as a way of communicating with their stakeholders, including future employees.

Thank you to Kevin and the team at beGlobal for providing me with the opportunity!

So long and happy investing.

 

Presentation used by AngelList for their PR announcement

 

About Ben Levy


Twitter | LinkedIn

BL ProfileBen is the co-founder of BootstrapLabs, a Venture Investment Company that invests capital, experience, and skills into disruptive software companies from around the world, and helps their founders relocate to Silicon Valley to build BIG. Born in France and living in Silicon Valley for the past 17 years, Ben is a repeat entrepreneur who launched, built, and exited two startups in the financial technology space, one to Mergent, and another one to SecondMarket, who was recently acquired by NASDAQ.

He has also helped founders raise over $300M of capital from Venture Capitalists and Private Equity Investors and closed $5B worth of technology M&A transactions as an investment banker earlier in his career. He is a frequent speaker on innovation, investing, technology, entrepreneurship and globalization.


 

AngelListlogo

AngelList Syndicates 1-0-1

AngelList logoAs most you know I have been an early supporter of what Naval and his team is doing with AngelList, I think AngelList is disrupting the whole angel and early-stage Venture Capital landscape, and thus we are also an investor in AngelList.

Because I get a lot of questions about how AngelList works in general and about how our syndicate works, I thought I should share a quick Q&A here on our blog, please ping me with any additional questions, and I will add them to this blog post.

What happens when I back a syndicate? Does that mean that I commit funds for future deals?

Because only if you back our syndicate you will have access to our deal flow, get notify about new deals and have access to future co-invest opportunity with us in the deal.

How much do I have to commit?

This varies with every syndicate, for BootstrapLabs syndicates (our Seed Syndicate and our A+ Syndicate) the minimum investment is $2,500. Usually Angels back the syndicate with amount from $10K to $25K. Please note the amount you choose when you back a syndicate represent the maximum you will be able to invest and you will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out on every deal that is syndicated (and you can always pick a lower amount for a particular deal).

For example if you back a syndicate with $10k you can also invest $2.5K on the next deal but you have a limit of $10K for all deals syndicates on that syndicate.

More Resources: