Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of January 18, 2021. Blend Raised $300M Series G led by Coatue and Tiger Global

Early-stage investors are picking up the pre-IPO investment game. 

In the September 2020 issue of Silicon.news, I reported that Affirm raised $500 million in Series G from Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Spark Capital.  All of which were early investors of Affirm and have a seat on its board of directors.  In this funding round, they paid $19.93 per share.  This past week, Affirm went IPO, raised $1.2B and the stock closed at $117 on Friday. 

In the past few years, I often complain (a bit) about growth-stage investors are coming into the early-stage territory and driving up valuation.  Think Softbank. 

We are now seeing early-stage investors going in the other direction. Why not?  Early-stage investors did invest in the relationship early.  Why shouldn't they double down on the commitment when things are going really well? 

After all, would your investors complain if you are making 6X in 4 months?

I guess not.  

This week a total of 18 startups raised $847.8M in funding, 2 IPOs:

• $304.1M goes to 7 Enterprise startups
• $338M goes to 2 FinTech startups
• $45M goes to 1 Real Estate startup
• $24.5M goes to 1 AI startup
• $7.5M goes to 1 Wellness startup
• $11M goes to 1 E-Learning startup
• $119M goes to 5 Healthcare startups