Betting on upcoming startup markets

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Betting on upcoming startup markets

This week M25, a venture capital concern focused on investing in the Midwest of the United States, announced a new fund worth $31.8 million. As the firm noted in a release that The Exchange reviewed, its new fund is about three times the size of its preceding investment vehicle.

I caught up with M25 partner Mike Asem to chat about the round. Asem joined M25 in 2016 after partner Victor Gutwein spearheaded the effort with a small $1 million fund. Asem and Gutwein have led the firm since its first material, if technically second fund.

Asem said that his team had targeted a $25 million to $30 million fund three, meaning that they came in a bit higher than anticipated in fundraising terms. That's not a surprise in today's venture capital market, given the pace at which capital is both invested into VC funds and startups.

The investor told The Exchange that M25 has been investing out of its third fund for some time, including CASHDROP, a startup that I've heard good things about regarding its growth rate. (More here on the CASHDROP round that M25 put capital into.)

All that's fine, but what makes M25 an interesting bet is that the firm only invests in Midwest-headquartered startups. Often when I chat to a fund that has a unique geographical focus, it's merely that, a focus. As opposed to M25's more hard-and-fast rule. Now with more capital and plans to take part in 12-15 deals per year, the group can double down on its thesis.

Per Asem, M25 has done about a third of its deals in Chicago, where it's based, but has put capital into startups in 24 cities thus far. TechCrunch covered one of those companies, Metafy, earlier this week when it closed more than $5 million in new capital.

Why does M25 think that the Midwest is the place to deploy capital and generate outsize returns? Asem listed a number of perspectives that underpin his team's thesis: The Midwest's economic might, the network that his partner and him developed in the area before founding M25, and the fact that valuations can prove to be more attractive in the region at the stage that his firm invests. They are sufficiently different, he said, that his firm can generate material returns even with exits at around the $100 million mark, a lower threshold than most VCs with larger capital vehicles might find palatable.

M25 is not alone in its bets on alternative regions. The Exchange also chatted with Somak Chattopadhyay of Armory Square Ventures on Friday, a firm that is based in upstate New York and invests in B2B software companies in what we might call post-manufacturing cities. One of its investments has gone public, and the group's latest fund is a multiple of the size of its first. Armory now has around $60 million in AUM.

All that's to say that the venture capital boom is not merely helping firms like a16z raise another billion here, or another billion there. But the generally hot market for startups and private capital is helping even smaller firms raise more capital to take on less traditional spaces. It's heartening.

On-demand pricing, and grokking the insurance game

This week The Exchange chatted with Twilio CFO Khozema Shipchandler about his company's earnings report. You can read more on the hard numbers here. The short gist is that it was a good quarter. But what mattered most in our chat was Shipchandler riffing on where the center of gravity at Twilio will remain in revenue terms.

Briefly, Twilio is best known for building APIs that allow developers to leverage telecom services. Those developers and their employers pay for as much Twilio as they used. But over time Twilio has bought more and more companies, building out a diverse product set after its 2016-era IPO.

So we were curious: Where does the company stand on the on-demand versus SaaS pricing debate that is currently raging in the software world? Staunchly in the first camp, still, despite buying Segment, which is a SaaS service. Per Shipchandler, Twilio revenue is still more than 70% on-demand, and the company wants to make sure that its customers only buy more of its services as they sell more of their own.

Startups, then, probably don't have to give up on on-demand pricing as they scale. Twilio is huge and is sticking to it!

Then there was Root's earnings report. Again, here are the core numbers. The Exchange is keeping tabs on Root's post-IPO performance not only because it was a company we tracked extensively during its late private life, but also because it is a bellwether of sorts for the yet-private, neoinsurane companies. Which matters for fellow neoinsurance player Hippo, as it is going public via a SPAC.

Alex Timm, Root's CEO, said that his firm performed well in the first quarter, generating more direct written premium than anticipated, and at better loss-rates to boot. The company also remains very cash-rich post IPO, and Timm is confident that his company's data science work has lots more room to improve Root's underwriting models.

So, faster-than-expected growth, lots of cash, improving economics and a bullish technology take - Root's stock is flying, right? No, it is not. Instead Root has taken a bit of a public-market pounding in recent months. The Exchange asked Timm about the disparity between how he views his company's performance and future, and how it is being valued. He said that the insurance folks don't always get its technology work and that tech folks don't always grok Root's insurance business.

That's tough. But with years and years of cash at its current burn rate, Root has more than enough space to prove its critics wrong, provided that its modeling holds up over the next dozen quarters or so. Its share price can't be great for the yet-private neoinsurance companies, however. Even if Next Insurance did just raise another grip of cash at another new, higher valuation.

Corporate spend's big week

As you've read by now, Bill.com is buying corporate-spend unicorn Divvy for $2.5 billion. I dug into the numbers behind the deal here, if that's your sort of thing.

But after collecting notes from the CEOs of Divvy competitors Ramp and Brex here, another bit of commentary came in that I wanted to share. Thejo Kote, the corporate spend startup Airbase's CEO and founder did some math on Divvy's results that Bill.com shared with its own investors, arguing that the company's March payment volume and active customer account implies that the company's average spend volume per customer was $44,400 per month."

Is that good or bad? Kote is not impressed, saying that Airbase's average spend volume per customer is almost 10 [times] that of Divvy," or around $375,000 per month." What's driving that difference? A focus on larger customers, and the fact that Airbase covers more ground, in Kote's view, than Divvy by encompassing software work that Bill.com itself and Expensify manage.

I bring you all of this as the war in managing spend for companies large and small is heating up in software terms. With Divvy off the table, Ramp is now perhaps the largest player in the space not charging for the software it wraps around corporate cards. Brex recently launched a software product that it charges for on a recurring basis. (More on Brex at this link, if you are into it.)

Various and sundry

Two final notes for you, things that should make you either laugh, grimace, or howl:

1. The Wall Street Journal's Eliot Brown tweeted some data this week from the Financial Times, namely that amongst the roughly 40 SPACs that completed deals last year, a dozen and a half have lost more than half their value. And that the average drop amongst the combined entities is 38%. Woof.
2. And, finally, welcome to peak everything.

More to come next week, including notes on the return of the Kaltura and Procore IPOs, and whatever it is we can suss out from the Krispy Kreme S-1 filing, as donuts are life.

Alex