Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of February 13, 2023. Arrcus Raised $50M Series D led by Prosperity7

Happy Monday!  Hope you can join me this Thursday for this Hong Kong Webinar. 

Here are a few great reads and lists for the week:

• 🔖 10 Lessons Learned from Founder-Led Sales for Startups - Founder-led sales is the part of the startup journey post-fundraise where the founders themselves are handling the majority of the go-to-market (GTM) and sales activities. This is typically within the post-seed pre-Series A part of the company building process. We hosted a discussion with our portfolio companies at Race Capital last week. Read more on the lessons learned
• 🇭🇰 Unlocking the Potential of Hong Kong's Startup Ecosystem - Join me, Jacko Tsang, Director, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office and Asia Society Northern California on Thursday, February 16, 2023 at 5 pm PST, for a virtual discussion on Hong Kong's Startup Ecosystem.  Join us!
• 🇨🇳 Chinese Startups Raised $9B in Venture Capital in 2022 - American lawmakers may be critical of Beijing's policies, but China still represents a huge market opportunity that's nearly impossible for U.S. companies to ignore. The Biden Administration is looking to turn up scrutiny on U.S. companies and investors looking to develop and support Chinese projects as China-US relations are growing more tense. According to data from PitchBook and Crunchbase, Chinese companies raised a lot more funding from US investors before 2022:
  • 2021: $27.5 billion-$32.2 billion
  • 2020: $19.8 billion-$25.5 billion
  • 2019: $14.9 billion-$29.9 billion
  • 2018: $43.9 billion-$46.9 billion
• 💸 Sumo Logic to be Acquired by Francisco Partners for $1.7 Billion - $1.7 Billion sounds like a big number but it is only 5.7X their 2022 annual revenue of $298.9M with 22% YoY growth.  This acquisition will set another example for Wall Street and later stage SaaS and enterprise software valuation. 
• Masayoshi Son reportedly Owes $5.1B to Softbank Vision Fund. The losses have stemmed from the 65-year-old billionaire's side deals at SoftBank. Unless the fund's performance recovers, Son would be liable to pay any "unfunded repayment obligations" at the end of the fund's tenure. Ouch! 

This week a total of 25 startups raised $465M in funding, 3 M&As:

• $219.2M goes to 9 Enterprise startups
• $15M goes to 1 FinTech startup
• $11M goes to 3 Crypto/Web3 startups
• $5.5M goes to 2 HRTech startups
• $4.2M goes to 1 eCommerce startup
• $2.6M goes to 1 Gaming startup
• $38M goes to 2 Healthcare startups
• $51M goes to 2 BioTech startups
• $51M goes to 2 Renewable Energy/Environment startups
• $17.5M goes to 1 Manufacturing startup
• $50M goes to 1 Hardware startup