> Cabify and Easy formed a strategic alliance to combine their investor base and expand services in Latin America. READ LAVCA’s analysis of recent LatAm rideshare investments in Cabify and 99.
> Financial Times’ Special Report Mexico: Innovation and Technology says, "Venture capital investors say it has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur in Mexico. International funds are increasingly active in the country, while government agencies are also financing start-ups."
> Miami Herald covers The Venture City, a new accelerator for the global tech ecosystem founded by Laura González-Estéfani, former director of international business development and mobile partnerships for Facebook, and Clara Bullrich, a private banking and asset management veteran formerly with Guggenheim Partners.
> OZY looks at the Netshoes IPO in the context of Brazil’s corruption scandal in Brazilian Business Goes Global -- Here Comes the Culture Shock.
> Quartz: Y Combinator will accept 10,000 startups to prove there’s nothing magical about Silicon Valley. And 1,500 startups just competed in Y Combinator’s first online Startup School.
> WSJ says Tencent “has quietly become China’s top corporate investor in Silicon Valley”—What Does China’s Tencent Want With Silicon Valley?
> #CVC Orange Digital Ventures, the early stage investment fund of French telco giant Orange, is launching a new €50m Africa-focused investment program for startups. From tech.eu:
The investment division, which will be led by a team in Dakar to be set up in September, is dedicated to verticals like fintech, IoT, energy, and e-health. It will invest in both Africa-based startups and startups that are tackling issues in Africa.
According to Orange, one in 10 African inhabitants is an Orange customer.
> RELATED: Quartz has data demonstrating Africa is an under-capitalized market in terms of venture funding.
> TechCrunch: Venture investing in the US and Europe are totally different industries:
The average US venture capital exit is nearly US$200m, versus US$70m for Europe. The number of US$250m exits during this five-year period? 22 across all of Europe, versus 166 in the US. That’s a huge, persistent disparity, especially given the evolution of European venture over the past decade…. The above has nothing to do with ambition, it simply reflects a current reality slowly changing; to make significant returns, CEO’s and investors need to invest less into more capital-efficient businesses that can return enough in a smaller, though successful exit.