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June 5, 2020
Hope you have a relaxing weekend, everyone. If you're looking for a little diversion, we just whipped up a new podcast, featuring three of the week's top stories, plus an interview with founder Amy Errett of Madison Reed, one of fastest-growing D2C companies in the U.S. right now, with more than $100 million in revenue. Errett is a force of nature, as you'll hear.
More Monday.:)
(P.S. Apologies for stray periods. Our keyboard is borked.)
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Top News
The U.S. job market is newly showing signs of life. After two months of seemingly endless layoffs, employers added 2.5 million jobs last month, the most jobs added in a single month on records dating from 1948. The jobless rate fell to 13.3% from April’s 14.7%, a post-World War II high. The WSJ has more here.
Frustration is boiling over inside Facebook over its stance on political free speech, reports the Washington Post. “What bothers me to the core about the way Facebook is talking about this issue is that there is no such thing as freedom of speech on the platform,” says Elizabeth Linder, a former executive in Facebook’s policy and government division and one of the people who signed a letter critiquing Mark Zuckerberg. “Facebook as a company has already decided what speech is allowed or not allowed through its content policies. And to say that the more power you have you can say whatever you want because it’s newsworthy is hugely problematic.”
Zuckerberg said this afternoon the company will review its content policies. He also pledged to study Facebook’s review structure “to make sure the right groups and voices are at the table.” More in Bloomberg.
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Fast-Growing Madison Reed is Eyeing Men's Hair Next: "We're Going to Blow the Doors Off That Market"
Amy Errett’s company, Madison Reed, sells women's in-home hair coloring products. It may not sound like a glamorous business but, as it turns out, it’s a very durable one, done the right way. Not only has the seven-year-old outfit been slowly chipping away at the dominant personal care giants like L’Oreal that have long controlled what’s currently a $30 billion market, but during one of the most dramatic economic downturns of the past century, it has been attracting new customers.
In fact, Errett — who was previously a VC with Maveron Ventures and has a side hustle as a venture partner with True Ventures — says the 300-person company is seeing revenue in excess of $100 million per year and that it will be profitable in the second half of this year. Presumably, that makes it a likely candidate for an IPO in the not-too-distant future.
We asked Errett earlier this week for an update on the business, which has raised $125 million to date from investors, including True Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Comcast Ventures.
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Massive Fundings
Everest Medicines, a three-year-old, Shanghai-based biopharmaceutical company focused on patients in Greater China and other parts of Asia, has raised $310 million in Series C funding, including from Janchor Partners, RA Capital Management, and Hillhouse Capital. The South China Morning Post has more here.
Postman, a six-year-old, India-based collaboration platform for managing, developing and testing APIs, is advanced talks with Insight Partners to raise around $150 million at a valuation of $2 billion, according to the Economic Times. The company was valued at $350 million just a year ago, so if the deal goes through, it will be one of the biggest jumps in valuation for an Indian startup, notes the outlet. More here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Atom Power, a six-year-old, Charlotte, N.C.-based maker of one of the first solid-state digital circuit breakers for commercial and industrial applications, has raised $17.8 million in Series B funding from Valor Equity Partners, Rockwell Automation, ABB Technology Ventures, and Atreides Management. VentureBeat has more here.
Alpha Tau Medical, a four-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based developer of radiation-based cancer therapies, has raised $26 million in Series B funding from Shavit Capital, Medison Ventures, and OurCrowd. NoCamels has more here.
Cloud9 Technologies, a six-year-old, New York-based cloud-based communications company that sells voice, messaging, and collaboration services, has raised $17.5 million in Series B funding led by UBS, with participation from J.P. Morgan and Barclays. MarTech Series has more here.
RiskIQ, an 11-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based application security company, has raised $15 million in Series D funding. National Grid Partners led the round, joined by Summit Partners, Battery Ventures, Georgian Partners, and MassMutual Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Play One Up, a two-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based e-gaming app that lets users compete for cash, raised $3.1 million in seed funding led by Three Curve Capital. Crunchbase News has more here.
Powerlytics, a nine-year-old, Doylestown, Pa.-based big data platform that analyzes anonymized financial information from publicly available U.S. government sources and reconstructs it for its customers, has raised $4 million in funding from Brewer Lane Ventures. More here.
React Mobile, a seven-year-old, Seattle-based employee safety platform, has raised $6 million in funding from publicly traded Brady Corp. More here.
Routinify, a two-year-old, Denver-based remote healthcare company, raised $1.5 million in funding led by Resolute Capital Partners. Vator has more here.
TaxProper, a year-old, Chicago-based company, has raised $2 million from investors to monitor customers' property tax assessments and automatically appeal when they are overvalued. Khosla Ventures led the round, joined by Global Founders Capital, Clocktower Ventures, and a handful of angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Not-Saying-How-Much Fundings
Coastal Cloud, an eight-year-old, Palm Coast, Fla.-based Salesforce consulting partner, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Sverica Capital Management and Salesforce Ventures. More here.
Caspian, an 18-year-old, U.K.-based financial crime investigation startup focused on automated anti-money laundering, has raised an undisclosed amount from Nasdaq Ventures. More here.
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New Funds
Atlas Venture, the 40-year-old, Boston-based life sciences-focused venture firm, has raised $400 million for its twelfth fund. More here.
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IPOs
From Bloomberg: "Three newly public companies -- two of them with ties to China -- made their trading debuts on U.S. exchanges Friday. All of them exceeded earlier fundraising goals, with two of them delivering heady first-day pops for investors." More here.
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Exits
Chegg, a publicly traded direct-to-student learning platform, has acquired Mathway, an 18-year-old math problem-solving application with subscribers in roughly 100 countries. Chegg paid $100 million for the app, with additional payments of up to $15 million over the next three years contingent on performance and other factors. ZDNet has more here.
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People
The WSJ takes a look at author Alex Berenson, whose newest book was temporarily rejected by Amazon's self-publishing unit yesterday, inspiring Elon Musk to tweet at Jeff Bezos, “This is insane @JeffBezos," then: “Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!”
Michael Gladstone has been promoted to partner at Atlas Venture. Gladstone, who studied biochemical sciences at Harvard, joined the firm in 2012 as an associate.
Alexis Ohanian, the cofounder of Reddit, stepped down from the company’s board today and called on it to fill his position with a black board member. He also vowed to use all future gains from his Reddit stock to support the black community and to "curb racial hate." Reddit has a rocky track record around issues of race; meanwhile, Ohanian, who is married to Serena Williams, said of the moves on Twitter, "I'm saying this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: 'What did you do?'" TechCrunch has more here.
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Layoffs
The Athletic is laying off nearly 8% of staff, or 46 people, according to an internal memo obtained by Axios. It's the latest venture-backed media company that's been been forced to take drastic measures to survive the economic fallout from the coronavirus. More here.
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Essential Reads
Silver Lake is doubling down on India’s Reliance Jio Platforms, saying today it is buying an additional stake worth $600 million in the top Indian telecom operator, which has now raised $12.2 billion in less than two months. The private equity firm had invested nearly $750 million in Reliance Jio Platforms last month.
As software companies push their work-from-home model beyond the immediate response to the Covid-19 pandemic, techies in India may choose to move into less congested areas, too.
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Detours
Take note: Delta says it will stop flying to these 11 U.S. cities indefinitely.
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