Secondaries Spike In 2021 | Redpoint Has A New Partner | India’s Unicorn Boom

In this edition, I take a look at what’s going on in the secondaries market, which is seeing a surge of activity amidst this year’s scramble to get into competitive deals, I catch up with Crossbeam Venture Partners about its new $70 million fund that it raised in three weeks, Kenrick introduces us to Redpoint Venture’s new partner and I chat about the boom in unicorn companies in India this year and the firms driving that success. Let’s get started.

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“Later stage companies — where secondaries are traditionally happening — have more money chasing their growth and later-stage deals than ever before, and there are a lot of interesting companies that people are trying to get access to and can’t in the traditional way,” Harrison Horn, a vice president at Bracket Capital, which takes secondary stakes as part of its regular strategy, tells Midas Touch. “Companies and funds are looking for different ways to get access and secondaries has been one of those ways over the last 12 months that will probably continue to stick around for the long term.” 

By the numbers: In 2021, there were 256 known venture secondary transactions, worth a collective $12 billion, according to data provided by Crunchbase. That number shows a 58% increase from the 151 transactions that were completed in 2020, worth $2.4 billion in total. That marks an 80% increase in year-over-year capital. This year’s total is only topped by 2017’s when $11.3 billion flowed through venture secondary transactions anchored by a $7.7 billion sale by Uber in December 2017. Notable transactions from this year include blockchain incubator decacorn Digital Currency Group selling a $700 million stake in November and sustainable proptech company GoodLeap selling a $830 million position in October...

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“I was not planning to leave GitHub, but Satish called me, and he’s one of those people where if he calls you, you take his call, no matter where you are and what you’re doing,” she tells Midas Touch. 

Brescia is the second GitHub C-Suiter to decamp for Redpoint Ventures in less than a year. She’s preceded by Jason Warner, who was serving as the open source repository’s chief technology officer when he reached out to Redpoint Ventures about moving into investing full time. When Warner became a partner at Redpoint in July, the firm’s courtship of Bresica was already underway...

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