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February 3, 2020
Hello again, hello.:)
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Top News
Alleging that Facebook is contributing to instability in the country, Myanmar’s new military government has ordered local telecom firms to temporarily block the social network, days after it seized power in the Southeast Asian. TechCrunch has more here.
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This Insuretech Alleges Its Venture Backer Founded and Funded a Copycat Company: a "Founder's Nightmare"
Relationships can be messy, including between startup founders and their venture investors. But in a case that takes messy to an extreme, an insurtech company in Santa Monica, Calif. called Sure is alleging that its Series A investor used privileged information to provide to a New York-based startup called Boost that the venture firm incubated and that quickly evolved into a competitor to Sure.
Sure further assets that the venture firm -- 29-year-old IA Capital Group of New York -- has continued to "harass" Sure over information rights that it is no longer entitled to receive. As for why the firm would bother, Sure's founder and CEO, Wayne Slavin, suggests that it's because its growth is outpacing that of Boost. "We've grown headcount almost 50% through COVID," says Slavin. Sure now has annual recurring revenue in the "double digit millions" and is profitable, he adds. Boost, on the other hand, is "losing employees," he insists. (According to LinkedIn, Boost, founded in 2017, has 30 employees and no job openings; Sure, founded in 2013, has 62 employees and three job openings.)
Andy Lerner, a managing partner with IA Capital who has been with the firm since 1995, disputes Sure's characterization of events. "It's very important that we did not invest knowingly in two companies that were direct competitors," he said earlier today when asked about Sure's claims.
Alex Maffeo, a former investor with IA Capital Group who sat on Sure's board before incubating Boost, then leaving venture to become its CEO, said in response to Sure's claims: "We have no knowledge of the situation between Sure and IA Capital, nor do we receive any information about any of the companies in IA's portfolio. I haven't worked at the firm for almost four years now, and Boost has been focused on the same mission to power insurtech startups and other digital distribution partners from the start. We have always and continue to wish Wayne and his team nothing but the best as both of our companies thrive in our respective lanes."
So what went so awry here? The conflict between the two sides dates back to nearly 2017, when IA Capital led an $8 million Series A round for Sure, writing the company a $2 million check from a fund whose sole limited parter is the insurance giant Prudential.
Lerner says that at the time, Sure was a "mobile insurance distributor," one that was focused on items in transit, including, "flight insurance, smart phone insurance, baggage insurance."
Slavin says this is false and asserts that Sure -- which sells its software as a service to large companies like Tesla, Intuit, Mastercard, and other customers that subscribe to its software-as-a-service to run their digital insurance programs -- had already begun working instead on an embedded insurance API strategy soon after its seed round closed in 2015.
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Massive Fundings
Good Eggs, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based grocery delivery startup that has focused exclusively on the Bay Area but is now planning to launch in Southern California, has raised $100 million in new funding led by Glade Brook Capital Partners. Other backers in the round include GV, Tao Invest, Finistere Ventures and Rich’s, as well as earlier investors Benchmark, Index Ventures, S2G, DNS Capital and Obvious Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Tealium, a nearly 13-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based customer data orchestration company, has raised $96 million in Series G funding at a post-money valuation of $1.2 billion. Earlier investors Georgian and Silver Lake Waterman led the round, which brings its total funding to $250 million. VentureBeat has more here.
TouchCast, a nearly 11-year-old, New York-based video startup whose platform aims to help companies produce lifelike, virtual conferences and other events without much technical heavy-lifting, has raised $55 million led by Accenture Ventures, with participation from Alexander Capital Ventures, Saatchi Invest, Ronald Lauder, and other unnamed investors. The company was bootstrapped previously. TechCrunch has more here.
Vivino, an 11-year-old, Mill Valley, Ca.-based online wine marketplace, has raised $155 million in Series D led by Sweden’s Kinnevik, with participation from Sprints Capital, GP BullHound and earlier investor Creandum, which led its Series A. The company has now raised $221 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
DealerPolicy, a nearly six-year-old, Burlington, Vt.-based insurance marketplace for auto retailers, has raised $30 million in Series B funding co-led by 3L Capital and HSCM Bermuda Management. More here.
Evinced, a 2.5-year-old, Bay Area-based is a startup that promises both richer and faster checks of websites in production or in progress, has raised $17 million in Series A funding co-led by M12, BGV and Capital One Ventures and included earlier investors Engineering Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Flosonics Medical, a nearly six-year-old, Toronto, Ontario-based medical device startup that's focused on critically ill patients and which makes a wearable ultrasound sensor that sticks to a patient’s neck, has raised $14 million in Series B funding. Arboretum Ventures led the round, joined by earlier backers iGan Partners and Genesys Capital. More here.
Rocket.chat, a six-year-old, Porto Alegre, Brazil-based-based open-source alternative to the the closed messaging platform Slack, has raised $19 million in Series A funding led by Valor Capital Group, Greycroft, Monashees and NEA, with additional participation from e.ventures, Graphene Ventures, ONEVC and DGF. The company has now raised $27 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.
Reverie Labs, a 3.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based startup that claims to have developed AI model architectures that can predict important molecular properties for drug discovery and optimization, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Ridgeback Capital Investments led Reverie’s latest funding round. The company has now raised more than $32 million altogether. VentureBeat has more here.
Scratchpad, a 17-month-old, San Francisco-based early-stage startup that wants to make it easier for salespeople to get information into Salesforce by placing a notation layer on top of it, has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by Craft Ventures, with additional participation from Accel. The company has now raised a total of $16.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Balance, a 14-month-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based B2B payments startup that says it enables companies to process any payment method, offer flexible terms, and get paid instantly, has raised $5.5 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Stripe, and Affirm CEO Max Levchin, through his SciFi VC. TechCrunch has more here.
Banxware, a months-old, Berlin, Germany-based startup offers embedded finance in the form of loans for smaller businesses, in partnership with marketplaces, payments companies and others, has raised €4 million in seed funding led by Force Over Mass and VR Ventures, with participation from HTGF and private investors in banking, payment and e-commerce. TechCrunch has more here.
Beam, a five-month-old, Paris-based startup whose product is both a web browser and a note app, has raised a $9.5 million in Series A round funding led by Pace Capital, with participation from individual investors, including Christian Reber, Harry Stebbings and Albert Wenger and earlier backers Spark, Amaranthine, C4V and Alven. TechCrunch has more here.
GajiGesa, a year-old, Indonesia-based fintech company that offers Earned Wage Access (EWA) and other services for workers in the country, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Defy.vc and Quest Ventures. Other participants included GK Plug and Play, Next Billion Ventures, Alto Partners Multi-Family Office, Kanmo Group and individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Granulate, a 2.5-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that says it employs real-time continuous optimization that allows organizations to handle compute workloads with far fewer servers while markedly improving performance, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Red Dot Capital Partners led the round, joined by Dawn Capital and earlier investors Insight Partners, TLV Partners and Hetz Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Polytomic, a 17-month-old, Bay Area-based startup that says it synchs internal data to business systems (we're not quite sure what that means as of this writing), just raised $2.4 million in seed funding led by Caffeinated Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Prisidio, a two-year-old, Naples, Fla.-based B2C software company that says it organizes a family's most important information in a secure online vault, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding co-led by OCA Ventures and Origin Ventures. More here.
Rightfoot, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that bills itself as the Stripe of debt repayment, has raised $5 million in seed funding. Bain Capital Ventures led the round, joined by BoxGroup and SemperVirens VC. More here.
Veerum, a nearly seven-year-old, Calgary, Alberta-based software-as-a-service startup in the industrial asset visualization space (it lets companies view asset data in the context of a 3D model), has raised $7.4 million Series A funding round led by BDC’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and Builders VC. Earlier backers Brick & Mortar Ventures, Evok Innovations, Intergen and Creative Ventures also joined the round. More here.
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New Funds
Amplify.LA , the nine-year-old, L.A.-based and L.A.-focused seed-stage venture firm led by managing partner Paul Bricault and his cofounder and the outfit's chief technologist, Oded Noy, is raising $50 million for a new fund, shows an SEC filing. More here.
Breakout Ventures, a nearly five-year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage venture firm that invests in deep science companies and is led by general partners Lindy Fishburne and Julia Moore, has filed paperwork with the SEC for a $100 million second fund. The outfit closed its debut fund with $60 million in 2017. More here.
Halogen Ventures, a nearly six-year-old, L.A.-based venture fund led by Jesse Draper (of the famed VC clan), has raised $21 million for its second fund. Halogen focuses on consumer tech startups with at least one woman in their founding teams. Dot.LA has more here.
David Hornik, who spent 20 years as a general partner with August Capital and created The Lobby conferences (The Lobby and Lobby:Enterprise), has launched a new fund, he revealed on social media today. Called Lobby Capital, his cofounder in the effort is Buddy Arnheim, who founded and co-chaired the emerging companies and venture capital practice at the law firm Perkins Coie and who says in his LinkedIn bio that he has separately invested in more than 80 startups over the years, including OpenTable, Cloudera and HotelTonight. The outfit -- which also features Eric Carlborg, an investor with August Capital since 2011 -- separately filed SEC paperwork for its debut fund, though no target amount is listed.
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Exits
HubSpot, a publicly traded sales and marketing software company, is acquiring The Hustle, an email newsletter and content company targeted at entrepreneurs and small business owners, sources tell Axios. The deal is expected to close next week. As Axios explains it, Hubspot has long invested in using content to help educate its existing and potential customers about business trends; meanwhile, the Hustle's daily business newsletter, which claims more than 1.5 million subscribers, will help on that front, potentially helping HubSpot generate customer leads. The deal is valued at roughly $27 million, says Axios. Assuming shareholders approve, it's a nice return, considering the business, founded six years ago, had raised just over $1 million in seed funding from investors Tim Ferriss, Scott Belsky and Bleach Report cofounder David Nemetz, among others. More here.
Box, the publicly traded cloud company, says it has agreed to acquire a six-year-old, Amsterdam-based e-signature startup, SignRequest, for $55 million. The acquisition gives the company a native signature component it has been lacking and opens up new workflows for the company, notes TechCrunch. Neither PitchBook nor Crunchbase has a record of SignRequest raising funds. More here.
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People
Techstars Los Angeles, the L.A.-focused branch of the global accelerator network, has named Matt Kozlov as its new managing director. Kozlov previously served as the head of Techstars's healthcare accelerator and as the head of its Starburst Space Accelerator, which was focused on space and aerospace startups. TechCrunch has more here.
Parler CEO John Matze says he’s been terminated by its board, saying "I did not participate in this decision." The future of Parler -- already shut down earlier this month following what Amazon Web Services called its failure to moderate "egregious" content -- "is no longer in my hands," Matze wrote in a memo to staffers.
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Essential Reads
Secondary shares of Carta, whose software is used by many startup and venture investors to manage their equity, are being valued by investors at $6.9 billion on Carta's own newly launched exchange, says the company's CEO, Henry Ward. Its private investors valued the company at $3 billion less than a year ago. The Information has more here.
The GameStop-ravaged hedge fund Melvin Capital has an unlikely investor — the partners at Sequoia Capital, the same firm that backs the retail-trading app Robinhood. Business Insider looks at how one of Silicon Valley's most storied investment firms found itself with money on both sides of the trade.
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