has been working with banks to sell off VC fund investments in the secondary market, . It鈥檚 unclear what stakes the firm tried to sell, or if it was successful.

Tiger Global was an incredibly active investor in the tech ecosystem during the pandemic-era funding boom, and it also contributed investments to several VC firms during this time period. According to 附近上门 data, the firm invested in 139 startups in the first quarter of 2022 alone.聽

But following a dramatic dip in the stock market in 2022, and its ripples in the private market, Tiger Global reported in fundraising documents that its portfolio companies . Tiger Global, one of the largest investors in tech at the time, quickly stopped its investment streak. Per 附近上门 data, the company only invested in 45 startups in the latter half of 2022.聽

A bleak private market ahead?

It鈥檚 a clear sign that Tiger Global, and perhaps the venture community at large, isn鈥檛 confident in a market bounce back anytime soon. Tiger Global was one of the first wealth management companies back in February 2022. Indeed, global venture funding continues to slow down in Q1 2023, save for the tech world鈥檚 recent obsession with generative artificial intelligence.

But it looks like things are looking up for the company, albeit only slightly. Tiger Global鈥檚 hedge fund posted 7.3% gains in the first quarter of 2023, . The firm鈥檚 fund dropped 56% and its long-only fund dropped 67% between 2021 and 2022 (to recoup losses, each fund would need to see a gain of 144% and 216% respectively).聽

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and 鈥攖he two firms that used to regularly top our most active and spendiest venture investor rankings鈥攃ut back sharply in the third quarter. Both firms face well-publicized woes, with Tiger reeling from declines in its public tech portfolio and SoftBank cutting staff in the face of steep losses.

That leaves and in first and second place, respectively, for most active global lead venture investor in Q3. While both those firms also cut back dealmaking activity in the quarter, they did so at a less dramatic pace.

To see how firms and recent quarters compare, below we lay out the ranking for the most active venture and growth lead investors in 2022, comparingfor Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2022:

Notably, there wasn鈥檛 a single firm on the list above that increased its lead deal pace in Q3. That鈥檚 not too surprising, given the general investment environment. Global venture funding for the third quarter, which totaled $81 billion, was down 53% year over year and 33% quarter over quarter, according to a 附近上门 News analysis.

Most active participating investors

While some firms are known for leading rounds, other venture investors more frequently take a smaller stake. Below, we tally up the most active venture investors across all rounds, including those they led and those in which they participated.

For an idea of who spent the most money, we tallied up the total dollars invested in each investor’s rounds. (This offers a general idea of how much is spent, but not a specific one, given that rounds with multiple investors rarely specify how much each backer contributed.)

Here, Andreessen Horowitz is once again in the lead, followed by BlackRock and Sequoia Capital. Once again, everyone on the list participated in deals that collectively raised less in Q3 than in Q2.

Seed slows too

Seed investment has shown more modest declines than other stages. But still, funding is down and the most active firms are doing fewer deals.

To get a clearer idea, we look at the most active seed-stage investors for the past three quarters below:

As you can see, the most active seed investor remained , which has topped the ranks for every quarter this year. In second place was , a U.S. angel network with a diversity focus.聽

No one was scaling up. Rather, every seed investor in our most active list did fewer deals in Q3 than in Q2.聽

Is this the bottom?

There鈥檚 a case to be made that the current dealmaking slowdown will likely be temporary. As investors held back on consummating rounds, it鈥檚 likely less about disinterest in the current crop of startups and more about valuations.

With the slump in public tech and biotech stocks, investors are having to lower valuations for their private portfolios. As a result, startups with the means to do so largely prefer delaying their next financing rather than doing a down round. Moreover, during a period of resetting valuations, it鈥檚 harder for investors and startup teams to reach consensus on terms.

Still, there is some broader slowing going on too. For initial seed deals, for instance, down rounds aren鈥檛 a concern, and yet we鈥檙e still seeing a pullback.聽

Nonetheless, the most active check writers are still writing a lot of checks. While they may be scaling back, none of the top startup investors appear to be abandoning the asset class.

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And, sometimes, it’s all about OKRs.

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, a Bellevue-based startup, announced its Series B this morning, a $15 million round led by . The OKR-focused software startup (it was announced in August), an $8 million round led by . That makes Ally’s Series B a rapid-fire deal led by a firm that normally writes much larger checks.

I had to figure out what was going on.

Roots

Ally founder worked at Microsoft in the past, explaining the location of his new company. (Microsoft is headquartered in nearby Redmond.) But despite spending north of a decade at the software giant, Vellore wanted to build a company on his own.

So, he founded , a company that he later sold to a private equity shop. Chronus focused on mentoring, incidentally, something that Vellore said he received lots of at Microsoft and that he considers having “super-high ROI.”

Vellore’s interest in how people work included reading up on how product development has changed, namely how the software development model has changed from the “waterfall” method (big, irregular releases) to the “agile” method (smaller, rapid-fire releases).

Hunting for other models concerning how business might change, Vellore ran across OKRs, a neat method for corporate planning that companies seem to mainly execute in spreadsheets. As anything currently done by spreadsheets is an opportunity for a SaaS play, he founded Ally.

OKRs

“OKR” is an acronym for “objectives and key results.” The concept is famous () and somewhat simple to understand if tricky to execute. An objective is a goal that the company thinks will bring it closer to its mission. Each objective has a number of key results, achievable targets that are usually approached over the next quarter.

A candy company that wants to become the most beloved confectionery in the world might have an objective to delight its customers with new treats. It might then set up key results for that objective, like the invention and sale of three new packaged delights in the quarter, the maintenance of its current customer satisfaction scores across its entire line, and the addition of a new membership model to further entrench itself into consumers’ sweet tooths.

Each key result should be trackable as the quarter progresses, helping the OKR-guided company in question grade itself as it works towards its objectives. At the end of the quarter, each key result is graded, giving each objective a final score.

It’s simple enough in theory. In practice, setting intelligent OKRs is harder than you’d think (our candy example is terrible and unfocused, for example; I could use another americano), and getting employees to not only participate in the planning model but regularly track their efforts against their key results can prove irksome.

Ally wants to make all this a bit easier. By integrating into Slack and other daily-use tools, the company wants to help “ease people into OKRs” according to Vellore, helping employees create intelligent objectives and key results and keep them updated.

So far it seems to be working.

Three Rounds, One Year

Rewinding, Vellore told 附近上门 News that Ally raised a $3 million Seed round in January. That was followed by its $8 million Series A this summer and today’s $15 million Series B. Asked why he raised again, and why Tiger Global had led such a comparatively modest round, Vellore said that , who in Ally’s Series A, introduced the company to someone at his former employer (Tiger Global).

The introduction went well, and Ally wound up raising $15 million now instead of what Vellore hypothesized could have been a $30 million round in a year and a half.

Translating all of that into something understandable, Ally’s Series A investor introduced him to someone at a huge hedge fund who decided to put money into Ally quickly as it looked like an attractive bet. In 2019, rapid-fire venture rounds ahead of normal timings aren’t rare.

Ally has big aspirations. Saying that it wants to build a sort of “operating system” for how businesses run, Ally is hiring quickly (doubling its headcount in Q3) and growing its customer base (100 new customers in the same period).

Now it has even more money, and if there is any company that should be good at planning its next steps, it’s Ally. Let’s see what the company can get done now that it is — surely — done fundraising for a bit.

Correction: An earlier version of this story indicated that Lee Fixel worked for Accel. It now accurately reflects that he took part in Ally’s Series A which Accel led, but was not part of the venture firm during the deal.

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The prolific is leading the extension, which also includes 鈥渟ignificant participation鈥� from , SendBird鈥檚 initial Series B lead. This means that SendBird鈥檚 Series B now amounts to $102 million. That鈥檚 a pretty big jump from a $16 million in 2017.

SendBird, which first started in 2013 as a B2C application company, evolved into a messaging platform after building one for its own needs. After applying to , the startup launched its first messaging product in January 2016. Since then it has 鈥渕ore than鈥� tripled its ARR every year, according to founder and CEO , who declined to reveal just what that ARR is.

Other growth metrics it did provide: in 2018, the company tripled the number of messages sent through its platform, surpassing 1 billion messages per month. It also grew to聽more than 50 million monthly active users and 16 million daily active users. Headcount grew by 180 percent last year and has increased from 70 to 98 since January, according to the company. Customers include the NBA, Yahoo! Sports, and Indonesia’s , among others.

On its growth metrics alone, SendBird certainly fits the profile of the kind of high-growth private company we like to cover. Plus, the SaaS space is just hot, as our EIC Alex wrote in February. At that time, he noted that SendBird鈥檚 Series B part 1 came at a time when public companies operating in similar spaces were posting sharp gains. , in particular, had been on a tear in the public markets in recent quarters.

The addition of Tiger Global as an investor happened quickly, and perhaps a little unexpectedly, according to Kim.

鈥淎fter announcing our Series B, a lot of hedge funds and investment firms reached out,鈥� he told 附近上门 News. 鈥淲e鈥檇 heard great things about Tiger Global and liked that they had invested in a lot of successful companies in the consumer space. We also thought they had a good overlap in their portfolio of our ideal customers in terms of target market鈥e had a term sheet one day after our meeting with them. It was an incredibly fast process.鈥�

That prompted existing investor Iconiq to contribute to the second part of the Series B. (Kim said for legal reasons, the startup had to extend that round, rather than create a Series C, because the raises happened so close together) SendBird has recently opened offices in Singapore, London and Bengaluru and generally plans to focus on its go-to-market strategy with its new capital, according to Kim. The company currently operates in 150 countries and also aims to continue expanding globally, with an emphasis on hiring in the United States and Korea, he said.

, general partner at ICONIQ Capital, said his firm invested in both tranches of the Series B round because of its belief that 鈥淪endBird has emerged as the category leader, recognizing the immense demand from businesses for a chat and messaging solution and meeting these needs with a customer-focused product and API.”

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and led the round, which also included participation from existing investors , and funds and accounts managed by .

The raise comes about eight months after Toast reached unicorn status when it brought in $115 million in a that included participation from Tiger Global, T. Rowe Price,聽and . (Read more about that here.) It also takes the Boston company鈥檚 total raised since its inception in 2011 to just .

While Toast did not give exact revenue numbers, it did note in its press release that revenue in 2018. The company isn’t releasing specific metrics around growth in ARR, but Toast Senior Vice President of Marketing told 附近上门 News that it was 鈥渞oughly the same鈥� last year. It鈥檚 that kind of impressive growth that new investor TCV found particularly appealing.

TCV General Partner said his firm has been watching the company over the past few years and has been impressed with its ability to move from a POS (point-of-sale) product to an operating system for a restaurant, with both front office and back office functionalities. The evolution has resulted in a number of different revenue streams for the company.

鈥淰ery few companies are able to scale at these rates while maintaining or improving their growth rate and efficiencies,鈥� Yuan, who will join Toast鈥檚 board of directors, told 附近上门 News. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e executed incredibly well, building a big go-to-market.鈥�

Founded in late 2011 by , , and , Toast first launched its product in 2013. It currently boasts that 鈥渢ens of thousands of restaurants鈥� are powered by its platform. In 2018 alone, the number of restaurants more than doubled, according to the company.

The 1,500-person company said it plans to invest over $1 billion in R&D over the next five years 鈥渢o continue building software and hardware designed specifically for the restaurant industry.鈥�

Its products include Toast Go, a mobile point-of-service platform, and Toast Guest Feedback, which are both aimed at helping restaurants speed up service 鈥渂y up to 40 percent,鈥� boost revenue and get real-time customer feedback.

鈥淭he adoption of [Toast Go] really accelerated growth and has also had a big impact in terms of visibility for Toast,鈥� Hamilton said. He also said that the on-demand economy represents opportunities to elevate the guest experience as well.

鈥淩estauranteurs are increasingly having to navigate this on-demand economy both from a physical perspective in the restaurant and from a digital perspective,鈥� Hamilton expressed.

鈥淲e鈥檒l always look at different paths to growth. Historically we’ve focused entirely on building and releasing our own capabilities,鈥� Hamilton said in response to our queries about future acquisitions.

Toast also plans to use the new capital to do more hiring in its R&D, customer success, and sales and marketing departments.

So far in 2019 Toast said it has hired on-the-ground employees across the U.S. in addition to engineering teams in Dublin, Ireland by recruiting from the software, financial technology, and food & beverage industries.

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