Alex Wilhelm

Reading headlines here and there, one might assume that venture capital interest in fintech startups is setting records every quarter. After all: Didn’t Robinhood raise $280 million and $320 million more this year? Stripe raised $600 million just a few minutes ago, and wasn’t it Monzo that raised £60 million a few weeks back? Oh,…

You might have missed it, but amidst the current political-M&A-pandemic-election-disinformation news cycle we find ourselves in this week, SaaS and cloud companies reached new public market records. Yesterday, the Bessemer-Nasdaq cloud index closed at 2,035.54, a new record finish for the basket of software companies. And, today, the index broached the 2,040 mark before ceding…

News broke last night that Affirm, a well-known fintech unicorn, could approach the public markets at a valuation of $5 to $10 billion. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, said that Affirm could begin trading this year and that its IPO options include debuting via a special purpose acquisition company, also known as…

Today after the bell, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon reported their earnings results. Each bested expectations, and all but one are up sharply in after-hours trading. Coming on the heels of a day’s worth of congressional hearings in which the four companies highlighted competition and downplayed their market position, the results are loud. The group’s…

Since The Exchange last checked in on the world of low- and no-code startup funding, several more interesting rounds in the niche have bubbled up. This week, TechCrunch covered a startup called Hevo raising $8 million, and Paragon, which raised a $2.5 million seed round. Hevo is a “data pipeline startup” that helps “clients’ employees…

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken up the startup world, slowing some high-growth unicorns and promoting others onto the coveted list. In the earlier-stages of startup land, the same patterns of acceleration and braking can be found. TechCrunch wanted to dig more deeply into the cohort of startups that are seeing acceleration, so we put together…

The fortunes of startups that leverage artificial intelligence have soared dramatically in recent years. These AI-powered startups have seen quarterly investment totals rise from a few hundred rounds and a few billion dollars each quarter to 1,245 rounds and $17.3 billion in the second and third quarters of 2019, according to data from CB Insights.…

This week has brought with it two tasty pieces of IPO news — Rackspace’s return to the public markets and BigCommerce’s debut will be far more interesting now that we know what a first-draft valuation for each looks like. But amidst the numbers is a question worth answering: Why aren’t cloud-focused Rackspace and e-commerce-powering BigCommerce…

Startup stories are often too reductive — an entrepreneur dreams up an idea, snags some co-founders, raises a bit of money and presto: success and riches. It’s nearly never true. Even breakout successes like Slack that may feel straightforward have complicated stories. Amongst the most valuable startups there are hidden crises and disappointing quarters. Some…

The coronavirus caused some disagreement amongst Boston’s venture capital community. Looking back at our mid-2020 survey of its VCs, some saw the city’s strength in biotech and healthcare as a competitive advantage, while others saw Boston’s diverse startup ecosystem as key to its survival. And some were worried that activity was about to clamp down.…

Over the weekend, software giant SAP announced that it will take Qualtrics public, with the German software company retaining a majority stake in the Utah-based “experience management” firm after its forthcoming debut. SAP paid $8 billion in cash for Qualtrics back in 2018, right before the smaller firm was set to go public. Chatting with…

On the heels of Hippo’s funding round and our exploration of how the private markets appear to be more conservative than public investors at the moment, we’re asking a new question: are a bunch of insurtech startups undervalued? Hippo — an insurtech startup focused on home insurance — put together a $150 million round at a…

Startups that fit under the broad umbrella of insurance technology are having quite a year. In early 2020, insurtech marketplaces raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and as the year continued, more insurtech startups saw their fortunes rise. But these busy and lucrative recent quarters are perhaps best demonstrated by Lemonade’s IPO. The rental and…