Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of March 11, 2024. Alumis Raised $259M Series C

Happy Monday!

A quick update on my upcoming enterprise SaaS accelerator Topline focusing on revenue growth, welcomed more awesome mentors this week!  

Sayan Gomel, COO, Innovation Economy - J.P.Morgan and Eddie White, VP, Business Development and Strategic Alliances at Google both committed to join us this June-July, along with other experienced operators from Slack, Zendesk, Docusign, Oracle, ServiceNow, Caterpillar, Morrison Forrester and many more.  Apply to join us - applications close March 31.

Here are a few great things to read/watch this week:

• 💰 81% of SVB's Clients From a Year Ago are Still Banking with SVB, - On March 8, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank announced it had raised $500 million from General Atlantic and had plans to raise $1.75 billion to help it plug a hole in its balance sheet created by rising interest rates. Less than 48 hours later, regulators shut it down and took over. I am surprised that one year later, 81% of SVB's clients are still banking with SVB. I still remember that day being so nervous about closing Race Capital Fund II that weekend.  Despite telling all of our LPs about switching to a new bank last minute, one of our LPs still sent money to SVB!  Read more.
• 💰 HR2799 Increases the 99 Investor Limit to 600 for Funds Under $150M - On March 8, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Chairman Patrick McHenry’s (NC-10) H.R. 2799, the Expanding Access to Capital Act. H.R. 2799 will facilitate capital formation by strengthening our public markets.  This should make it easier for emerging fund managers to raise money — they will be able to accept smaller checks. Read more.
• 💰 When Your Cap Table Makes your Startup Un-investable - As investors, you want founders to have a lot of skin in the game. You want yours and your founders incentives to be completely aligned. If you take too much equity in the early stages, at some point, the founders have so little equity left, there is no reason for a founder to give you their all. As founders, it’s your responsibility to say no to bad capital. Do you expect your next lead investor to come in and fix your cap table?  It takes so much time, energy, money and lawyers that, it will turn investors away.  Great opinion piece by Haje Jan Kamps.
• 💰 Finding the Right Type of Investors - My friend Allen Lau from Two Small Fish Ventures wrote this. I love this analogy of “bringing a tennis racket to a hockey game is a recipe for disaster”.  When a real estate Investors try to apply use EBITDA/yield approach to invest in tech startups, the company often “die young” despite its potential. If you are a founder, stay away! If you are an investors, don’t be that guy.  https://allensthoughts.com/2024/03/06/the-right-type-of-investors/
• 🇭🇰 March 27 - 28, 2024 - If you are in Hong Kong in 2 weeks, join me, Affirm's Huey Lin, Funplus’ Michael Tong and more at FoundersHK Week.

This week a total of 16 startups raised $530.9M in funding, 1 M&As:

• $151M goes to 7 Enterprise startups
• $18.6M goes to 1 FinTech startup
• $25M goes to 1 HR startup
• $10M goes to 1 eCommerce startup
• $3.8M goes to 1 FoodTech startup
• $5M goes to 1 Gaming startup
• $38M goes to 1 Healthcare startup
• $259M goes to 1 BioTech startup
• $13M goes to 1 Robotics startup
• $17.5M goes to 1 Other startup