No Longer Invincible

Bay Area’s Venture Share Hits All-Time Low, Arthur Ventures Ascends With $470 Million Capital Close, and an InsurTech Company Triumphs With New Funding.

Author

Adam from VC Brags
April 17, 2023

Welcome Shareholders,

In this daily edition of the Brags Newsletter, we’ll cover Silicon Valley's Waning VC Dominance, Minneapolis-based Arthur Ventures raises record funds for pair of new funds, and a startup raises funding for InsurTech Innovation.

So sit back, grab a snack, and enjoy!

Venture Today 👏

  • The San Francisco Bay Area, home to tech giants like Apple, Google, and Meta has seen a steep decline in the share of overall venture deals across the US, hitting an all-time low of 18.6% in the first quarter of 2023.

The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank may have further exacerbated the decline in deal activity in the Bay Area. As the Bay Area's dominance wanes, VC funding is moving to other US regions, such as Miami, which saw deal count double from 2019 to 2022.

Mayor Francis Suarez's promotion of Miami as a tech and crypto hub has attracted investments while neighboring Orlando experiences an influx of established companies like Checkr and Siemens working on AI advancements. This funding shift follows the trend of tech workers seeking more affordable cities post-pandemic.

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Who’s Raising?

  • Minneapolis-based venture capital firm Arthur Ventures, specializing in early-stage North American software companies, recently secured $470 million for two new funds, marking the largest fundraising in the company's history.

Arthur Ventures will allocate $300 million to its fifth Core Fund for investing in new companies while directing the remaining $170 million to a Growth Capital fund to further support existing investments. The firm primarily focuses on software companies targeting large businesses and organizations. In 2022, US deal value for enterprise software-focused startups reached a six-year high at $453.2 million across 1,614 deals.

Arthur Ventures, holding over 50 active investments in various sectors such as financial services, cybersecurity, and IT services, will allocate $3-30 million per deal through its core fund and $10-50 million through its growth fund. The venture firm which has raised $155 million in 2019, $72.5 million in 2017, and $45 million for its inaugural fund in 2013, now manages over $1 billion in total assets with its new raise.

Startup of the Day

  • Capitola, a Mountain View-based startup developing commercial insurance technology, secured a $15.6 million Series A funding round led by Munich Re Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, which previously led the company’s $5 million seed round in 2021.

Capitola offers a cloud-based SaaS platform and marketplace for commercial insurance brokers and carriers, supporting various coverage lines and integrating with agency systems. The platform streamlines data entry and utilizes AI-driven risk appetite matching to provide coverage recommendations. Capitola claims its solution can reduce placement time by 47% and enable customers to generate 30% more business with the same resources.

Capitola highlights that brokers often spend excessive time on manual, repetitive tasks without fully utilizing data to find the necessary capacity for their clients. Capitola's AI-driven matching system not only streamlines data entry but also enhances market responsiveness by preventing brokers from sending requests to uninterested carriers. This approach improves underwriters' inbound-to-quote and quote-to-buy ratios by better aligning the supply and demand of commercial risk.

Fresh Finds

  • AutoGPT allows AI "agents" to autonomously complete tasks, leading to a revolution in productivity and a reduction in manual work.

  • A wide range of applications is offered by AutoGPT, encompassing task management, goal execution, creative design, and academic research.

  • Accessibility to AutoGPT is enhanced through an open-source web implementation built on BabyAGI, making it available to a broader audience.

Memes and Other Things

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