Venture

New $5M deep tech fund aims to lure founders from universities

Spend time at a university, and inevitably you’ll come across someone who has a plan to save the world, or at least make some small part of it better. It might be merely the optimism of youth, but sometimes, they’re actually onto something. Critical Venture Partners is betting that young founders plucked fresh from universities can […]

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Here’s why seed fund investor Michael Kim of Cendana Capital says last year was among his most liquid

This week on StrictlyVC Download, TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos and StrictlyVC’s Alex Gove are joined by Michael Kim, the longtime VC and founder of Cendana Capital, a fund of funds that’s now managing $2.6 billion in assets, almost all of them spread across seed and pre-seed funds, including some of the most successful emerging managers

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VC Aileen Lee highlights how the broader investor exodus is worsening woes for unicorn companies

In this week’s episode of the StrictlyVC Download podcast, veteran VC Aileen Lee was direct about a major consequence of the recent boom-and-bust cycle: many companies stuck in limbo aren’t just struggling to regain their footing after raising too much money at unsustainable valuations; they’ve also lost the champions who once backed them. Lee was

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Y Combinator’s police surveillance darling Flock Safety raises $275M at $7.5B valuation

Flock Safety and one of its long-time VCs, Bedrock Capital, announced Thursday that the startup raised a fresh $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. Flock makes computer vision-enabled video surveillance technology used by law enforcement as well as businesses, property management companies, and so on. It’s best known for its automatic license plate recognition

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Could deeptech serve as Europe’s path to autonomy from the US?

Amidst geopolitical tensions and volatile markets, the question of Europe’s ability to weather the storms ahead, especially as President Trump seems intent on having his pound of tariffs from the continent, is looming large. But an extensive new report claims deeptech is poised to become a key pillar of Europe’s security, defense, and future autonomy,

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Vento rolls out new €75M fund for Italian founders, no matter where they live

Over the last 15 years or so, as European venture capital shifted into a higher gear, one way to help a nation’s ecosystem flourish was to invest in founders from that country, regardless of where they were based. This would help re-patriate the entrepreneurial mindset back home. In Europe, the approach was pioneered in part

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VC Aileen Lee still sees the most promise in ‘unsexy tech’

In this episode TechCrunch Editor in Chief, Connie Loizos, is joined by Aileen Lee the founder of Cowboy Ventures. Aileen coined the term “unicorn” in a TechCrunch article all the way back in late 2013. In this conversation, they discus the ongoing liquidity crisis in the startup ecosystem, the secondary market’s evolution, and how VCs

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