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September 11, 2020
Hope you have a terrific weekend, everyone. If you find time, check out the latest StrictlyVC Download; it's freshly baked and features the one and only Josh Kopelman of First Round, who had a lot of interesting things to say about venture firm branding (versus individuals' brands). We also talked about rolling funds, direct listings, and seed-round mania.
Thanks to podcast sponsor Draper Venture Network for its help with this one. Note that this coming Tuesday, it's hosting its own chat between Tim Draper and Brad Feld on startup communities outside of Silicon Valley that you might want to catch.
More Monday.:)
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DCM Has Already Made Nearly $1 Billion Off Its $26 Million Bet on Bill.com
David Chao, the cofounder of the cross-border venture firm DCM, speaks English, Japanese, and Mandarin. But he also knows how to talk to founders.
It’s worth a lot. Consider that DCM should see more than $1 billion from the $26.4 million it invested across 14 years in the cloud-based business-to-business payments company Bill.com, starting with its A round. Indeed, by the time Bill.com went public last December, when its shares priced at $22 apiece, DCM’s stake — which was 16% sailing into the IPO — was worth a not-so-small fortune.
Since then, Wall Street’s lust for both digital payments and subscription-based revenue models has driven Bill.com’s shares to roughly $90 each. Little wonder that in recent weeks, DCM has sold roughly 70 percent of its stake for nearly $900 million. (It still owns 30 percent of its position.)
We talked with Chao earlier today about Bill.com, on whose board he sits and whose founder, René Lacerte, is someone Chao backed previously. We also talked about another very lucrative stake DCM holds right now, about DCM’s newest fund, and about how Chao navigates between the U.S. and China as relations between the two countries worsen.
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Massive Fundings
Everlane, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based fashion brand that targets the ethically minded with minimalist basics (and has also come under fire for some of its internal practices), has raised $85 million in Series F funding led by L Catterton. The Business of Fashion has more here.
Korro Bio, a two-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company establishing a broad portfolio of RNA editing therapies, has raised $91.5 million in Series A funding. Wu Capital led the round, joined by Atlas Venture, New Enterprise Associates, Qiming Venture Partners USA, Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company), Cormorant Asset Management, MP Healthcare Venture Management, and Alexandria Venture Investments. FierceBiotech has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
AeroSafe Global, a 25-year-old, Rochester, N.Y.-based cold packaging manufacturer for the pharmaceutical industry, has raised $47.5 million in new funding, including from new investors Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Escalate Capital, as well as earlier backers.
Capitolis, a nearly four-year-old, New York-based startup whose software aims to help financial institutions optimize their balance sheets, has raised $11 million from Citi, J.P. Morgan and State Street. The company was founded by Gil Mandelzis, a former senior executive at ICAP, and former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer. Reuters has more here.
Chairish, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace for both new and vintage, high-end home furnishings, has raised $33 million in Series B funding. Tritium Partners led the round, joined by Altos Ventures, Azure Capital, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Furniture Today has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Agragene, a three-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based company that's developing eco-friendly alternatives to chemical pesticides, including sterile male insects that mate with wild female crop pests, has raised $4 million in Series A funding. Ospraie Ag Science led the round. More here.
Chartable, a two-year-old, New York-based startup that aims to give podcast publishers and advertisers the insights they need to understand their audiences, has raised $2.25 million in seed funding. Initialized Capital, which also contributed to Chartable’s $1.5 million round last year, led the round. Other backers include include Naval Ravikant, Greycroft Partners, The Fund, Weekend Fund, and other individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Roam Research, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that currently sells access its note-taking tool, has raised $9 million at a valuation of $200 million, or "about 25 times higher than the median valuation for seed rounds," notes The Information. It says more than a dozen individuals and firms joined the round, including Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, True Ventures and Lux Capital. More here.
Sunday, a three-year-old, Thailand-based company that offers personalized insurance product and services to its customers, has raised $9 million in bridge funding from SCB 10X, the venture capital arm of the Siam Commercial Bank PCL, along with Vertex Ventures, Quona Capital and Line Ventures. Entrepreneur has more here.
Toucan, a year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based startup that has developed a Chrome browser extension designed for anyone trying to earn a new language (it scans the text of any English-language site and translates some of the words into the language the interests the user), has raised $3 million in seed funding. GSV Ventures led the round, joined by Amplifyher Ventures, Wonder Ventures, Golden Ventures, Halogen Ventures, and Vitalize Ventures, among others. TechCrunch has more here.
Not-Saying-How-Much Fundings
StatHero, a two-year-old, Scottsdale, Az.-based startup behind a multi-day survivor-style fantasy sports platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from the Chicago-based family office Breslow Forsythe Group.
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New Funds
Santander, the Spanish multinational banking giant, is announcing that its fintech venture arm is to be spun out and will be managed more autonomously going forward. Previously known as Santander InnoVentures and established in 2014, the VC is being re-branded to Mouro Capital. It will continue to be headed up by general partner Manuel Silva Martínez, who joined InnoVentures five years ago and has led the fund since 2018, and senior advisor Chris Gottschalk, who joined from Blumberg Capital last year. TechCrunch has more here.
A two-year-old, Tokyo-based business unit of Toyota Motor Corp. that's called Toyota Research Institute - Advanced Development (or TRI-AD), says it is creating an $800 million global growth-stage investment fund named Woven Capital. The stated goal is to invest in growth-stage companies that are developing innovative tech and mobility-related business models, including autonomous driving technology, automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data and analytics, connectivity, and smart cities. The fund will begin operations in January. The Robot Report has more here.
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Exits
Executives at HubHaus, a venture capital–backed startup that manages shared homes, are taking steps to shut down the company after struggling to attract tenants and raise venture capital, according to The Information. HubHaus, founded in 2016, had raised $13.4 million, including from General Catalyst and Social Capital, according to Crunchbase. More here.
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People
Battery Ventures, an investment firm that uses an apprenticeship model and promotes from within, has bumped four team members up the chain. In London, Paul Morrissey was promoted to partner and Zak Ewen to principal. Morrissey, a native of Ireland, joined Battery in 2012 and focuses on later-stage software investments, mainly in Europe. Ewen, also now based in London, first joined Battery in 2010 and re-joined the firm in 2016 after earning an MBA. In San Francisco, Duncan Gills, who joined Battery in 2016, was also was promoted to principal. Meanwhile, Adi Dangot-Zukovsky, based in Herzliya, Israel, was promoted to vice president. She joined Battery in 2016. More here.
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Sponsored By . . .
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Essential Reads
The Chinese government opposes a forced sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations by its Chinese owner ByteDance, and would prefer to see the short video app shut down in the United States, Reuters reported earlier today. The outlet's sources tell it that Chinese officials believe a forced sale would make both ByteDance and China appear weak in the face of pressure from Washington. More here.
Andy Jassy, the leader of Amazon's cloud computing business, is now the heir apparent to Jeff Bezos after the announced retirement of Amazon's retail operations chief. The Washington Post takes a look at the "executive made in Bezos's image."
Palmer Luckey's Anduril Industries just unveiled a military drone that can fly autonomously, form a data-sharing swarm, and track people, missiles, and equipment using AI. Cnet has more here.
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Detours
Quiz: Are you the worst f*cking parent?
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