Black-Founded Exceptional Capital Targets $30 Million For Debut VC Fund

At a time when Black-led firms and Black-founded startups struggle to raise money—just 3% of venture check writers are Black, according to data from industry nonprofit BLCK VC—Exceptional Capital has managed to raise $20 million toward a goal of $30 million in just three weeks, Evans says. The fund won’t focus only on investing in Black-owned businesses, but he hopes to show young Black people that there is a place for them in venture capital, including at the top.

Among those backing his fund are Twitter cofounder and Block CEO Jack Dorsey, SPAC king Chamath Palihapitiya and former YouTube and Facebook CFO Gideon Yu. Evans also collaborates with many of these LPs, plus other venture funds and angel investors, to gather deal flow.

Evans got his introduction to the technology world with a gig selling IBM software, then moved to the startup side with a sales job with security platform Okta before its $1.5 billion 2017 IPO. There, he met the founders of DoorDash, Lyft and Slack and decided he wanted to try the other side of the table. He started investing through a family office before joining SoftBank in 2019.

Despite his experience, he didn’t have much luck finding a position he wanted at an existing firm in 2021 and decided to strike out on his own. In Evans’ case, he decided to lean on the Silicon Valley network he built along the way, and he began raising money for Miami-based Exceptional Capital this year.

Evans’ fund will target pre-seed and seed-stage B2B software companies in both the U.S. and Latin America, with investments in cybersecurity, developer tools, fintech and edtech, among others. Twenty percent of capital will be reserved for crypto companies. Evans says he decided to focus on those areas because he thinks they mesh well with his operational experience.

“I want to be hyperfocused on B2B software and ignore the bells and whistles,” Evans tells Forbes. “My strength is B2B software. I want to find the next Okta, Snowflake, Datadog.” —B.S.

The move comes about three weeks after the FTC sued to block the takeover and just a few days after Nvidia abandoned its planned mega-deal for Arm. Under chair Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission has shown a growing desire to challenge major mergers and acquisitions. These would seem to be two significant wins for regulators, ones that came without setting foot in a courtroom.

Lockheed Martin had hoped adding Aerojet’s rocket expertise to its own technology would create a streamlined government supplier for launch systems and missiles. The two sides pledged that Aerojet would continue to sell its products to other companies, but the FTC still feared the combination would stymie competition. The ill-fated deal has generated controversy ever since it was first announced in late 2020. Raytheon and Sen. Elizabeth Warren both voiced their objections, while last summer, a bipartisan group of 13 lawmakers wrote to the Department of Defense to advocate for the takeover.  —K.D.

Our own Abram Brown took a closer look at TripleDot, which specializes in casual games like solitaire and Woodoku, a variant of sudoku. Instead of occupying hardcore gamers for hours on end, its titles are more likely to help you while away a few minutes on the bus or in the waiting room. The company’s CEO, Lior Shiff, told TechCrunch that TripleDot will use the new funding in part to buy up other startups.    

Another mobile gaming company was the subject of a major acquisition last month, as Take-Two Interactive agreed to buy Zynga—the maker of FarmVille and Words with Friends—for $12.7 billion. On a much smaller scale, the New York Times bought the wildly popular game Wordle for a price in “the low seven figures.” There’s also been plenty of M&A activity in the world of big-budget console games, with Microsoft landing Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion mega-deal and Sony agreeing to buy Bungie for $3.6 billion. 

Now, investors like 20VC are trying to find the next Zynga, Wordle or Bungie.  —K.D.

On Friday, the firm reported its results for the fourth quarter of 2021, capping off a highly eventful year with a few new annual records. And today, it announced two major deals, lining up a $1.4 billion investment in Abu Dhabi developer Aldar Properties and agreeing to take control of packaging powerhouse Novolex from the Carlyle Group, with Bloomberg reporting a $6 billion valuation.  

The Aldar deal represents a major foreign investment in Abu Dhabi’s private sector—one that Aldar hopes will be a sign of things to come. Talal Al Dhiyebi, the company’s CEO, described the partnership with Apollo as “a signal to the world’s investment community” that Abu Dhabi’s real estate market is poised for growth. The $1.4 billion is split into four parts, including $500 million for a joint venture and $100 million for an equity investment in Aldar Investment Properties.

The Novolex deal will give Apollo a majority stake in a company that makes containers, carryout bags, boxes and other packaging products for restaurants and the foodservice industry. As restaurant carryout has boomed amid the pandemic, so too has demand for many of the company’s products. Carlyle will retain a minority stake in Novolex, which it bought from TPG and Wind Point Partners in 2016.  —K.D.

With Esusu, he’s looking to help improve Black and Brown people’s access to credit by using tenants’ rent payments to boost their scores. The credit-building platform collects its users’ rental data and, for a $50 annual fee, reports it to credit bureaus so that the payments can count toward their credit score, which they historically haven’t.

The startup just raised $130 million from angel investor Hagop Hagopian in a Series B round that valued it at $1 billion—making the company one of the first unicorns helmed by a Black entrepreneur. It plans to use the capital infusion to grow headcount and invest in technology to “build the most comprehensive financial health platform in the market.” Read more from Harris here. —B.S.

— The state-run Life Insurance Corp. of India filed a prospectus for its coming IPO over the weekend, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the industry giant hopes to raise $8 billion or more. Based on the terms in the prospectus, that would result in a market cap of some $160 billion. The IPO market went wild in India last year, but many debutantes have traded down significantly since their listings. LIC will hope to buck the trend. 

— Eight months after the collapse of plans to take the company public, Bain Capital has agreed to sell Parts Holding Europe to D’leteren Group, resulting in an enterprise valuation of €1.7 billion ($1.9 billion) and an equity valuation of €540 million ($610 million). PHE sells spare parts for light vehicles and trucks, while D’leteren is a Belgian holding company that owns noted notebook-maker Moleskine and a handful of automotive brands. 

— The hunt for all things streaming continues. Shares of Audioboom closed up more than 10% in London today in the wake of a Sky News report that Amazon and Spotify are considering competing takeover bids for the podcasting company. The stock surge took Audioboom’s market cap to nearly £306 million ($414 million). 

— Papier, a British direct-to-consumer startup that sells stationery, notebooks, diaries, cards and a range of other paper products, inked $50 million in new funding to help fuel its expansion into the U.S. and build on its significant growth during the pandemic. French firm Singular was the lead investor, and Lansdowne Partners, Felix Capital and Beringea were among the other backers.

— A SPAC merger is no longer in the cards for Essentium. The provider of industrial 3D printing services canceled its agreement to combine with Atlantic Coastal Acquisition Corp., a deal announced in December that would have valued Essentium at $974 million. Several SPAC deals have been abandoned in recent weeks thanks to a chill in the stock market and poor performance from many companies that completed blank-check mergers in 2021. 

— Apax Partners agreed to buy Alcumus from Inflexion, valuing the provider of tech-powered risk management services at more than £600 million ($811 million). Inflexion said it will generate a 5.9x multiple on the sale of the Welsh company, its largest cash return ever on a deal. 

— A pair of former Snapchat engineers are moving into the metaverse. Bud Technologies, led by Risa Feng and Shawn Lin, raised $15 million in Series A extension led by Qiming Venture Partners to keep building out its platform, which allows users to create their own 3D worlds. With so many massive corporations embracing the metaverse, expect venture activity in the space to heat up in 2022.

The province saw more than $200 million invested across 13 deals last year through Q3, according to the latest numbers from the Canadian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. Funding has been inconsistent over the last five years but has risen more than 14-fold since 2017, when $14 million was invested. An $80 million investment this early in the year suggests 2022 could see further growth. 

 — NFT marketplace OpenSea is getting slammed by its users for its lack of transparency among its rapid growth. (Fortune) 

— For nearly two decades, Peter Thiel has been a kingmaker in Silicon Valley. Now, he’s taking his act to Washington. (The New York Times)

— The rise of trading platforms for shares of pre-IPO companies is making it easier than ever to compare private-market valuations to public stocks. (Institutional Investor)

— After winning a gold medal with the U.S. women’s hockey team in the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, Haley Skarupa left professional hockey  to join marketing tech startup Klaviyo, one of Boston’s most notable startups. (BostInno)

— Losing a $9.5 million bet is never easy. But for Jim McIngvale, a successful $20 million mattress promotion certainly helps. (Forbes)

— From stadium naming rights to Super Bowl ads, crypto startups continue to force their way into the mainstream. (Protocol)