startups

Earlier this week, the United Kingdom announced a £1.25 billion ($1.6 billion) initiative to support the country’s startups. One program within the initiative provides £500 million in the form of loans up to £5 million that are matched by private funders to companies that have raised at least £250,000 in the last five years. The remaining £750 million will be managed by Innovate UK and provide loans and grants to R&D-focused companies. The U.K. is not the only European country to invest in startups: France announced a plan in March to spend €4.0 billion ($4.3 billion) through a combination of refinancing, early payments on tax credits and planned investments, and guarantees, and Germany has €2.0 billion ($2.2 billion) committed to funds that continue making investments.

SBA released data on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) this week for all approved loan activity through April 13 and told banks Wednesday night that the program is nearly out of funds. The data show more than 1 million loans worth more than $247 million approved across all states and territories. While the average loan is $239,000, 70 percent of the loans are less than $150,000. On average, states are seeing 3.1 loans per 1,000 population and nearly $747,000 per 1,000 population. While Texas (88,434) has seen the most loans, many Great Plains states are leading in per capita terms, with North Dakota (10.8 per 1,000 population), Wyoming (9.9), Montana (9.7), Nebraska (9.6), and South Dakota (9.0) comprising the top five. State data is in the table below. Looking at NAICS subsectors, construction is receiving the most loans with nearly 14 percent of approved funds, followed by professional services and manufacturing (each at 12 percent). According to SBA data (xls), accommodations and food services accounted for nearly 20 percent of 7(a) loan (the parent program of the PPP) volume over the past three years, but are just 9 percent of the PPP approved PPP loan volume.

While startups consistently create more jobs than older firms, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis took a look at the trends in startup’s share of jobs and found that startup employment share has been declining for more than a decade. The Fed story provides an overview of startup employment dynamics between 1994 and 2018. While it found that the construction industry and leisure and hospitality industry contributed to the decline more than did the rest of the economy, the story calls for future research into the reasons behind the decline. Specifically, it notes that questions both about a decline in startups and about a change in employment dynamics among aging firms should be explored.

Founded in 2015, venture-backed aerospace firm, Relativity Space, is poised to disrupt the rocket manufacturing and launch markets as it secures long-term contracts at NASA’s Stennis and Kennedy Space Centers. Relativity is reimagining the process to iterate and scale rockets quickly, relying on its revolutionary “Stargate” metal 3D printer and new autonomous facilities to build and launch rockets in days rather than years. The Mississippi Development Authority supplied the cost reimbursement and tax incentive package that, combined with a $59 million infrastructure investment from Relativity, enabled the firm to move into a 220,000 square foot facility, unused for the last 20 years, in southern Mississippi.

Emerging over the past five years, novel approaches to supporting early-stage cleantech development have the potential to ease the transition from invention to marketplace, according to new research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center for the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis. The report provides a comparison of some of the nation’s most notable cleantech incubators and accelerators, finding that each organization fills a unique niche and competition among them is not an issue.

Both female-founded startups and female investors have seen slow progress over the past 10 years, and still face an uphill battle for equality in the venture capital industry. While the deal count for companies founded solely by women has more than quadrupled since 2008, the share of venture dollar invested has remained nearly flat, hovering around 2.0 percent over the same time, according to PitchBook. Similarly, only 10 percent of VC ‘decision-makers’ are women, up from 5.7 percent in 2016.

Last week, U.S. trade representatives traveled to Beijing for a round of trade talks with the hope of coming to an agreement that would end the U.S.-Chinese trade dispute. Alongside large corporations, many U.S. tech startups are watching the results of these talks with a close eye because they face significant concerns over the impact that increased tariffs will have on their business. But while tariffs have garnered most of the press attention, U.S. startups also face reduced access to foreign capital, increased regulatory scrutiny, and potential talent issues. Conversely, China is developing new strategies to ensure that more investment dollars will remain in their domestic startup capital community.

While women comprise approximately 33 percent of the combined founder and employee workforce at startup companies, they hold just 9 percent of all equity value in those companies, according to The Gap Table from Carta – a software platform for managing startup equity and ownership. The new report was based upon capitalization table (cap table) data from more than 6,000 companies with a combined total of nearly $45 billion in equity value. The cap table is a list of owners of a company and includes information about the percentages of ownership, equity dilution, and value of equity in each round of investment. The researchers found that:

• Women make up 35 percent of equity-holding employees, but only hold 20 percent of employee equity; and,
• Women make up 13 percent of founders, but hold 6 percent of founder equity.

The Angel Capital Association is piloting a new report on the factors that influence successful angel investing and the startups that angels support.  The initial Angel Funders Report covers 2017 data from 26 angel groups and provides new insights for one year of investments. Some of the report’s key findings include:

A new platform to match promising start-ups with experienced business executives, investors and startup mentors from participating school’s alumni ranks is reporting momentum. Following a year of development, the University of Kentucky last month announced the launch of the Southeast Executives-on-Roster (XOR) and the Midwest Executives-on-Roster (XOR) platforms, collaborations between regionally-partnered universities to broaden access to experienced entrepreneurial talent and match that talent to university-affiliated startups in need of executive management. SSTI learned more about the program through interviews with two of the universities involved.