Startup Stash - Shifting Sailors, Beehomes & Beings 🐝

If VCs don’t invest this money in the current cycle, they will struggle to raise their next funds. So they’re obviously still interested in shelling out to startups.

But the pattern has changed. 

Major, late-stage investments — like Stripe’s $600 million round last year — are effectively drying up. So they’re out of the investment plan for now. Instead, seed funding, which comes at the earliest stages and could take around seven years before delivering a return, is booming.

All in all, the startup market isn’t seeing a widespread valuation pullback. In fact, only 5% of deals in the first quarter this year were down rounds. Tiger Global, for one, has still done 74 funding deals this year, per Pitchbook, despite being down 52% through May.

What’s changed is the stage at which VCs are pouring in funds, that’s all.

The bee population has been dwindling for years due to climate change, pesticides, over-consumption and disease. According to the USDA, the number of honeybee hives has declined from around 6 million in the 1940s to just ~2.5 million today.

Startups are trying to address this issue using technology.
Example: California-based startup Beewise. 

How it works: 

Beewise’s Beehome is a modern update on the man-made beehive, which has been mostly unchanged since its invention in the mid-1800s. The Beehome can monitor and maintain up to 24 colonies and is overseen by a robot, making it as if every bee had their own beekeeper 24/7.

The solar-powered robot uses cameras, AI, and neural networks to monitor bees and address needs like food, water, temperature, humidity, and pests, and administer medicine to sick bees.

The company has raised over $118.7 million in funding since its founding in 2018, including an $80 million funding round in March of this year.

US beekeepers lost 45.5% of their managed honeybee colonies from April 2020 to April 2021, per the Bee Informed Partnership. The startup claims its tech-powered “Beehome” decreases the number of failed colonies to just 8%.

A recent McKinsey American Opportunity Survey of inclusive and representative workers provides us with data on how flexible work fits into the lives of people in the United States. 

A remarkable 58% of respondents— equivalent to 92 million people in the U.S. —report having the option to work from home for all or part of the week. This can be seen as a confirmation that there has been a major shift in the working world and in society itself.

35% of respondents say they can work from home full-time. Another 23% can work from home from one to four days a week.

Unsurprisingly, the most common rationale for a job hunt was a desire for greater pay or more hours, followed by a search for better career opportunities. 

The third most popular reason was flexible work, making it a more important factor in job hunt than benefits, healthcare and work culture.