Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly start-up and market newsletter. It is broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but for free, and made for your weekend reading. Do you want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign in here.
Happy Saturday, everyone. I do hope you are kind and healthy. I am learning to sleep, something that has become a requirement in my life after realizing that the news cycle is never going to slow down. And because my partner and I adopted a third dog who would like to get up early, please take an adult nap with me so we can all rest for the vaccine. It’s almost here.
On work topics, today I have a few things for you, all about data points that matter: Q1 2021 M&A data, March VC results from Africa, and some surprising (for me at least) podcast numbers.
At first Dan Primack shared some first quarter data points via Refinitiv that I wanted to pass on. According to the financial data industry, global M&A activity reached $ 1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 93% over the first quarter of 2020. U.S. M&A activity also increased in the first quarter of 2020. quarter peaked. Why do we care? Because the data helps underscore how hot the past three months have been.
I expect the capital data itself for the quarter to be just as impressive. But as everyone notes this week, there are some cracks in the stock market for the IPO as the second quarter begins which could make Q2 2021 a very different beast. Not that the venture capital world will slow down, especially since Tiger has only recharged $ 6.7 billion.
On the venture capital topic, Africa-focused firm Briter Bridges reports that ‘in March alone, more than $ 280 million will be deployed in technology companies operating in Africa’, driven in part by ‘Flutterwave’s huge round of $ 170 million at a valuation of $ 1 billion. ‘
The data point is important as it is the most active March the African continent has seen in venture capital since at least 2017 – and I would ever guess. African businesses tend to raise more capital in the second half of the year, so the March result is not a record for any single month. But it is the same, and it helps our general feeling that the results of venture capital in the first quarter may be large.
And finally, Index Ventures by Rex Woodbury tweeted some Edison data, that ’80 million Americans (28% of the U.S. population of 12+) are weekly podcast listeners, + 17% year-on-year. ‘ The venture capitalist added that “62% of the U.S. population of 12+ (approximately 176 million people) are online audio listeners weekly.”
As we discussed on Equity this week, a large number of players are being thrown into the non-music streaming audio market in light of Clubhouse’s success over the past few months as a crucial social company. The data points are under the commitment of Discord and Spotify and others. People like to listen to other people talking. Much more than I would think as a music first person.
How nice it is to be back in a time when consumer investments are neat. B2B is great, but not everything can be SaaS for businesses. (However, it does appear that Clubhouse is struggling to hold on to his own hype.)
Look I can not keep up with all the damn venture capital rounds
TechCrunch Early Stage was this week, which went pretty well. But if I had a meet to help, I meant I did fewer rounds this week than I would have liked. So here are two things I would have typed if I had the free hours:
- Striim’s $ 50 million C series. Goldman led the deal. I believe Stream, a distinct stream, is a software startup that helps other companies move data directly into their cloud and local settings. Given how active the data market is today, I assume the TAM for Stream is deep? Fast flow? You can easily deliver a better streamlined word.
- Kudo’s Series A. of $ 21 million. I covered Kudo last year when it raised $ 6 million. The company provides video chat and conference services with real-time translation support. It had a good COVID era, as you can imagine. Felicis led the A after participating in the sowing round. I’ll see if I can get some new growth statistics from the company next week. One to look at.
And two more rounds that you may have missed too, but not. Holler raised $ 36 million in a B. Series. According to our own Anthony, ‘[y]You may not know what talk media is, but chances are you’ve used Holler’s technology. For example, if you added a sticker or GIF to your Venmo payments, Holler manages the app’s search and suggestion experience in that media. ‘
I feel old.
And if you do not pay enough attention to Latin American technology, this $ 150 million Uruguayan round would help you get it right.
Various and diverse
Finally some good news this week. If you’ve been reading The Exchange for some time, you should have read me about the Bessemer Cloud Index, a basket of public software companies that I treat with exceptional respect. Now there is a new index on the market.
Meet the Lux Health + Tech Index. According to Lux Capital, it is an “index of 57 publicly traded companies that best represents the emerging Health + Tech investment theme.” It is certainly branded to such an extent that, like the Bessemer collection, it is linked to a specific focus of the supporting enterprise. But what the new Lux index will do, as with the Bessemer collection, is to see how a particular business enterprise itself locates the portfolios of the public.
This is a useful thing to have. More of this, please.