Pride Fund raises $10M for LGBTQ founders

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PitchBook

The Daily Pitch: VC

June 24, 2020

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Today's Top Stories

How Loud Capital's Pride Fund 1 is uplifting LGBTQ startups

(Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

When the founders of Loud Capital's recently launched Pride Fund 1 needed a CEO, they didn't pull from the tried-and-true venture capital network. Instead, they tapped someone from the LGBTQ community who could speak to the entrepreneurs they wanted to reach.

Densil Porteous, CEO of the new fund, sees the vehicle as an opportunity to uplift founders from an often-overlooked group.

Most diversity-focused funds take a broad approach toward underrepresented entrepreneurs, but few have specifically sought out investments in the LGBTQ community.

LGBTQ startup founders reportedly receive less than 1% of venture funding in the US, and more than a third keep their sexual orientation hidden while fundraising.

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Quick Takes


	The Daily Benchmark
	2010 Global Debt Funds
	VC Deals
	DispatchHealth picks up $135.8M Series C
	Somatus pulls in $64M for kidney care
	BrightInsight shines with $40M Series B
	Away brings home new funding
	Andreessen leads $26M Series B for Rasa
	Nylas snags $25M Series B
	Armored Things brings in $7M to manage crowds
	Portfolio Companies
	Morningstar invests in Allocator
	Fintech startup ScaleFactor to shut down
	Exits
	Mastercard to purchase Finicity for $825M
	An IPO in the works at MessageBird
	Fundraising
	Amazon launches $2B venture fund for climate tech
	Investors
	Bill Ackman plans super-sized SPAC
	Corporate M&A
	Softbank-backed OSIsoft looking for buyers

The Daily Benchmark

2010 Global Debt Funds

Median IRR

12.72%

Top Quartile IRR Hurdle Rate

16.23%

1.39x

Median TVPI

Select top performers

AnaCap Debt Opportunities

CVI Credit Value Fund I

FCO MA II

*IRR: net of fees

18 Funds in Benchmark »

Check out the latest version of PitchBook Benchmarks

VC Deals

DispatchHealth picks up $135.8M Series C

DispatchHealth, which provides in-home healthcare for a variety of diseases, has raised $135.8 million in a round led by Optum Ventures. Founded in 2013, the Denver-based company operates across 19 US cities.

Additional Investors:

Echo Health Ventures, Alta Partners, Oak HC/FT, Humana, Questa Capital

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Somatus pulls in $64M for kidney care

Somatus, a kidney care provider, has secured a $64 million Series C led by Longitude Capital and co-led by Optum Ventures and Deerfield Management Company. The Virginia-based company has raised more than $105 million since it was founded in 2016. Somatus provides services to over 20,000 kidney patients across six states.

Additional Investors:

Blue Venture Fund, Flare Capital Partners, Town Hall Ventures

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View 2 competitors »

BrightInsight shines with $40M Series B

Insight Partners has led a $40 million round for BrightInsight, which develops a data analytics platform for biopharmaceutical and medtech companies. Existing investors New Leaf Venture Partners and Eclipse Ventures also participated in the funding. The Bay Area-based company was valued at $40 million in August, according to a PitchBook estimate.

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Away brings home new funding

New York-based Away has raised between $30 million and $40 million in new funding, according to Axios. Backed by investors including Battery Ventures and Accel, the company makes high-end luggage sold through its website.

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Andreessen leads $26M Series B for Rasa

Rasa Technologies has raised $26 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with existing investors Accel, 468 Capital, Basis Set Ventures and Mango Capital also participating. The startup, which is based in Berlin and San Francisco, creates technology to help organizations make chatbots that use conversational AI. Rasa's total funding now stands at $40 million following a Series A last year.

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Nylas snags $25M Series B

Nylas, a cloud-based API platform provider for developers, has raised $25 million in funding co-led by 8VC and Round13 Capital. San Francisco-based Nylas has over 450 global customers including Comcast and Hyundai. The startup plans to double its workforce over the next year and use the capital in part to scale sales and marketing activities. It was valued at $66 million in 2018, according to PitchBook data.

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Armored Things brings in $7M to manage crowds

Crowd intelligence startup Armored Things has raised an additional $7 million in seed capital, bringing its total funding to $14.8 million. Will Ventures led the round, with participation from Splunk, Glasswing Ventures, Inovia and MassVentures. The Boston-based startup makes a platform that tracks the movement of people in large venues to manage security and density. The Los Angeles Football Club will use Armored Things' software to assist with its pandemic-era reopening.

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Portfolio Companies

Morningstar invests in Allocator

Morningstar has agreed to take a minority stake in Allocator, the privately held provider of a platform that limited partners use to track their portfolio companies. Morningstar, which offers a range of research and data tools for investors in public and private markets, is the parent of PitchBook. Under the agreement, Brett Kaluza, PitchBook's vice president of customer success, will join London-based Allocator's board.

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Fintech startup ScaleFactor to shut down

Fintech startup ScaleFactor has decided to shut down after the pandemic eliminated demand for its bookkeeping and payroll software, according to Forbes. The Austin-based company reportedly told its 100 employees Tuesday that half of them would be laid off and by August, only 10 would remain to help wind down operations. ScaleFactor had raised $60 million in a funding round last July at a $360 million valuation, according to PitchBook data.

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Exits

Mastercard to purchase Finicity for $825M

Mastercard has agreed to pay $825 million for Finicity, a provider of real-time financial data and insights. Finicity, which is based in Utah, raised a $42 million Series B led by Experian Ventures in 2016. The company's shareholders could receive up to $160 million in additional payment based on the company meeting certain milestones.

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An IPO in the works at MessageBird

MessageBird, a Dutch software company focused on connecting businesses to their customers across various channels, has begun working with bankers on an IPO that could occur during the next year, according to Bloomberg. A competitor of Twilio, the company raised $60 million in 2017 from Accel and Atomico.

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Fundraising

Amazon launches $2B venture fund for climate tech

Amazon has committed $2 billion to The Climate Pledge Fund, a venture vehicle that will invest in companies addressing sustainability and low-carbon challenges. The idea behind the fund is to help Amazon and other companies fulfill the goals of The Climate Pledge, which aims to meet the Paris climate agreement targets a decade early, in 2040. Amazon's fund will target industries including transportation, logistics, energy, manufacturing and agriculture.

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View 166 investments »

Investors

Bill Ackman plans super-sized SPAC

A special-purpose acquisition company backed by Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management has filed for an IPO that plans to raise $3 billion from outside investors and could ultimately raise a total of $6.45 billion. The SPAC could target a takeover of what it refers to as a "mature unicorn," according to an SEC filing, defined as a company that has stayed private despite a lofty VC-backed valuation and significant scale and market share. The move is the latest sign of a SPAC surge so far in 2020.

View details

View 24 investments »

Corporate M&A

Softbank-backed OSIsoft looking for buyers

OSIsoft, which sells software to industrial companies, is considering bids from manufacturing giants Schneider Electric and Emerson Electric, among others, according to Bloomberg. The Bay Area company is backed by SoftBank's Vision Fund.

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Chart of the Day

"Regionally, the UK & Ireland led the way in Q1 2020 and contributed 38.3% of B2C deal value. A notable deal for the region involved the €782.9 million sale of the iconic Ritz Hotel in London to a private Qatari investor, recently revealed as Abdulhadi Mana Al-Hajri."

Source PitchBook's Q1 2020 European M&A Report