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February 12, 2021
Friday!
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Hope you are in for a relaxing long weekend and definitely not heading into traffic, trying to get away for ski week.
Before you make any moves(!), know that we have a new StrictlyVC Download for you, with featured guest Tony Florence of the powerhouse firm NEA. Florence oversees the outfit's massive tech practice, but as a general partner, he also leads deals and joins boards and has a portfolio that includes many brands you'd recognize, from Jet to Goop to Casper. We talked with Florence about how new companies can survive and thrive alongside Amazon, even as it consumes more of the retail world -- and at a faster pace. Florence doesn't talk all that often with the press, so if you want to hear his tips and tricks, it's worth a listen.
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Top News
Facebook is reportedly building a smartwatch that it hopes to begin selling next year, providing new competition for Apple’s smartwatch. The Information, which has the story here, notes that Facebook has been expanding into selling consumer hardware in recent years -- introducing its Oculus headsets and Portal video-calling devices for the home -- as it looks to control the next computer platforms.
Meanwhile, the WSJ reports the growing animus between the Facebook and Apple -- and their CEOs -- is real. In reaction to some of Tim Cook's public comments in 2018, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told his team of Apple, "We need to inflict pain."
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Tony Florence and the Art of Building Breakthrough Brands
Tony Florence isn't as well-known to the public as other top investors like Bill Gurley or Marc Andreessen, but he's someone who founders with SaaS and especially marketplace e-commerce companies know -- or should. He's responsible for the global tech investing activities for NEA, one of the world's biggest venture firms in terms of assets under management (it closed its newest fund with $3.6 billion last year). Florence has also been involved with a long list of e-commerce brands to break through, including Jet, Gilt, Goop, Casper, Letgo, and Moda Operandi.
It's because we talked earlier this week with one of his newer e-commerce bets, Maisonette, that we wanted to ask him about brand building more than a year into a pandemic that has changed the world in both fleeting and permanent ways. We wound up talking about how customer acquisition has changed; what he thinks of the growing number of companies trying to roll up third-party sellers on Amazon; and how upstarts can maintain momentum when even younger companies become a shiny new fascination for customers.
Note: one topic that he couldn't and wouldn't comment on is the future of one founder who Florence has backed twice, Marc Lore, who stepped down from Walmart last month to begin building what he recently told Vox is a multi-decade project to build “a city of the future.” (More on this to come, evidently.)
Part of our chat with Florence, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows, or you can hear it in its entirety here.
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Massive Fundings
Cameo, a 4.5-year-old, Chicago-based startup whose app lets customers pay for custom celebrity videos, is talking with investors about raising about $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, says Bloomberg. More here.
Immunai, a three-year-old, New York-based startup developing an AI platform to analyze the human immune system, this week announced that it has raised $60 million in funding led by the Schusterman Foundation, the Duquesne Family, Catalio Capital Management, and Dexcel Pharma. Earlier investors Viola Ventures and TLV Partners also participated, bringing Immunai’s total raised to date to $80 million. VentureBeat has more here.
Smaller Fundings
FingerprintJS, a two-year-old, Chicago-based company focused on browser fingerprinting-as-a-service (meaning it identifies unique site visitors, including those who enter their session through incognito windows, use VPNs, or block cookies) has raised $8 million in Series A funding. Nexus Venture Partners led the round, which brings the startup's total funding to $12 million. VentureBeat has more here.
Raw Labs, a six-year-old, Lausanne, Switzerland-based data management company, says it has raised $5.5 million in pre-Series-A funding from the Swiss venture firm Investiere, along with unnamed individual investors. More here.
TomoCredit, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based fintech that offers a credit card aimed at helping first-time borrowers build a credit history based on their cash flow, has raised $7 million in seed funding. Participants in the deal included KB Investment (a subsidiary of South Korean consumer bank Kookmin Bank), Barclays, Knollwood Investment Advisory, BAM Ventures, Passport Capital, Ulu Ventures and Strong Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Ubamarket, a nearly six-year-old, London-based maker of scan-and go retail tech, has raised £2.9 million ($4 million) led by IW Capital. UKTN has more here.
UpEquity, a two-year-old, Austin-based tech-enabled mortgage platform, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Next Coast Ventures. The funding consists of $7.5 million of equity financing and $17.5 million of venture debt. TechCrunch has more here.
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New Funds
Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay Z have created an endowment to fund bitcoin development initially in Africa and India, Dorsey said earlier today. The duo is putting 500 bitcoin, which is currently worth $23.6 million, in the endowment called Btrust. The fund will be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, Dorsey said, adding that the duo won’t be giving any direction to the team. Btrust is looking to hire three board members. The stated mission of the fund is to “make bitcoin the internet’s currency." TechCrunch has more here.
The founders of LightShed Partners, a firm providing research to Wall Street, has formed LightShed Ventures, a new venture investment company targeting early-stage tech, media and telecom startups, and closed an initial fund of $75 million. The idea is to write seed-stage and Series A checks into startups across the tech, media and telecom categories, says Variety. LightShed's founders include Richard Greenfield, Walter Piecyk and Brandon Ross — all previously analysts at BTIG Research who left that firm to form LightShed Partners in 2019 — and Jamie Roberts Seltzer, who was most recently entrepreneur-in-residence and investor at Waverley Capital, the venture and private-equity firm founded by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Daniel Leff. More here.
SCB 10X, the venture capital unit of Thailand's oldest Siam Commercial Bank, has launched a new $50 million fund to invest in blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) startups. SCB 10X is already an investor in crypto startups such as Ripple, BlockFi, and Alpha Finance. With the new fund, the firm looks to invest in early and growth-stage blockchain, DeFi, and digital asset startups. The Block has more here.
M13 Ventures, a nearly five-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based early-stage venture firm that invests in both consumer and enterprise companies, has raised $275 million for its third fund, shows a new SEC filing. The firm was cofounded by brothers Courtney and Carter Reum (the latter of whom has been in the spotlight in recent years, as the beau of Paris Hilton). More on the firm and its portfolio here.
Khosla Ventures just registered plans for a third blank-check company . . . after also registering its first and second one today. The SPACs are targeting $300 million, $400 million, and $500 million, respectively. (Interesting new strategy!) Renaissance Capital has more here.
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Exits
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga founder Mark Pincus are nearing a deal to merge their blank-check company with Joby Aviation, valuing the flying taxi developer at about $5.7 billion, according to the Financial Times. Reinvent Technology Partners, their special purpose acquisition company, which raised $690 million in a public listing last year, is reportedly finalizing financing for the deal. It would become just the latest electric-power transportation startup that's still in prototype phase to go public this early and this way. More here.
Regus parent company IWG, the office co-working and rental company, has invested an undisclosed sum The Wing, the women-focused co-working and social club that's been struggling amid the pandemic and whose founding CEO resigned back in June, in exchange for a majority stake in the business. GV and Sequoia Capital are among the Wing's investors. Bloomberg has more here.
Datadog, the 11-year-old, publicly traded monitoring service for cloud-scale applications, says it is acquiring Sqreen, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based software-as-a-service security platform that aims to protect applications directly. Sqreen had raised at least $16.3 million from investors, including Alven Capital, Point Nine Capital, Greylock and Y Combinator. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.
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Going Public
Coupang, the 11-year-old South Korean e-commerce giant, unveiled its filing for a U.S. IPO that is expected to be the largest from a foreign company since Alibaba Group Holding’s blockbuster 2014 debut, notes the WSJ, which adds that the Seoul company had already filed for the listing privately and that the listing is expected to garner a valuation of more than $50 billion. SoftBank's Vision Fund is among Coupang's biggest outside shareholders; a successful offering would be the latest in a string of recent wins. More here.
Grofers, a seven-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based online grocery delivery service, is reportedly weighing going public in the U.S. through a special purpose vehicle, says Bloomberg, which adds that the company would be seeking a deal that would value it at $1 billion. More here.
Samsara, a San Francisco-based startup that provides a cloud-based platform for fleet management software that was valued at $5.4 billion in its most recent private funding round last May, is reportedly gearing up for an IPO that could come as soon as next month, says Bloomberg, adding that the company has already selected banks to lead the offering. More here.
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People
David Schneider has joined Coatue Management as a general partner, says Bloomberg. Schneider worked for a decade at workplace software company ServiceNow, including as its chief revenue officer; he also headed international sales at Data Domain.
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Essential Reads
Administration officials in Britain have minimized Brexit troubles, describing them as “teething problems” that will subside once businesses master the intricacies of the new procedures. But many companies — especially small- and medium-size firms — lament what feels like a new normal.
The stock market is going dark. On some days, more than half of shares changing hands in U.S. are traded outside public stock exchanges, according to new data.
Federal prosecutors are investigating whether market manipulation or other types of criminal misconduct fueled the rapid rise last month in prices of stocks such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings, says the WSJ. More here.
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Detours
The people for whom the suburbs were built are gone.
Scientists have taught pigs to play video games.
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Sponsored By . . .
Visionary women in business are leading this year’s 7th Female Entrepreneur Program at The Montgomery Summit presented by March Capital. Don’t miss keynote speakers Ruzwana Bashir, co-founder and CEO of Peek, and Alexa von Tobel, co-founder and Managing Partner of Inspired Capital. Want to join us? Register for a complimentary pass! The program will be hosted by Niloo Howe, Sr. Operating Partner of Energy Impact Partners, and Julia Klein, Vice President of March Capital on March 3rd at 4:00pm PT.
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