paying is the hardest part

but not just because of inflation

View this email in your browser Today's summaries save you 16 minutes of news reading! Happy Friday, Below the Fold! Shopping is top of mind as the major sales and gifting season begins. The latest gadgets are luring us all in, but one technology has been pushing its way into our lives more aggressively since the pandemic: self-checkout. They're not perfect but they get to job done most of the time — unless you're blind, deaf, or in a wheelchair. Not Everyone Can Self-Checkout Mon Nov 21 Self-checkout isn't a beloved part of the grocery shopping experience, but it's even more frustrating, if not impossible, for those with disabilities. The troubles range from the lack of space for a wheelchair (and thus a screen that's out of reach for those shoppers) to being inoperable by the blind as the only interface is a touchscreen. But stores have been allowed to keep the systems as-is because an employee is often made available to those who need assistance. However, there have been accusations of employees stealing from the blind person they were asked to assist. There are also fears that those requesting assistance are left to the mercy of bad actors pretending to be helpful employees when a store is short staffed. One disability-rights lawyer says that, beyond those issues, those with disabilities should be able to reap the benefits that everyone else does from self-checkout (such as privacy). Turns out, everyone else (including the stores themselves) also dislikes self-checkout. The machines are pricey, glitchy, and can lead to smaller sales. Then there are issues with frustrated customers scanning incorrectly or being confused by how a product is priced and weighed, not to mention how much easier it is to shoplift with self-checkout. In fact, losses are 77% higher if 50% of a store's transactions are through self-checkout. So why is self-checkout here to stay? Fewer employees means reduced labor costs. At least one estimate put savings at up to 66%. Customers think it's faster, but it's because they're being kept busy by doing the work themselves. Contactless transactions are more hygienic (as long as stations are cleaned frequently). Everyone else is doing it, leaving stores fearful of falling behind competitors. Globally, the self-checkout systems market is projected to reach $6.6B by 2027, over double its size in 2020 at $3.1B. The U.S. market alone was $1.3B in 2020. With such a strong future ahead, the U.S. government has recognized the need to regulate soon. The Access Board, a federal agency promoting equal rights for people with disabilities, has already developed guidelines for self-checkout systems but is waiting for an agency with enforcement powers to adopt them. BELOW THE FOLD BYTES Parched from Drought, California Approves Desalination Plant   "Water, water everywhere Nor any drop to drink." — unless you're willing to spend the $330M necessary to generate 4.8M gallons a day. California is approving its second desalination plant as water supplies get desperately low. The Central Valley, which supplies 25% of the U.S.'s food and 40% of its fruit and nuts, has been hit the worst but the state overall has lost $3B to the drought. Still, the desalination plant has not been without debate as it will increase water bills by $47-$50 per month. >> Read More Former Paralymic Athlete is World's First "Parastronaut"   The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected its first new class of astronauts in 13 years. Among the 17 selected is British paralympic athlete and surgeon, John McFall. McFall had his leg amputated after a motorcycle crash when he was 19 years old. With McFall, ESA hopes to better understand the types of accommodations needed when sending parastronauts to space. For instance, how the parastronauts might anchor themselves in microgravity or what adjustments should be made to the space suits. >> Read More 🎬 Action of the Week   While public comment has closed for the Access Board's proposed guidelines, learn more about the ongoing fight for accessible self-service kiosks on this blog: Law Office of Lainey Feingold. THIS WEEK'S SOURCES The Wall Street Journal: Inaccessible Self-Checkouts 6 minutes | 4 days ago CNN: Univeral(ly Disliked) Self-Checkout 6 minutes | 4 months ago Nerd Wallet: Self-Checkouts: Pros and Cons 4 minutes | 9 months ago CLASSIFIEDS Being informed is a priority for our readers, but paywalls can be a huge barrier. Sometimes we just need to read that one article from that one publisher, but we can't pay for just that article. We have to purchase a whole subscription. Not anymore! Zette gives you pay-per-article access to premium journalism. For just $9.99 a month, you can unlock 30 articles from behind paywalls with Zette's browser extension. With Zette, you can open, read, and share premium content while still supporting the important journalism from local papers to national outlets! Join the waitlist today and be the among first to download the Zette browser extension.   >> Join the Waitlist Today ASCII-ING ABOUT THE NEWS . _|_ .-' '-. / \ ^^^^^|^^^^^ | ejm97 \_/ Why are you selling your umbrella? I'm moving to California. I need every penny to pay for water. Art Credit: asciiart.eu Share Tweet Forward to Friend Copyright © 2022 Below the Fold, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: Below the Fold 2261 Market St # 4135 San Francisco, CA 94114-1612 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Europe warms on ESG

Charting European VC valuations; H&F, Permira seal $10B Zendesk deal; Ramani rakes in $32M; Pinata grabs $10M

Read online | Don't want to receive these emails? Manage your subscription. Log in The Daily Pitch: VC, PE and M&A November 25, 2022 The Daily Pitch is powered by PitchBook's industry-defining research and best-in-class data In today's Daily Pitch, you'll find: European ESG investing may be partly to blame as oil companies in the region miss out on stock boosts expected from the recent energy crisis. As many late-stage and pre-IPO companies fail to hit revenue projections, some are slashing their internal valuations. Five charts showing how European VC valuations fared in Q3.   Today's Top Stories   Europe warms on ESG, leaving its oil leaders out in the cold (Lukasz Z/Shutterstock) In a year when an energy crisis in Europe has sent the stock prices of US oil companies soaring, their European counterparts haven't felt the same bump. ESG may be to blame—at least in part. European sustainable funds have attracted large number of assets, reducing the amount of capital flowing into oil companies, according to a recent Morningstar report. Oil investors have likewise cooled on European oil majors, which are investing more aggressively in the energy transition than their global peers. read it now   Share: European Q3 venture valuation trends in five charts (Martin Diebel/Getty Images) European VC valuations have maintained their upwards trajectory despite more challenging market conditions. Here we share five charts showing how valuations fared in Q3, offering a window into the health of the European startup ecosystem. read more   Share: More cuts in late-stage valuations loom, as startups miss revenue targets (kan_chana/Shutterstock) Many late-stage and pre-IPO companies are failing to hit their revenue projections. That's according to Kroll, a business valuations consultancy that advises companies on their internal valuations, known as 409A valuations. If Kroll's sample is any guide, it would indicate that startups are in much worse shape than was believed until recently. The appraiser has advised nearly 50% of the late-stage companies it analyzed over the last few months to lower their 409A valuations. read more   Share: Why some investors may have rose-tinted glasses (Chloe Ladwig/PitchBook News) Private equity has a reputation for surviving, and even thriving, in most economic crises, thanks in part to its illiquid nature and focus on long-term horizons. However, while this quality can insulate investors from economic volatility, at times it can also insulate them from reality. It has been a bad year for public markets, but it is harder to say how PE has fared. Fundraising and dealmaking have cooled off, but in both cases, this still only really reflects a return to activity pre-2021. Even so, the fear rippling through the public markets has not carried over to PE investors. Instead, the industry is cautiously optimistic—even confident—about its ability to ride out the economic and financial storm, with investors' portfolios sufficiently diversified to absorb any unfolding economic shock. A part of this optimism could be chalked up to genuine resilience, but there is also something to be said about the way fund managers report their portfolio performance and how this could contribute to a relatively rose-tinted view. read more   Share: Recommended Reads What fleeing Twitter users will—and won't—find on Mastodon. [The New Yorker] The Labor Department is reversing regulations that made it harder for retirement savers to invest based on ESG principles. [The Wall Street Journal] A look at The White House's plans to colonize the moon. [Vox]   Since yesterday, the PitchBook Platform added: 330 Deals 1547 People 497 Companies 18 Funds See what our data software can do   Quick Takes     The Daily Benchmark     2017 Vintage Global PE Funds with more than $1B     People     Calpers appoints new PE team lead     VC Deals     Celebal grabs $32M     Ramani raises $32M     Pinata secures $10M     Harvey rakes in $5M     RedBrick AI lands $4M+     PE Deals     H&F, Permira seal $10B Zendesk deal     First Reserve's IOG Resources II buys gas assets     Vista Equity eyes Coupa Software take-private     Exits & IPOs     NewSpring exits Avantus through $590M QinetiQ deal     Fundraising     Apollo closes Accord+ Fund on $2B+     Raven raises $834M for credit fund     Investors     Adani seeks $5B in equity financing       The Daily Benchmark   2017 Vintage Global PE Funds with more than $1B Median IRR 26.08% Top Quartile IRR 35.22% 1.78x Median TVPI Select top performers HgCapital Genesis 8 Veritas Capital Fund VI Clearlake Capital Partners V *IRR: net of fees 55 Funds in Benchmark » Check out the latest version of PitchBook Benchmarks   People   Calpers appoints new PE team lead Calpers has appointed Anton Orlich as leader of its restructured private market investment program, a consolidation of the system's private equity and growth-and-innovation programs. The team is tasked with growing the pension fund's PE assets from 8% to 13% of the total portfolio. View details       VC Deals   Celebal grabs $32M Software services startup Celebal Technologies has raised $32 million from Norwest Venture Partners in its first institutional round. View round   View similar company »   Ramani raises $32M Tanzanian supply chain tech startup Ramani has secured $32 million in a Series A led by Flexcap Ventures and Jared Schreiber, TechCrunch reported. View round   View similar company »   Pinata secures $10M Pinata, a tech platform for frontline workers, has raised a $10 million Series A led by M13 and Bullpen Capital. View round   View similar company »   Harvey rakes in $5M Legal-tech company Harvey, which uses natural language processing to automate legal work, has secured $5 million led by the OpenAI Startup Fund, TechCrunch reported. View round   View similar company »   RedBrick AI lands $4M+ Healthtech startup RedBrick AI has raised a $4.6 million seed round led by Surge, Sequoia India and Southeast Asia's rapid scale-up program. View round   View similar company »     PE Deals   H&F, Permira seal $10B Zendesk deal Hellman & Friedman and Permira, among other investors, have closed on their $10.2 billion acquisition of Zendesk. The firms paid $77.50 in cash per share to take the customer service software specialist private. View deal   View 77 competitors »   First Reserve's IOG Resources II buys gas assets IOG Resources II, an oil and gas company backed by First Reserve, has acquired a set of gas-producing assets in Pennsylvania. National Fuel Gas affiliate Seneca Resources operates the wellbores. View deal   View similar company »   Vista Equity eyes Coupa Software take-private Vista Equity Partners has been in talks with Coupa Software as the firm considers making a bid for the company, Bloomberg reported. The business expense management SaaS company went public on the Nasdaq in 2016. View details   View 20 competitors »     Exits & IPOs   NewSpring exits Avantus through $590M QinetiQ deal NewSpring Capital has closed on the sale of Avantus Federal to QinetiQ Group's US division, a deal that values Avantus at $590 million. QinetiQ US engineers digital products for the Defense Department and intelligence agencies. NewSpring acquired Avantus through a leveraged buyout in 2018. View details View 28 competitors »   Fundraising   Apollo closes Accord+ Fund on $2B+ Apollo Global Management has closed its latest special situations fund, Apollo Accord+ Fund, on $2.4 billion. The closed-end fund seeks to invest in multi-asset credit opportunities. View fund   View 767 investments »   Raven raises $834M for credit fund Raven Capital Management has raised $834 million for Raven Asset-Based Credit Fund II, and launched another fund, Raven Evergreen Credit Fund II. The firm plans to lend senior secured loans in North America with an asset-based focus. View fund   View 13 investments »     Investors   Adani seeks $5B in equity financing Adani Enterprises and other companies owned by Indian business leader Gautam Adani have been seeking to raise roughly $5 billion from sovereign wealth funds in order to improve their debt-to-equity ratios, Bloomberg reported. Potential investors include Mubadala, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. View details   View similar company »     Chart of the Day   "One noteworthy platform creation in the ambulatory surgical space was TPG's investment in Blue Cloud Pediatric Surgery Centers via The Rise Fund, the firm's impact investment arm. Blue Cloud seeks to address significant unmet demand for Medicaid-eligible pediatric and IDD oral surgery—a niche that is also being addressed by VC-backed OFFOR Health." Source: PitchBook's Q3 2022 Healthcare Services Report   Who's in the newsletter today? People Gautam Adani Jared Schreiber Investors Abu Dhabi Investment Authority Bullpen Capital Canada Pension Plan Investment Board First Reserve Flexcap Ventures Hellman & Friedman M13 Mubadala NewSpring Capital Norwest Venture Partners OpenAI Startup Fund Permira QinetiQ Group Sequoia India and Southeast Asia Surge Vista Equity Partners Companies Adani Enterprises Apollo Global Management Avantus Federal Calpers Celebal Technologies Coupa Software Harvey National Fuel Gas Pinata Ramani Raven Capital Management Seneca Resources Zendesk gas-producing assets   About PitchBook | Terms of use | Advertise with us | Contact Follow us: This email was sent to pitchbook@quicklydone.com via the PitchBook Platform. Do you want to change your email address, get a different edition or unsubscribe? Manage your subscription here. © 2022 PitchBook. Win what's next. All rights reserved.