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The Weekend Pitch |
August 9, 2020 
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Presented by RSM |
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It didn't come as a huge surprise when, on Thursday night, President Trump issued a pair of executive orders effectively banning TikTok and WeChat in the US. Trump had indicated that such a move may be in the offing, and his administration has rarely been shy about escalating tensions with China.
The lack of astonishment at the directives, though, doesn't lessen their potentially far-reaching impact. Microsoft may still buy TikTok, if, in a little more than six weeks, it can iron out the terms of what figures to be a highly complex transaction worth tens of billions of dollars. But that's just the TikTok deal. In the months and maybe years to come, companies and investors on both sides of the Pacific Ocean could be facing a changed landscape.
Welcome to The Weekend Pitch. I'm Kevin Dowd, and you can reach me at weekend@pitchbook.com. Years of increasing overlap between the venture and tech ecosystems in the US and China seem to be coming to an end, replaced by a new era of separate spheres. That's one of 11 things you need to know from the past week: |
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(Blake Callahan/Getty Images) |
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1. Trump vs. TikTok
Historically, there has been little interplay between the American and Chinese startup scenes. Yet throughout the 2010s, US investors funneled more capital to Chinese startups, with China's firms returning the favor.
The governments of the US and China have never seen entirely eye to eye. But for the purposes of business, they managed to find an equilibrium. American investors had confidence that, for the most part, they would be treated like any other investor when they backed a Chinese company. China's companies were free to operate in US markets. Political considerations rarely interfered.
Now, Trump has set a new precedent. And already there are signs that China won't take the bans of WeChat and TikTok lying down. A government spokesperson accused the US of "engaging in political manipulation and oppression," and TikTok called the bans "a dangerous precedent for the concept of free expression and open markets."
The immediate implications of Trump's move are myriad. TikTok finds itself in the midst of an extraordinary sale process with Microsoft, negotiations further complicated by Trump's call for the Treasury to get a cut of a sale to US investors. The prospect of a TikTok ban also opens the door for competitors; sure enough, Instagram launched its new Reels offering this week, and a TikTok rival called Triller was reported to be raising $250 million at a $1.25 billion valuation.
A ban on WeChat, the dominant chat and messaging app in China, would make it harder for people of Chinese descent in the US to communicate with friends and family in China. The phrasing of Trump's executive order also at first appeared to ban all transactions with Tencent, WeChat's parent. But a White House official told the Los Angeles Times that is not in fact the case. That would have opened a whole other can of worms: Tencent is a major investor across the American music and gaming industries. As one example, it owns a significant stake in "Fortnite" maker Epic Games, a North Carolina-based company that reached a $17.3 billion valuation this week.
Gazing into the future, one can envision how the fallout may spread. Increased tensions are likely to have a chilling effect on cross-border dealmaking. If Beijing retaliates by targeting US-owned companies or apps, it could herald a new age of digital isolationism, a balkanization of the truly worldwide web that has developed over the past three decades.
One of the internet's early promises was that it would connect the world, bringing us all closer together, creating a new, global community of cooperation and communication. On the surface, apps like TikTok and WeChat embody that dream. But for politicians and national security experts, worries remain about what's beneath the surface.
Banning TikTok and WeChat might be a one-off. Perhaps not much else will change. It seems more likely, though, that after years of coming together, the Chinese and American tech ecosystems are beginning to go their separate ways.
2. Merger Monday
Seven & i Holdings, the parent company of 7-Eleven, kicked the week off with an agreement to buy the Speedway chain of gas stations and convenience stores from Marathon Petroleum for $21 billion, adding some 3,900 locations to its corner-store empire. News of that mega-merger came shortly after Siemens Healthineers (which spun out from Siemens in 2018) unveiled a $16.4 billion deal to acquire Varian Medical Systems, a cancer-care specialist.
3. Planting seeds
A handful of investors spent the week getting back to the land. BlackRock led a group of backers that provided $250 million at a reported $1.75 billion valuation to Farmers Business Network, the creator of an agtech platform that supplies various tech-powered services to farmers. Meanwhile, Indigo Agriculture announced $360 million in new Series F funding, which will go toward the company's platform for helping farmers increase both their profits and their sustainability.
4. Investor resignations
Calpers chief investment officer Ben Meng abruptly stepped down from his position this Wednesday, three days after the website Naked Capitalism published a report highlighting the incompleteness of Meng's public financial disclosures. A day later, Wendell Brooks decided to leave his position as head of Intel Capital, ending a six-year run in which the corporate venture firm participated in more than 350 transactions, according to PitchBook data.
5. Second chances
With Zenefits, co-founder Parker Conrad's first effort at building an HR powerhouse came to an ignominious end. His second attempt seems to be coming along swimmingly, as Conrad's Rippling raised $145 million this week at what was reportedly a unicorn valuation. Elsewhere, a bankrupt football league is getting a second chance from a Hollywood star: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson teamed up with RedBird Capital Partners and businesswoman Dany Garcia on a $15 million deal to acquire the XFL, which went under earlier this year amid the pandemic. |
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Former college football player Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will soon have a league of his own. (Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images) |
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6. A tele-deal
Compared to the start of the year, stock in telehealth specialist Teladoc is up more than 130%. Livongo, another teleheath provider, has seen its shares soar by nearly 400%. Amid that heady performance, Teladoc announced an agreement this week to acquire its slightly smaller rival for $18.5 billion, the most lucrative sign yet of how the pandemic has created new opportunities for remote healthcare.
7. A mortgage merger
In April 2019, Thoma Bravo bought Ellie Mae, a maker of widely used mortgage software, for $3.7 billion. This week, the tech investor agreed to sell Ellie Mae to Intercontinental Exchange in a deal that values the company at $11 billion, an impressive return after just 16 months of ownership. For ICE, which also owns the NYSE, the deal is the latest example of how it's using M&A to bolster its position in the mortgage space.
8. IPO letdowns
Cloud hosting specialist Rackspace priced its public shares at $21 apiece, at the bottom of its range, and then saw its stock slide more than 20% in its first day of trading, a disappointing result for majority owner Apollo Global Management. Quicken Loans owner Rocket Companies also went out with a downsized debut, raising $1.8 billion after initially planning to bring in a reported $3.3 billion; the Detroit-based business had a very different first day trading, though, as its shares jumped nearly 20%.
9. IPO pickups
It was all positives on the IPO front for BigCommerce, a creator of ecommerce software. The VC-backed company priced its debut at $24 per share, well above its initial range, and the value of those shares then soared another 200% in their first day on the market. It was also a rosy week for Acutus Medical, a developer of cardiac mapping technology, which priced an upsized IPO at $18 per share and closed Friday at $79 per share.
10. Busy, busy Blackstone
Where to begin? Blackstone inked an agreement this week to purchase Ancestry, a genealogy company that owns a vast base of consumer DNA data, for $4.7 billion. The firm teamed with Clearlake Capital Group to invest in Diligent, valuing the creator of corporate governance software at a reported $4 billion. Blackstone brought on former Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler as a senior adviser focused on healthcare. And it hired as a senior managing director Christine Feng, a former executive at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft who will deepen the firm's commitment to tech deals.
11. Bookworms
Serial fiction was all the rage in the age of Dickens. A startup called Radish is trying to bring it back, aided by a reported $63.2 million in Series A funding this week from SoftBank Ventures Asia and Kakao Page. The company offers a huge list of serialized stories across a range of genres, in part by employing TV show-style writers' rooms to churn out content. Its most popular title, according to TechCrunch? "Torn Between Alphas," a tale of romance involving werewolves.
View the full list online |
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| It could be a busy second half of the year for private debt fundraising. (domin_domin/Getty Images) |
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Investors closed just 53 private debt funds during the first half of 2020, on pace for the lowest annual total since 2011. Yet as the pandemic continues to unfold, a number of prominent names have begun raising new debt funds to capitalize on a rash of special situations and opportunistic deals—including Oaktree Capital Management, which is currently in the market with a $15 billion distressed debt vehicle.
Which other firms are on the fundraising trail? How long could these unusual market conditions linger? PitchBook's H1 2020 Global Private Debt Report offers up some answers. |
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| Ring it up. (Kathrin Ziegler/Getty Images) |
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Through the end of May, physical card transaction volume was down 25% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to a Visa regulatory filing. Online transaction volume, meanwhile, was up 40%. It's one sign of how the coronavirus crisis has been reshaping the financial world, presenting new opportunities for the wave of fintech startups that have proliferated in recent years.
For now, venture deal volume in the sector may be on the ebb. But in a preview of PitchBook's latest piece of Emerging Tech Research, senior analyst Robert Le makes the case that the future of fintech is as bright as ever. |
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A high-climbing panda considers going out on a limb.
(VCG/Getty Images) |
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I got my hopes up, I must admit. With the recent rush of healthcare deals, it wouldn't have been the craziest thing. For one brief moment this week, when I saw funding news about a company called PandaDoc, I thought the venture world at long last had a startup dedicated to providing medical care to pandas. Have you seen how clumsy pandas are? They probably need doctors!
But alas, PandaDoc's $30 million funding this week will go toward the company's e-signature and workflow software. Hey, it's never too late to pivot. |
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Recommended reads
In the midst of a pandemic, a story of life and debt at a private equity-backed hospital. [Bloomberg]
On TikTok, America's history of appropriating and exploiting Black culture is getting a 21st century spin. [Wired]
Nearly 50 years ago, a treasured shield vanished from the Pueblo of Acoma. In 2016, it resurfaced at a French auction house. Then, the tribe began a quest to reclaim its cultural patrimony. [High Country News]
In Portland, protestors have been joined by an unusual character: A 5-foot-8-inch, 350-pound llama from Argentina who goes by the name of Caesar McCool. [The Washington Post]
The pandemic has been a disaster for much of the fashion industry. It has been a boon for sweatpants. [The New York Times]
An interview with businesswoman Dany Garcia about teaming up with RedBird Capital Partners and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to purchase the XFL. [Sports Illustrated]
A meditation on the life, death and rebirth of English cheeses. [The New Yorker]
Eight women on the frontier of venture capital in Central and Eastern Europe weigh in on female founders, improving outcomes for women in VC and more. [Sifted]
A look at how Amazon navigated the never-before-seen challenges of the coronavirus crisis to record its best quarter ever. [The Wall Street Journal] |
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Quote of the week
"Our two companies were either on a path of convergence or collision."
—Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic, speaking to CNBC about his company's agreement this week to buy rival Livongo for $18.5 billion |
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The Weekend Pitch is produced by editor Kevin Dowd.
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