#4 Sequoia's last 10 investments (2023), thoughts about luck & random cool stuff
#4 Sequoia's last 10 investments (2023), thoughts about luck & random cool stuff
Hey there! I'm Guillermo, a new VC associate at GoHub Ventures and on Venture Street, I'm taking you along for the ride as I share my journey, the startups we're investing in, and the lessons I'm learning. It's an inside look at the VC world, come join me!
This week has been hectic and I was thinking how to create value in today’s newsletter. The thing is that being a weekly article it is hard to make it long, useful and interesting.
So I figured it could be interesting to do a quick analysis of what Sequoia is doing lately. Next week I’ll try to up the content a bit!
Country: Australia
Stage: Series C
Amount: $18.7M
Vertical: Fintech
Value proposition: Simpler way to trade, pay, and access funds - credit and payment platforms for business
Country: USA
Stage: Seed
Amount: $9M
Vertical: Crypto/Blockchain
Value proposition: founded in March 2022 by Katz and Parker Jou, CTO of Caldera, in an effort to simplify the process of creating app-specific blockchains so builders can create layer-2 blockchains in the span of hours, opposed to months or years, the team said.
Country: Singapore, operating across Vietnam, Indonesia, India and the Philippines
Stage: Later stage
Amount: $65M
Vertical: Fintech
Value proposition:delivers AI-led products to leading banks and finance companies, enabling them to provide credit to under-served consumers at scale.
Printo
Well, this is a super interesting story that I’m sure you don’t know. Find it full here
Country: USA
Stage: Later stage
Amount: $22M
Vertical: Business/Productivity Software
Value proposition:RP automation platform designed for planning tools in the distribution ecosystem. The company offers enterprise resource planning with automated sales, purchasing, and pricing workflows in the tool, and on-demand recommendations, enabling wholesale distributors and b2b retailers to automate and optimize their pricing and sales processes.
Country: India
Stage: Later stage
Amount: $25M
Vertical: Logistics AI
Value proposition: Logistics software designed to bring visibility and operational efficiency to the supply chain. The company's software uses data analytics with machine learning algorithms and APIs, enabling logistics companies to track parcels, reduce costs and improve on-time delivery of goods.
Country: India
Stage: Later stage
Amount: $12.3M
Vertical: Creator’s economy
Value proposition: Enabling creators to monetise their community
Country: Uruguay
Stage: Later stage
Amount: $10M
Vertical: Fintech
Value proposition: Device that allows the small merchant to be given the same advantages and facilities that large commercial surfaces have, such as the use of credit cards or telephone card recharges.
Country: UK
Stage: Seed
Amount: $4.7M
Vertical: Fintech
Value proposition: open-source data validation framework designed to validate data in python using type hints.
Country: USA
Stage: Series A
Amount: $20M
Vertical: Business/Productivity Software
Value proposition: Qualified pipeline you can count on.
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3 TAKEAWAYS
Sequoia is very active in ASIA, especially India.
Fintech and productivity software is still changing the world (B2B approach)
Later-stage startups received a larger amount of funding, highlighting the interest of investors in companies that have established themselves in the market and have a proven track record
Latam is appearing on the radar, and has untapped potential.
TALK ABOUT LUCK
We’ve all encountered the ultra successful person and somehow, he always ends up saying, it was all luck. I’ve heard it so many times that sometimes I have the temptation to think it’s right and just let the luck do its duty.
However, I try not to believe in luck, but in consequence. I see happening that sometimes you take a direction in life and the sole decision to go a way leads you in the future to the lucky event that makes you successful. In terms of Venture Capital, investor’s make educated decisions based on data and analysis of the companies, however, only a few grow to become global. Should you as a VC believe in luck? How can you guess which companies will be able to grow and raise capital when the other companies that do exactly the same will die?
Let me know what you think about it.
RANDOM COOL THINGS
Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros (Founder of Auara) is now on the mission to build the most sustainable car ever. This is the kind of project that excites because it’s extremely bold, utopic and optimistic. I believe those are the kind of projects that change the world, pushing against the heavy and repeated “it’s impossible”. I can’t wait to see where it is going!
Check out LIUX!
Have a great weekend!!