drama: founder returns for revenge

Fight Club

Hi there,

It’s that time again. We just released the quarterly MoneyTree report with PwC which looks at VC-backed trends across the globe through Q1’17.

Some highlights scattered below.

But first.

The Rumble in the Lending Jungle

LendingClub (ticker: LC) was co-founded in 2006 by Renaud Laplanche and IPO’d in 2014. All was good and then he was fired in 2016 over faulty loans and sales practices.

Now, he’s back heading up a direct competitor to LendingClub called Upgrade (more on his moves in The Blurb).

A lot has changed in the landscape since LC was founded with increased competition from the likes of everyone from Goldman to SoFi. Laplanche still has an ownership stake in LendingClub as well (to make things more interesting).

I’m looking forward to discussing the LendingClub competitive and industry landscape with the firm’s Executive Chairman, Hans Morris (also founder of Nyca Partners), and COO, Sameer Gulati, at The Future of Fintech.

Use the code AltLending to get $1000 off a ticket until April 15th.

Going up

Global deals and dollars rose in Q1’17, reaching 2,228 deals across $27.1B. North America took the lead, with $14.3B invested across 1,163 deals. Asia saw over a half-dozen rounds over $300M during the quarter, mostly within China.

Celebrity fight club

Ultimate Fighting Championship has the most interesting investor group of any company in our database as this Business Social Graph reveals.

We got Cam Newton, Goldman Sachs, Trey Parker, Mark Wahlberg, and Guy Fieri, among others in the mix.

Good find by Cam on the CB Insights team.

Big pharma bets

We created a timeline of digital health investment activity by the top 20 pharmaceutical corporates by revenue and those corporates’ associated venture arms. The top three most active investors in digital health since 2009 are Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Johnson & Johnson.

Um, yeah

Are you an “um” person or an “uh” person?

Back to earth

While Asia saw an increase in unicorn births from Q4’16, North America remained flat with a total of 3 new unicorns. Notably, Europe has not seen a new VC-backed unicorn since the first quarter of 2016.

Bearish

US adults invested in the stock market matches a 19-year low. But they’re all super interested in equity crowdfunding, right?

The Industry Standard

CB Insights data is the most trusted by those in the industry and the media. A few recent hits.

Forbes. Robert Hof (@robhof) digs into VC funding to startups and cites data found in CB Insights’ Q1 2017 MoneyTree report with PwC.

VentureBeat. Bérénice Magistretti writes about Qualtrics’ latest round and cites CB Insights’ 2017 Tech IPO report.

LiveMint. A report on InnoVen Capital’s India investments refers to CB Insights investment data.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal

P.S. Round 3 of our most innovative consumer product since the iPhone bracket kicked off yesterday. Our closest match up so far is between Raspberry Pi and Tesla’s Powerwall. Polls close April 16th, so make sure you vote here.