A forward outlook as Lightspeed closes on over $7 Billion of committed capital to serve Founders around the globe — Today, Lightspeed is unveiling three Lightspeed US funds ($6.6B), a Lightspeed India early stage fund ($500M), and debuting Lightspeed Faction, an independent team dedicated to building on Lightspeed’s nine year history of backing exceptional founders in blockchain infrastructure. This brings our total committed capital across the firm to $18B. …

Reflections on the market meltdown, and what startups can do today to emerge stronger. — The boom times of the last decade are unambiguously over. No single metric shows the magnitude of the current downturn more than the dramatic retreat in revenue multiples for technology businesses. Witness, for example, the rise and fall of AMZN in the dot-comm bubble vs. SHOP in the last year…

At Lightspeed, we are big believers in Southeast Asia as a vastly uncharted region, yet a major hub of tech innovation and investment. We now have an office in Singapore, which enables us to combine an understanding of the region with global domain expertise from Lightspeed’s investor base across India…

Over the past 50 years the pharmaceutical industry has moved from small molecules (pills) to large molecules (injectables) to therapies based on cells. The last of these has become increasingly important over the past 5 years especially for cancer patients. …

Earlier today, we sent the following letter to our global community of Founders and LPs:

By Tal Morgenstern, Partner at Lightspeed We’ve recently announced our investment in CANDIS, a Berlin based company leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to automate bookkeeping tasks. CANDIS has a few things in common with other early-stage companies we have been fortunate enough to partner with: A Strong founding team…

A great higher education sets up one’s entire career for success. But unfortunately, not everyone is able to access a great education. The seats at the premier schools are limited and often too expensive for a huge segment of the population because of the socio-economic backgrounds they come from. …

On this weekend’s episode of Recode Decode, Semil Shah, Venture Partner at Lightspeed, discussed everything from his unconventional path into venture capital, to advice for people trying to break in, to his thoughts on how the tech industry is changing. Whether you’re a founder or investor or somewhere in between, it’s a worthwhile listen. Recode Decode is available wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts and Overcast. You can also read a lightly edited transcript of the full interview on Recode here.

At Lightspeed, we talk a lot about entrepreneurs that have the “X-factor.” The X-factor is the uncanny cleverness and ingenuity an entrepreneur possesses that gives him or her the ability to capture the power of an idea and transform it into a incredibly valuable product…and ultimately an incredibly valuable company…