Venture capital is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some species of property. Types of investments include equity, debt, securities, real estate, infrastructure, currency, commodity, token, derivatives such as put and call options, futures, forwards, etc. This definition makes no distinction between the investors in the primary and secondary markets. That is, someone who provides a business with capital and someone who buys a stock are both investors. An investor who owns stock is a shareholder.
Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term seed suggests that this is a very early investment, meant to support the business until it can generate cash of its own, or until it is ready for further investments. Seed money options include friends and family funding, seed venture capital funds, angel funding, and crowdfunding.
A business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services starting with management training and office space and ending with venture capital financing. The National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) defines business incubators as a catalyst tool for either regional or national economic development. NBIA categorizes its members' incubators by the following five incubator types: academic institutions; non-profit development corporations; for-profit property development ventures; venture capital firms, and a combination of the above.
Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
A second bank rescue package totalling at least £50 billion was announced by the British government on 12 January 2009, as a response to the then-ongoing Financial crisis of 2007–2008. The package was designed to increase the amount of money that banks could lend to businesses and private individuals. This aid came in two parts: an initial £50 billion made available to big corporate borrowers, and a second undisclosed amount that formed a form of insurance against banks suffering big losses.
Impact investing refers to investments "made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return". At its core, impact investing is about an alignment of an investor's beliefs and values with the allocation of capital to address social and/or environmental issues.
The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) is the largest entrepreneur assistance organization in the state of Oregon. As such, this not-for-profit organization provides resources and support for emerging, growth-oriented companies in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.
The Cape Silicon Initiative or Silicon Cape is a regional ICT business networking NPO and community in the Western Cape, South Africa.
Entrepreneurial finance is the study of value and resource allocation, applied to new ventures. It addresses key questions which challenge all entrepreneurs: how much money can and should be raised; when should it be raised and from whom; what is a reasonable valuation of the startup; and how should funding contracts and exit decisions be structured.
Headquartered downtown Toronto at Toronto Metropolitan University, the DMZ is a leading startup tech incubator for startups to grow and scale their businesses. In April 2015, the Incubator rebranded from the Digital Media Zone to "DMZ" signalling their transition to supporting sector agnostic startups.
Revenue-based financing is a type of financial capital provided to small or growing businesses in which investors inject capital into a business in return for a fixed percentage of ongoing gross revenues, with payment increases and decreases based on business revenues, typically measured as monthly revenue.
Crowdcube is a British investment crowdfunding platform, established by Darren Westlake and Luke Lang in 2011.
AngelList is a U.S. website for fundraising and connecting startups, angel investors, and limited partners. Founded in 2010, it started as an online introduction board for tech startups that needed seed funding. Since 2015, the site allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge. Created by serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi in 2010, Avlok Kohli has been leading AngelList as its CEO since 2019.
OurCrowd is an online global venture investing platform that empowers institutions and individual accredited investors to invest and engage in emerging technology companies at an early stage while still privately held. Based in Jerusalem, the company launched in February 2013, and has since opened overseas branches in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Spain, Singapore, Brazil, and the UAE.
Nevzat Aydın is a Turkish internet entrepreneur, angel investor and a mentor. Aydın is the co-founder and former CEO of Yemeksepeti, the leading online food delivery portal in Turkey.
Harry Tomi Davies is a Nigerian British investor, speaker, author, entrepreneur, philanthropist and advisor to technology companies. He is the chief executive officer of TVCLabs, a technology business accelerator based in Lagos and also sits on the boards of Sproxil, Strika Entertainment, TechnoVision Communications, PeoplePrime and MBO Capital. Davies is co-founder of the Lagos Angel Network and founding president of the African Business Angel Network.
Social entrepreneurship in South Asia involves business activities that have a social benefit, often for people at the bottom of the pyramid. It is an emerging area of entrepreneurship that is supported by both the public sector and the private sector.
Icehouse Ventures is a New Zealand-based venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Auckland and mainly focuses on the technology industry and has backed 200 companies. The firm also operates a variety of angel groups networks such as Ice Angels and Arc Angels. Icehouse Ventures was formally founded in 2019 as a separate company but had operated as part of the Icehouse group since 2001. In 2019, the founding CEO of the Icehouse stepped down as CEO and joined the board of directors of Icehouse Ventures.
