Venture capitalists were particularly bullish on DTC brands in the 2010s.

That's a significant drop from 2022’s $242B, reflecting market uncertainty but continuing VC’s role in scaling transformative ideas. Rooted in early risk-sharing models, venture capital took off with firms like ARDC in 1946, later evolving into today’s influential players like Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

When average Americans began pouring into the stock market, Wall Street wasn’t sure if its new guests were there to stay. But at the end of 2023, Public confidently declared that retail investors “weren’t going anywhere” after 30 million new individuals began buying and selling stock. Download the report to learn more here.

Household name companies such as Airbnb and Uber might not exist without venture capital, which is commonly referred to as "VC" for short.

Early-stage startups are highly risky investments. Many companies in a VC portfolio will not provide any significant return.

Dollar store retailers experienced significant fiscal gains during the 2010s, which were then accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. But in recent years, dollar stores have been closing in large numbers and suffering financial hardship. Experts point to Walmart's strategy of decreasing prices to cater to inflation-fatigued customers, and point out that when Walmart does well financially, dollar stores typically suffer.

In the early 1990s, stock brokerages knew that online trading would be a great equalizer, creating opportunities for more individuals to buy and sell stocks.

With fees removed from the equation and more time at home thanks to pandemic-related lockdowns, Americans who had never bought or sold stocks before started participating in the market. Charles Schwab dubs this cohort “Generation Investor” and notes individuals from all age ranges took part in this phenomenon. Study up here.

A reporter dove into how highly anticipated IPOs can still be risky, and why retail investors should be wary of investing right away.

The venture capital firm that kickstarted an industry.

Companies that primarily used the web as a platform for doing business were more vulnerable than companies that created technology. While hardware and software companies managed to make it to the other side, most e-commerce companies took a brutal beating and share prices plummeted.

Pets.com—an e-commerce pet store webpage—is a prime example of dot-com companies burning through investments. Despite being a popular and well-known brand, the company struggled to generate enough revenue to become profitable. After raising approximately $82.5M in its February 2000 initial public offering, Pets.com filed for bankruptcy in November of that same year.

A look at the dot-com bubble, when investors poured money into unproven internet startups, driving the Nasdaq to dizzying heights before it crashed by more than 80% after 2000, showing how new technologies can detach markets from reality.

For retail investors, the stakes may seem higher and more personal. Critics say that this dynamic means that retail investors are more susceptible to behavioral biases that could lead them to make poor decisions when it comes to buying and selling assets. For instance, fear of missing out could cause a retail investor to buy a stock that is popular but not a financially worthy investment.

For example, as some US regulations have loosened in recent years, retail investors have begun to get exposure to the private credit market via ETFs that invest in publicly traded financial vehicles with private credit exposure, such as BDCs.

For decades, the US has operated as a low-regulation, private-sector-driven, globalized economy (also known as neoliberalism). In recent years, the Trump administration has taken direct stakes (rather than providing subsidies) in private companies with strategic products like semiconductors and rare earths. This paper argues the approach allows the US to capture the upside of growth.

Most of the industry's prominent players were created since 2010, and are still in a growth phase. These institutions have broadly disrupted traditional banking and have pushed physical banking locations toward obsolescence.

Venture capital firms get the money they use to invest in companies from limited partners, also called LPs. It’s the general partner’s job to manage that money and invest it in the right startups.

Books were just the start, as founder Jeff Bezos' ultimate goal was to create an "everything store," using the internet to transcend the physical limitations of brick-and-mortar retail. The Seattle-based Amazon gradually added CDs and consumer electronics, becoming a dominant e-commerce player in the late 1990s, and one of the few dot-com companies to make it through the bust.

Some of the brightest minds at Andreesen-Horowitz, one of the country’s leading venture capital firms, believe the cryptocurrency ecosystem will revolutionize global finance in the coming decades. This podcast recounts, through their view, the history of crypto, how it works, and trends they see emerging in the future.

Venture capitalists have been bullish on the industry’s future in recent years, too. Some estimate that global investment in fintech increased by 12,000% between 2008 and 2020.

Examples include Andreessen Horowitz’s TxO (Talent x Opportunity) Initiative and Fifth Star Funds, which allows donors to write “Friends & Family” checks for Black tech founders.

In the 2010s, dozens of female founders were celebrated on the covers of business magazines like Inc. for their recent startup success, from Emily Weiss’s Glossier makeup brand to Steph Korey’s Away luggage company. But many of these companies were also the subject of large takedown articles around the year 2020.

A list of the top 10 VC firms, like Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, ranked by assets under management shows how those two firms stack up against their competitors—and what kinds of companies those competitors invest in.

In the US, many retail investors lack the SEC-mandated status (a high enough net worth, income, and other factors) to directly invest in hedge funds. The regulator considers hedge funds too risky for the masses. Hedge fund-like strategies have emerged as a workaround, despite potential pitfalls.

After the "Barbie" movie premiered, the number of investors in Barbie parent company Mattel's stock grew more than six times larger on the investment platform Public, according to the platform's recent report. Other cultural trends have affected which stocks investors choose as well.

That changed thanks to GameStop, federal stimulus checks, and strong corporate results in the first quarter of 2021. This chart plots how much retail investors poured into the market each day, reaching records in early 2023.

While the aforementioned whaling industry has a lot of similarities to today’s venture fund models, the first modern venture capital firm wasn’t founded until 1946.

Best known for investing in companies that wanted to utilize some of the technology developed during World War II, the ARDC’s cofounders all held prestigious positions at places like MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

More than 30% of venture capital deals come from leads courtesy of a VC’s former colleagues or professional network. You can learn more about how venture capitalists decide which companies to invest in by reading this article.

With Peter Thiel's "Monopoly Theory," the Founders Fund partner argued that investing in companies that create new categories, rather than those that compete with other businesses in existing ones, is a best practice in venture capital.

The buzz around non-fungible tokens has faded since 2021 to 2022, when brands including Prada and Starbucks launched their own NFTs. While Prada’s NFTs were linked to limited-edition fashion items, Starbucks’ were part of a loyalty program.

Chris Dixon is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In this hourlong podcast episode, Dixon shares his overall thesis for investing in the cryptocurrency space, the opportunities and limitations of blockchain applications, and why this is the most interesting area for investing and building over the next 10 years.

From Pinterest to Yelp, Bessemer Venture Partners—one of the most well-known VC firms—has invested in many successful companies over the years. But the firm has also kicked itself for passing on a few great opportunities, like Apple and Google. Check out the other companies in Bessemer's "anti-portfolio" here.

The people who bought the original domains for dot-com companies and had the ideas to start businesses were often bought out by investors before becoming well-known companies. Both Pets.com and Broadcast.com were acquired early on.

Whaling was like VC in that it was highly lucrative but characterized by low-probability payoffs. Both industries rely on extreme returns from a very small subset of investments.

These companies became known as the "four horsemen of tech" for the influence the companies had both on other businesses and investors in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The expansion of internet infrastructure throughout the 1990s and the dot-com bubble lifted these companies to incredible heights.

Online investing platform eToro conducted a survey of retail investors in June 2024. It explored what assets they held and what types of stocks they liked to purchase. The most commonly held asset was cash, with 76% of retail investors holding cash in their portfolios. The next most popular asset was domestic stocks, with 49% of investors.

Only about 11% of investing partners at venture capital firms are women, according to Harvard Kennedy School research. What’s more, only about 13% of VC dollars go to startups with a woman on the founding team. To learn more about why women are so often sidelined on both sides of the venture capital equation, click here.

Non-fungible tokens, digital assets backed by smart contracts, gained mainstream recognition in 2021 as the digital assets’ popularity rose in tandem with investors’ appetite for risk. NFTs are unique and not divisible.

Retail investors may not have the same resources institutional players do, but thanks to the internet, they can access several free tools that provide a leg up. These tools do everything from recommending portfolio allocations to helping investors screen stocks.

Bezos parlayed a career on Wall Street into founding an online bookstore that would evolve into the largest online retailer in the world. Bezos’ story is characterized by his relentless focus on innovation and on the customer experience at Amazon.

Annual investment letters from Howard Marks, the billionaire cofounder of top distressed debt shop Oaktree Capital Management, are required reading on Wall Street. The prolific writer and investor explains the distinction between the folly of trying to time the market and the necessity of paying attention to market cycles. The difference makes all the difference in returns.