Quick News №13

UK venture capital fund Firstminute Capital has closed its second $160M in Seed round. The news is interesting because Firstminute Capital has invested in over 100 unicorn startup founders — a first in venture capital history. The fund plans to continue supporting the European startup ecosystem, having made 70 investments to date, mainly in UK projects and the B2B segment.

In turn, Leta Capital plans to support overseas projects of Russian-speaking and Eastern European founders over three years: their third $100M fund was launched the other day. The focus will be on growth-stage startups from Europe, the US and the UK, as well as software, IT and internet technology sectors.

Sometimes even 1.2% is decisive. That’s how much Microsoft’s stock gained last week, pushing its market capitalization up to $2T, briefly, but for the third time since Saudi Aramco and Apple beat the historical mark. A couple of days later, Microsoft unveiled the next generation of its operating system, Windows 11. The “menu” includes a new Start menu, a rounded window redesign, a taskbar in the centre of the screen, support for Android apps, integration with Teams and much more. A major update will be released this winter.

Meanwhile, other updates, albeit in test mode, have already ended in failure for Facebook Corporation. They recently tried to integrate ads into Resolution Games’ shooter Blaston, and more specifically into the Oculus VR headset. Last week, Blaston decided to give up the experiment because of complaints from users who were not happy with the situation. We wonder how Facebook, for which advertising accounts for 97% of revenues, will deal with the situation.

The week was interesting in terms of rounds. For example, Ukrainian FinTech startup Finmap raised investment from BRISE Capital, Startup Wise Guys, Sigma Software Labs together with the Inspirium fund, as well as a number of private investors. The amount of funding was not disclosed. Launched in 2019, the project, among other things, allows businesses to monitor their financial analytics via a dashboard and filter them by project and client category. The funds will help expand the team and go towards marketing and development.

Communication agency Setters is investing $1M in HR service Budu, launched in January this year. The round includes the agency’s founders and the funds will go towards the marketing development of Budu and its own career advice project, H. At the same time, Eruditor Group (its projects include Profi.ru, Zoon and Ruki) is acquiring the psychotherapy recruitment service Meta for ₽8M. Project founder Ivan Zamesin will exit the startup in the deal. According to him, ₽8 million is all the money he has invested in Meta, but “de jure it’s a sale”.

We end Quick News with the traditional “blockchain” sector on a tumblr. Startup Rarible, a Russian-founded NFT marketplace, raised $14.2M, with US funds Venrock and CoinFund leading the round. At the same time, Peter Berezin, chief strategist at BCA Research, predicted bitcoin’s death. Both the cryptocurrency’s lingering environmental problems and its involvement in illegal transactions are playing against it. Once regulators tighten their grip on digital assets — their days can be counted backwards.

Have a productive week!