Venture capital in the context of "Net asset value"

Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm uses its internal reserves to satisfy its necessity for cash, while the term financing is used when the firm acquires capital from external sources.

Sources of funding include credit, venture capital, donations, grants, savings, subsidies, and taxes. Funding methods such as donations, subsidies, and grants that have no direct requirement for return of investment are described as "soft funding" or "crowdfunding". Funding that facilitates the exchange of equity ownership in a company for capital investment via an online funding portal per the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (alternately, the "JOBS Act of 2012") (U.S.) is known as equity crowdfunding.

Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. Instead, it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in managing and structuring the companies. In casual usage, "private equity" can refer to these investment firms rather than the companies in which they invest.

Private-equity capital is invested into a target company either by an investment management company (private equity firm), a venture capital fund, or an angel investor; each category of investor has specific financial goals, management preferences, and investment strategies for profiting from their investments. Private equity can provide working capital to finance a target company's expansion, including the development of new products and services, operational restructuring, management changes, and shifts in ownership and control.

A platform cooperative, or platform co-op, is a cooperatively owned, democratically governed business that establishes a two-sided market via a computing platform, website, mobile app or a protocol to facilitate the sale of goods and services. Platform cooperatives are an alternative to venture capital-funded platforms insofar as they are owned and governed by those who depend on them most—workers, users, and other relevant stakeholders.

Platform Cooperativism is an intellectual framework and movement which advocates for the global development of platform cooperatives. Its advocates object to the techno-solutionist claim that technology is, by default, the answer to all social problems. Rather, proponents of the movement claim that ethical commitments such as the building of the global commons, support of inventive unions, and promotion of ecological and social sustainability as well as social justice, are necessary to shape an equitable and fair social economy. Platform cooperativism advocates for the coexistence of cooperatively owned business models and traditional, extractive models with the goal of a more diversified digital labor landscape respecting fair working conditions.

The economy of Philadelphia encompasses the city of Philadelphia, the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region of the United States. Philadelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the East Coast of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. Five Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the city. As of 2021, the Philadelphia metropolitan area was estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479 billion, an increase from the $445 billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth largest U.S. metropolitan economy. Philadelphia was rated by the GaWC as a 'Beta' city in its 2016 ranking of world cities.

Philadelphia has shifted to an information technology and service-based economy. Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley are a biotechnology hub. As of 2023, metropolitan Philadelphia had entered the ranks of the top five U.S. venture capital centers, facilitated by its proximity to New York City and its entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest sector of the metro economy, and it is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city is also home to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq. Philadelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Liberty Bell receiving over 2 million visitors in 2010.

Silicon Alley is an area of high tech companies centered around southern Manhattan's Flatiron district in New York City. The term was coined in the 1990s during the dot-com boom, alluding to California's Silicon Valley tech center. The term has grown somewhat obsolete since 2003 as New York tech companies spread outside of Manhattan, and New York as a whole is now a top-tier global high technology hub. Silicon Alley, once a metonym for the sphere encompassing the metropolitan region's high technology industries, is no longer a relevant moniker as the city's tech environment has expanded dramatically both in location and in its scope. New York City's current tech sphere encompasses a universal array of applications involving artificial intelligence, the internet, new media, financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency, biotechnology, game design, and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments.

Emerson Collective, LLC is an American company founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. The company invests in entrepreneurs and innovators working in education, energy and the environment, immigration, media and journalism. Founded in 2011 in Palo Alto, California, Emerson Collective is considered to be one of the leading groups engaged in both venture capital investing and philanthropy. In 2017, the company acquired a majority interest in The Atlantic magazine.

The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that built during the late 1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Internet, resulting in a dispensation of available venture capital and the rapid growth of valuations in new dot-com startups. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, investments in the Nasdaq Composite stock market index rose by 60,000%, only to fall 78% from its peak by October 2002, giving up all its gains during the bubble. It is also known retrospectively as the tech–media–telecom (TMT) bubble, since it boosted established companies in those sectors as well as Internet startups.

During the dot-com crash, many online shopping companies like Pets.com, Webvan, and Boo.com, as well as several communication companies, such as WorldCom, NorthPoint Communications, and Global Crossing, failed and shut down; WorldCom was renamed to MCI Inc. in 2003 and was acquired by Verizon in 2006. Others, like Lastminute.com, MP3.com and PeopleSound were bought out. Larger companies like Amazon and Cisco Systems lost large portions of their market capitalization, with Cisco losing 80% of its stock value.

National champions are corporations which are technically private businesses but due to governmental policy are ceded a dominant position in a national economy. In this system, these large organizations are expected not only to seek profit but also to "advance the interests of the nation"; the government sets policies which favor these organizations. The policy is practiced by many governments, in some sectors more than others (such as defense), but by giving an unfair advantage against market competition, the policy promotes economic nationalism domestically and global pre-eminence abroad contrary to the free market. The policy also deters or prevents venture capitalism.

As the policy is the collective form of inequality of opportunity, it is irreconcilable with the paradigm of the neo-liberal (or "laissez-faire") economy. It was a major part of the dirigiste policy of 1945–1975 France.