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June 26, 2020
Friday! [Dunks on smallest intern.]
We leave you with a brand-new StrictlyVC Download, featuring some of the week's bigger stories and shop talk with founder Michael Kim of Cendana Capital, a fund of funds that was founded 10 years ago and has managed to snag stakes in numerous notable "micro" VC funds over the years, including Forerunner Ventures, Uncork Capital, and Lerer Hippeau. Alex and I talked with Kim about the fast-growing world of pre-seed investment, the managers who he finds most interesting right now, and why a wave of seed-stage companies could go kaput by year end despite everyone's best efforts. If you're a venture geek, you'll want to listen to this one.
Hope you have a great weekend.:)
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Top News
Facebook will put warning labels on posts that break its rules but are considered newsworthy, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today. Zuckerberg has come under growing pressure throughout the week as more brands have announced they won't advertise on the social network until it does more to address hate speech and misinformation. According to the WSJ, Unilever has now decided to halt advertising on both Facebook and Twitter until at least the end of this year. It joins Verizon, Patagonia, North Face and numerous other brands that are boycotting the platform. Coca-Cola also said tonight that it is pausing advertising on social media.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is in the news again. This time, he's moving on from Initialized, the venture capital firm he co-founded with Garry Tan in 2012, Axios reported earlier today. The outlet says that Ohanian has grown more interested in pre-seed investing, whereas Initialized focuses on "traditional" seed investments, and it ties the timing of the move to Initialized's plans to begin raising its fifth fund. As some readers might remember, in March -- for a real-world StrictlyVC event that was moved online because of COVID-19 -- we talked with both Ohanian and Tan, and based on that conversation, we definitely didn't see this coming. Tan said specifically at the time that "no traction is fine" when it comes to funding a nascent startup. (If you're curious, you can check out that interview here; it starts around the 23-minute mark.)
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Sponsored By ...
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Airvet, a Telehealth Veterinary Platform, Claws Its Way to a $14 Million Round
Telemedicine is becoming more widely embraced by the day — and not just for humans. With a pet in roughly 65% of U.S. homes, there is now a dizzying number of companies enabling vets to meet with their furry patients remotely, including Petriage, Anipanion, TeleVet, Linkyvet, TeleTails, VetNOW, PawSquad, Vetoclock and Petpro Connect.
One of these — a two-year-old, 13-person, LA-based startup called Airvet — unsurprisingly thinks it is the best among the bunch, and it has persuaded investors of as much. Today, the company is announcing $14 million in Series A funding led by Canvas Ventures, with participation by e.ventures, Burst Capital, Starting Line, TrueSight Ventures, Hawke Ventures and Bracket Capital, as well as individual investors.
The pandemic played a role in Canvas’s decision, as did a smart model, suggests general partner Rebecca Lynn, who says she has looked at many telemedicine startups over the last 11 years and that she fell for Airvet after using the service for the animals that live on her own small farm. Plus, “COVID has been a massive accelerant to adoption," she notes.
We asked Airvet’s founder and CEO, Brandon Werber, to make the company’s case to us separately.
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Massive Fundings
Oscar, the 7.5-year-old, New York-based direct-to-consumer health insurance company cofounded by Joshua Kushner, has raised $225 million in funding round. Investors include Alphabet, General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Lakestar, Thrive Capital, and new investors Baillie Gifford and Coatue. TechCrunch has more here.
TuSimple, a five-year-old, San Diego-based self-driving truck startup backed by Sina, Nvidia, UPS and Tier 1 supplier Mando Corporation, is headed back into the marketplace in search of new capital from investors, says TechCrunch. According to the outlet, it hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to help it raise $250 million. The company is already a unicorn, having raised $298 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion. More here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Ava Labs, a two-year-old, New York-based open-source platform for launching decentralized finance applications, has raised $12 million via token sale. Investors include Galaxy Digital, Bitmain, Initialized Capital, NGC Ventures, and Dragonfly Capital. Coindesk has more here.
Element Analytics, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based data hub for managing industrial metadata, has raised $18 million in Series B funding co-led by Activate Capital and Forte Ventures, with participation from Evonik Venture Capital, Kerogen Digital Solutions, High Tide Foundation and earlier backers. Built in SF has more here.
Enko's, a three-year-old, Boston-based focused on find promising candidates for new active ingredients, has raised $45 million led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation alongside Anterra Capital (which incubated the company), the Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund, Finistere Ventures, Novalis LifeSciences, Germin8 Ventures, and TO Ventures Food. VentureBeat has more here.
APDS, a six-year-old, New York-based public benefit corporation focused on education for the incarcerated (APDS is an acronym for American Prison Data Systems), has raised $5 million funding. Earlier backers New Markets Venture Partners and ReThink Education, led the round, joined by numerous other new and existing investors. More here.
Candidate Labs, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based hiring platform for sales and marketing professionals, raised $5 million in seed funding. Investors include Signalfire, Fuel Capital, and BoxGroup. TechCrunch has more here.
CoInspect, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that makes temperature monitoring sensors and a mobile checklist app to eliminate food waste and reduce refrigeration emissions, ha raised $4 million in seed funding led by Active Impact Investments. More here.
Teooh, a two-year-old, London-based avatar-based virtual gathering platform, has raised $2 million in fresh funding from Spark Capital and General Catalyst. "It took 18 months to raise $2 million before COVID, and it took us three months to raise $2 million after," the company's cofounder and CEO tells Business Insider. More here.
Not-Saying-How-Much Fundings
Byju’s, a nine-year-old, Bangalore, India-based education startup, has raised an undisclosed amount from the growth-stage investment firm Bond at a $10.5 billion post-money valuation, reports the Economic Times. More here.
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New Funds
Base10 Partners, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage venture firm that invests in startups using AI in industries like real estate, construction, waste management, and logistics, has closed its second fund with $250 million in capital commitments, just 1.5 years after announcing a $137 million initial fund. Base10 was one of the first venture funds with a black managing director -- Adeyemi Ajao, whose parents are Nigerian and Spanish -- to raise more than $100 million for its debut effort. TechCrunch has more here.
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IPOs
LX Oncology Holdings, a five-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based Phase 1 immuno-oncology biotech developing CD47 pathway-blocking therapies, filed today with the SEC to raise up to $100 million in an IPO. More here.
Pandion Therapeutics, a three-year-old, Watertown, Ma.-based Phase 1 biotech developing engineered T cells for autoimmune diseases, filed on Friday with the SEC to raise up to $75 million in an IPO. More here.
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People
It's not just Facebook employees who are frustrated with their boss. According to Recode, an engineer at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative -- the philanthropic foundation that Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan founded in 2015 -- voiced displeasure with Zuckerberg to his face at a town hall-style meeting last week. “You and Priscilla have emphasized that Facebook and CZI are two separate organizations. This is true, but we have the same leader -- you,” said the CZI employee, per video viewed by Recode. “The actions you take at Facebook reflect on you as a leader and your leadership skills and values. It only reflects reality to say that our leader’s idea of free speech values calls to murder people for demonstrating over the political speech of the demonstrators themselves.” More here.
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Essential Reads
Didi Chuxing says its on-demand robotaxi service will start picking up riders in Shanghai beginning tomorrow. (There will be safety drivers in each car, just in case.) More here.
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Detours
How to make a spiked Arnold Palmer.
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