Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly newsletter about startups and markets. It is largely based on the daily column that appears in Extra Crunch, but it is free and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign here.
Happy Saturday for all. I hope you are in a good mood and in good health. I am learning to take a nap, something that became a requirement in my life after I realized that the news cycle will never shorten. And because my partner and I adopted a third dog whoever likes to wake up early, join me to make the nap cool for adults, so we can all rest for Vaccine Summer. It’s almost here.
On work topics, I have a few things for you today, all related to data points that matter: first quarter 2021 merger and acquisition data, March VC results from Africa and some amazing podcast numbers (for me, at any less).
In the first, Dan Primack I shared some data points from the beginning of the first quarter via Refinitiv that I wanted to pass on. According to the financial data company, global merger and acquisition activity reached $ 1.3 trillion in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 93% over the first quarter of 2020. Merger and acquisition activity in the United States States also reached a historic high in the first quarter. Why do we care? Because the data helps to underline how hot the past three months have been.
I expect the venture capital data for the quarter to be equally impressive. But, as everyone is watching this week, there are some cracks appearing in the IPO market as the second quarter begins, which could make the second quarter of 2021 a very different beast. Not that the venture capital world is going to slow down, especially considering that Tiger has just reloaded the $ 6.7 billion amount.
On the topic of venture capital, Africa-focused data company Briter Bridges reports that “in March alone, more than $ 280 million was deployed in technology companies operating across Africa”, driven in part by the “round colossal $ 170 million from Flutterwave with a valuation of $ 1 billion “.
The data point is important, as it marks the most active March the African continent has seen in terms of venture capital since at least 2017 – and I imagine never. African startups tend to raise more capital in the second half of the year, so the March result is not a historical record for a single month. But he is equally optimistic and helps to fuel our general feeling that the first quarter’s venture capital results could be big.
And finally, Rex Woodbury from Index Ventures tweeted some data from Edison, namely, that “80 million Americans (28% of the US population over 12 years old) are weekly podcast listeners, + 17% year on year”. The venture capitalist added that “62% of the US population over 12 (about 176 million people) are online audio listeners weekly”.
As we discussed at Equity this week, the non-music streaming audio market is being bet on by a number of players in light of Clubhouse’s success as an emerging social consumer company in recent months. Underlying the bets of Discord and Spotify and others are these data points. People love to hear the conversation of other humans. Much more than I would have imagined, as a first person in music.
How good it is to be back at a time when investing for the consumer is cool. B2B is great, but not everything can be corporate SaaS. (Notably, however, it appears that the Clubhouse is struggling to maintain its own hype.)
Look, I can’t keep up with all the venture capital rounds
The initial stage of TechCrunch was this week, which went very well. But having an event to help organize meant that I covered fewer rounds this week than I would have liked. So, here are two that I would have typed if I had hours off:
- Striim’s $ 50 million C. Goldman series led the transaction. Striim, pronounced stream I believe, is a software startup that helps other companies move data in real time across their cloud and local settings. Given how active the data market is today, I assume that TAM for Striim is deep? Flowing fast? You can provide a more flow-centric word at your leisure.
- $ 21 million Kudo Series A. I covered Kudo last July, when he raised $ 6 million. The company offers videoconferencing and videoconferencing services with support for real-time translation. There was a good COVID era, as you can imagine. Felicis led A after participating in the seed round. I’ll see if I can extract some new metrics for the company’s growth next week. One to watch.
And two more rounds that you may also have missed and shouldn’t have. Holler raised $ 36 million in a Series B. By our own Anthony Ha, “[y]You may not know what conversation media is, but there is a good chance that you have used Heller technology. For example, if you added a sticker or GIF to your Venmo payments, Holler actually manages the app’s search and suggestion experience around that medium. “
I feel old.
And if you’re not paying enough attention to Latin American technology, this $ 150 million Uruguayan round should help to clarify it.
Various and miscellaneous
Finally, this week, some good news. If you’ve read The Exchange for some time, you’ve been forced to read me chattering about the Bessemer cloud index, a basket of public software companies that I treat with oracular respect. There is now a new index on the market.
Discover the Lux Health + Tech Index. Per Lux Capital, is an “index of 57 publicly traded companies that, together, better represent the topic of investment in health + emerging technology.” Of course, this is marked to the extent that, similar to the Bessemer collection, it is linked to a particular focus of the supporting venture capital firm. But what the new Lux index will do, like the Bessemer collection, is to track how a particular venture capital firm is tracking public comps in its portfolio.
It is a useful thing to have. More of that, please.