CB Insights - dumb startup ideas

Hi there, 

For those of you building companies…

What's some dumb isht you spent too much time on in the early days of your company?

My top 3:

1. Designing business cards, logo, etc. — aka branding

2. Trying to get articles ranked on Hacker News

3. Doing payroll on my own

I look back esp at #2 and marvel at how much time we wasted on this. 

And you?

We’ll share results/common themes in a coming newsletter.

Please remember the rules we laid out yesterday before responding.

Party in the USA
 

How did US metros fare during last quarter’s funding rush? We’ve got the numbers.

Here is startup venture investment in Q4’21 by geo: 

Silicon Valley $29.3B

New York $18.1B

Boston $8.9B

LA $5.7B

Seattle $2.5B

Denver $2.3B

Miami $2.2B

Dallas $1.9B

Chicago $1.7B

Austin $1.7B

DC $1.6B

Philadelphia $1B

Raleigh $0.5B

Atlanta $0.5B

And not to leave our northern neighbors out: 

Toronto $0.7B

Vancouver $0.3B

H/t Shai Goldman for compiling based on our 2021 State of Venture report. 

Dig in here.

Startup munchies

The food & meal delivery sector saw 15 unicorn births in 2021, riding on a wave of $19.6B in investor cash. 

Cash-burning ultrafast delivery players and late-stage delivery services in Asia drove the funding surge. 

Clients can dig into the sector’s top investors, SPAC and IPO exit activity, global funding trends, and more in this report.

Retail on the rebound

Retail bankruptcies more than halved in 2021 compared to 2020, but not all retailers are out of the woods. 

Find out the retailers that filed for bankruptcy in 2021 — and the first one to do so in 2022 — in this analysis.

Intruder alert

Cybercrime is expected to cost $10T globally by 2025. 

A new generation of cybersecurity companies is rising to meet it. 

Trial without error

Clinical trial sponsors and investigators are shifting more of their R&D budgets toward technologies that can improve the quality and cost of care and address unmet market needs. 

Need an adoption playbook?

We evaluate 8 tech markets — from digital twins & biosimulations to trial management — that pharma and CRO leaders should monitor, vet, and prioritize in this client-only MVP report.

TechCrunch. Mary Ann Azevedo (@bayareawriter) discusses fintech’s future with 9 investors and references CB Insights research.

GeekWire. John Cook (@johnhcook) covers the global unicorn herd using CB Insights research and citing CBI CEO Anand Sanwal (@asanwal).

Forbes. Martin Giles (@martingiles) covers Cloudinary’s rise to unicorn status and mentions CB Insights data.
 

P.S. Our analysts are breaking down blockchain’s biggest year ever tomorrow (Thursday, February 17). Register here.

Client-Exclusive Research
 

[Healthcare]

Dr. Amazon. Amazon has accelerated its involvement in the US healthcare market in recent years — here's how the tech giant is shaping the $5T industry.
 

[Manufacturing]
Semiconductor market map. From sensor tech to quantum computing, companies in the semiconductor industry are making the technology more powerful and efficient.

[Financial Services]
Pay up. 2021 payments funding blew past 2020 totals by more than double.