Welcome to today’s venture capital news roundup: I will be letting you in on a few venture capital funds trends to watch out for in 2022. Before anything else, an introduction to venture capital for those who don’t speak venture capital investment.
What Is Venture Capital?
Venture capital is a form of financing that provides capital to early-stage and emerging companies that have high potential for growth in exchange for equity. VC funds firms that are well off enough financially to risk and potentially take losses which come with investing in unproven high-risk companies.
In the process of investing, they consider the company’s potential for growth, its business plan and strength of management team. Other factors like what they are selling in terms of uniqueness are considered all with the aim of evaluating if the potential reward is worth the risk.
Why Venture Capital Firms Are Important
Venture capital firms provide venture capital funds. For example, Israeli VC funds provide funds to startups to help get their operations going. They give capital to entrepreneurs who have good ideas but with minimal experience and operating history coupled with inadequate funds.
This capital helps launch the business. VC firms also offer guidance as experienced business moguls.
If you have a company or business, I am certain you were no expert when starting out and will appreciate the need for guidance, not to mention financing. More often than not, new entrepreneurs lack adequate funding or access to bank financing due to lack of experience in the business as well as the high-risk nature of startup – you are never quite sure if you will succeed or not.
In exchange for guidance and funding, venture capitalists get some share equity in return with perks like control of decision making.
Onto what brought you here now: the trends
Over time, the venture capital world has faced some changes and as such has had to actively evolve and adapt to changing market needs. Changes come and go but the realm that is venture capital has remained intact.
Trends in Venture Capital
Over the last couple of years, here are some of the top trends that have been making themselves known:
Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency is certainly here to stay, with the blockchain technology being projected to be worth a whooping 39 billion by 2025.
What makes cryptocurrency attractive to VC funds is the fact that it is not regulated like traditional investing. As such, it offers a more lucrative trading approach.
Cryptocurrency uses an initial coin offering which allows companies to raise funds via a digital coin – the concept works the same as initial public offering. This method has been very fruitful to both venture capital firms and startups alike so don’t be surprised the next time your Israeli VC funds come in via cryptocurrency.
The bottom line is the method is more flexible for funding and finding funding.
Automation and Technology Adaptation
Humans are very curious by nature and as such, consumers have always been interested in new technology which upon mastering could improve their lives. Businesses have to keep up with venture capital news and adapt to new trends to stay efficient and stay competitive.
All this competition and adapting has seen a growth in market success of the fintech industry with numerous businesses and customers benefiting from all the recent advancements in technology.
Alternative Data
For a while now, investors have been looking at more than just traditional data like press releases and financial statements to aid in their decision making.
The alternative data varies in nature but it could be anything from credit cards to online job postings. In short, anything that can be a valuable, accurate source of information for the investors.
This data helps investors pinpoint which companies are in dire need of their services and from then on, they can build models that can help predict the future of the company.