Dear Partners of 500 Global,

It was wonderful to see many of you at last month’s 2024 AGM and Batch 35 Demo Day in San Francisco. We were fortunate that the stars aligned such that the AGM and Demo Day could be held back to back and during SF Tech Week, allowing our LPs to make the most out of their visit to the SF Bay Area. 

The full recording of our AGM is now available here. For those of you who missed it or want to relive the experience, you can now tune in at your convenience. A few notable highlights from our discussions:

• Market Update: With increasing geopolitical challenges, persistent inflation, and political polarization becoming the new normal, 2024 has brought continued macroeconomic uncertainty. However, there are emerging positive signals that reinforce our confidence – Fed rate cuts, recent increase in deal activity, and fundraising success from certain companies with healthy fundamentals and metrics for future growth. Additionally, we observed that the number of down rounds seems to have slowed down compared to last year’s AGM and flat rounds continue to increase. Overall, exit activity and liquidity at large continue to be challenged but there is a possibility that 2024 exit activity may surpass the rates and amounts seen in 2022 and 2023 YE. 
• Flagship Funds: We shared an update on the performance of our Flagship Funds I-VI and some outsized liquidity events during the year, most notably Canva. We were also fortunate to have the founders of two of our portfolio companies, MightyFly and Play.AI, join us for engaging fireside chats. 
• Climate: Managing Partner Bedy Yang shared our thoughts on a Global South strategy projected to provide capital and education to climate related companies. The Global South is arguably the most important region to support sustainable growth and given 500’s presence in many of those markets we are exploring a dedicated climate strategy.
• AI at 500: As much as VCs are excited about AI investments, how many of them are embracing AI themselves within their firms? Managing Partner Santiago Zavala talked about how 500 is utilizing AI to digest data and gain efficiencies as a venture firm. It’s maybe not surprising this transition has initially resulted less in cost reduction, but has increased volume and accuracy of data processed.

Immediately following the AGM was our much anticipated Batch 35 Demo Day. I had the honor of kicking off the event with a fireside chat featuring Batch 12 alum Abhinav Shashank, CEO and cofounder of Innovaccer, a healthcare data and experience platform. In the 10 years since 500 first invested and Innovaccer was part of Batch 12, Innovaccer has grown into a category leader for healthcare SaaS with partners and clients like Kaiser Permanente, CommonSpirit Health, Dignity Health, and more. The audience drew a lot of inspiration from Abhninav as he reflected on his journey, hard decisions along the way of building his company, and advice he would impart to founders building today. 

As our first fully in-person batch since March 2020, Batch 35 spent the last 4 months working out of our Palo Alto HQ and hundreds of hours spent talking with and studying their core ICPs, creating and testing effective sales funnels and marketing strategies. This batch featured 17 companies building in markets such as AI Developer Tools, Fintech, Healthcare, Productivity, Fraud Prevention, Deep Fake Detection, and more. We had founders that previously led teams at companies like Meta, Stripe, Airbnb, Pendo, Amazon, Google, Twitter, RBC. We are also proud of the fact that 30% of these CEOs are women.

It is worth noting that these reflections were prepared prior to the 2024 US presidential election, an event that adds an additional layer of complexity to market forecasting. While the election results may alter the market dynamics in the short term, our commitment to supporting the best founders, wherever they may be, remains steadfast. 

Highlights From The 500 Global Portfolio

• Canva recently completed a secondary share transaction at an increased valuation of $32B USD. 
• Sakana AI announced $214M of funding for their Series A, including backers NEA, Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital and 500 Global, as well as several major Japanese investors. They also announced a collaboration with NVIDIA around research, infrastructure, and AI community building in Japan. 
• Butlr, a privacy-first ambient sensing platform, raised $38M led by Foundry, as it responds to the increased demand it has from its primary clientele, senior living communities and workplaces.
• Finally, an AI-powered, all-in-one finance and HR suite, announced their $200M Series B ($50M equity and $150M credit facility) from PeakSpan Capital and Encina. 
• Motion raised $30M USD to build the command center for creative strategists. In the last year, Motion has grown to over 1,000 customers in the direct-to-consumer and ecommerce industry, as well as the B2B SaaS and consumer app verticals. 
• Printify, an on-demand printing technology platform, announced that they are merging with Printful. The deal is anticipated to close within the next few weeks. 

500 Global Around The World

• During the United Nations General Assembly, 500 Global co-hosted a roundtable with the US-Iraq Business Council and Al Monitor. As part of this convening, Courtney Powell joined the Prime Minister of Iraq to discuss the role that entrepreneurship will play in the country’s re-development.  
• Mareme Dieng was elevated to Partner, focusing on our Africa regional strategy. This ushers in a new era of commitment to the continent. We’re excited to see how her leadership will unlock new possibilities and help address the most pressing issues, such as financial inclusion, scalable education, food security, and climate resilience.
• Khailee Ng presented at Bhutan Innovation Forum 2024 where our Southeast Asia team met with the King of Bhutan to discuss the ongoing growth and development of the country.
• 500 Global in Eurasia participated in an immersion trip to Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal with accelerator partner GITA. Pedro Vieira spoke at the conference, and 125 founders and investors connected over food & drink at our Tech & Tonic Networking Reception hosted in partnership with Intercom.

Throughout November and December, the 500 Global team will be at a number of events around the world. Please drop us a line if you’ll be at any of these below:

• November 20-21, Helsinki: SLUSH
• December 3-5, Cape Town: SuperReturn Africa
• December 5-6, Abu Dhabi: Milken Middle East & Africa Summit
• December 9-12, Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi Finance Week

Questions or thoughts to share? We’d love to hear them. Please reach us at ir@500.co.

Thank you,

Christine Tsai
CEO and Founding Partner, 500 Global