Venture capital funds have gone out of their way in the last two weeks to convey a uniform, clear and distinct message to their entrepreneurs towards the unknown. Sequoia Venture Capital Fund has advised entrepreneurs to strive for profitability and focus on increasing sales from the existing customer base; Lightspeed has found many similarities between the economic crises of 1987, 2000 and 2008; The famous start-up accelerator Y Combinator warned of a capital raising crisis that could last up to a year and asked executives to cut expenses within thirty days; The Kraft Foundation has released a viral instructional video that has already garnered close to 130,000 views; And the Insight Fund, the most prominent venture capital investor in Israel in recent years, which is also considered the great godmother of Tel Aviv unicorns, has convened more than two hundred entrepreneurs for a special zoom call aimed specifically at the Israeli market.
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Radiation is a wonderful source of knowledge and guidance in difficult times. Its managing partners have often seen more difficult days than these. But should the close conversations with the entrepreneurs be one-sided? And who will guide investors? Who will give them workshops on the big checks – sometimes too big – that were handed out to entrepreneurs, and that actually forced them to increase the value of the companies beyond what was required? Who will ask them to tighten up the way they are considering new investments? And who will explain to them how to refuse an offer from an unbaked company for an IPO?
Like the children who often pay the price for their parents’ sins, the responsibility for the high-tech crisis rests with the investors no less than with the entrepreneurs who raised capital from them. But who will give them a crisis workshop?
Here are eight interesting topics we covered this week in the high-tech and science pages of Globes:
1. The new wave of EU sanctions against Russian companies and individuals this time also included the CEO of Yandex and one of its founders, Arkady Voloz, who also holds Israeli citizenship. Its headquarters are in Israel.
2. Artificial intelligence is gradually taking over every area of our lives, and viral artwork is just the tip of the iceberg. From cancer treatment, through a bot that predicts the future of stock markets, to writing news: the promises and the price of breakthrough technologies. A special project.
3. The cuts have been here for a long time, but what does the high-tech crisis look like and what is causing the market to sit on the fence? Research Company PitchBook Reveals the incredible numbers behind the fear.
4. In recent years Cheryl Sandberg’s relationship with Mark Zuckerberg has known rebellions that have led to cuts in her powers and her resignation from the company ranging from criticism of the publication of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, through the accusation of the Cambridge Analytics affair to content management disputes. That’s how Cheryl Sandberg found herself outside of Facebook.
5. The fall in the value of high-tech companies is beginning to change the balance of power between entrepreneurs and investors. The new conditions for cash flow may now include tighter performance monitoring, allocating options to funders, and increasing their share in future exits at the expense of shares that have been allocated in recent years to employees and entrepreneurs. Globes analysis.
6. The reversal in the list of the 10 largest Israeli public companies says it all about the turmoil in the markets.
7. Prof. Caroline Bertucci is researching the sugars that envelop the living cells inspired by the hard sugar shell that protects the sensitive face in m & ms candies, and recently won the Wolf Prize for Chemistry. “My whole career has been about putting the research on sugars into biology. If we can do that, we will have better drugs,” she told the Globes.
8. The global wheat crisis is growing with the continuation of the war in Ukraine. Climate change threatens the finest wine grapes grown in California and Provence. The bee population is disappearing and puts world agriculture in real danger. Possible solutions to all these burning problems are right here, in Israel. A special agricultural project for Shavuot.