Hello! Also, quick correction: we reported yesterday that India's Razorpay has hit a post-money valuation of $42 billion with its newest funding round, which is . . . a lot. We don't know how we managed that one (old glasses?), but please note that Razorpay is newly valued at $3 billion.
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Top News
Apple revealed a host of new products at its press event today, including a family Apple Card with customizable spending limits (for the interns) and a new iPad Pro that boasts 50% greater performance over the previous model. TechCrunch has more here.
Discord has halted talks to sell itself to potential suitors, including Microsoft, according to the WSJ. It adds that the chat startup remains interested in a potential IPO down the line and that, according to its sources, merger talks could always be rekindled in the future, etc, etc. More here.
Netflix revealed today that subscriber growth for the first quarter was weaker than expected, suggesting that consumers in many countries who are looking to get outside, combined with more streaming competition, is prompting a slowdown. More here.
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Early Coinbase Backer Garry Tan is Keeping the "Vast Majority" of His Shares Because of This Deal
A week after the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase staged a direct listing, much of the focus remains on the wealth that the listing generated for executives at the company, its board members, and its private investors. Citing data from Capital Market Laboratories, Cointelegraph on Monday noted, for example, that 12,965,079 shares worth close to $5 billion at the time had been sold by insiders by the close of stock market on Friday.
One early investor who sold some of those shares is Garry Tan of the venture firm Initialized Capital. Tan worked previously as a partner with Y Combinator, where he helped ensure that Coinbase was accepted into the program and he remained the primary contact for founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, backing Armstrong three more times with seed checks after launching Initialized Capital with two other YC alums: Alexis Ohanian and Harjeet Taggar. Before the listing, Initialized still owned .08% of Coinbase, which currently boasts a market cap of $64 billion.
We talked with Tan late last week, who spoke candidly about the event and its impact on him personally. Tan also gave a fairly specific reason why he's holding on to the "vast majority" of his stake for the foreseeable future. You can hear our longer conversation here; we're also featuring excerpts from that discussion below.
What year was that when you wrote that first check to Coinbase [on behalf of Y Combinator]?
It was 2012. I believe it would have been in April or May and then the batch started in June and I had just raised $7 million from Alex Bangash, who's a great fund of funds operator. He does direct [investing] now, too. But he'd been trying to invest with Y Combinator for many years., and Jessica [Livingston] and Paul [Graham] said, 'There's probably not a way for you to do that. But here, you should meet Garry and Harj and Alexis, who are raising a very small $7 million fund.' And he ended up giving us $5 million of the $7 million and Coinbase was one of our very first checks; we wrote a $50,000 check [with a] $9 million pre-money cap.
Did that create any complications with Y Combinator as Coinbase started to take off? Did Initialized wind up with a bigger stake in the company than Y Combinator?
I think YC still ended up getting more. The other thing that was true back then was it was commonplace for YC partners to invest in YC companies. And it is true that we were quite successful. And we were asked to stop doing that, and we did.
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Massive Fundings
BlaBlaCar, the 15-year-old, Paris-based carpooling platform that has historically connected people looking to travel long distances with drivers heading the same way (and which more newly added a bus marketplace and bus ticketing platform through acquisitions), has raised $115 million (€97 million) in new funding led by earlier backer VNV Global. Two new investors are also participating: Otiva J/F AB and FMZ Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Chargebee, a nearly 10-year-old, San Francisco- and Chennai, India-based firm that helps businesses set up and manage their billing, subscription, revenue operations and compliance, has raised $125 million in Series G funding at a $1.4 billion valuation. Sapphire Ventures led the round, and was joined by earlier investors Insight Partners and Tiger Global. Last October, the company raised $55 million in Series F funding, led by Insight. It has now raised $230 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
Clearco, a six-year-old, Toronto, Canada-based company that provides upfront cash to e-commerce firms to expand the businesses (and was known until now as Clearbanc), has raised $350 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Oak HC/FT, bringing its valuation to nearly $2 billion. Clearco sold $100 million worth of new shares and raised the remaining amount as debt. More here and here.
Deliverect, a three-year-old, Belgium-based startup that helps restaurant owners manage all their online delivery and take-out channels and integrate them directly into their point-of-sale service, has raised $65 million in funding co-led by DST Global and Redpoint Ventures, with OMERS, Newion, Smartfin and the company's founders also participating. The capital brings the total raised by Deliverect to $90 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Dott, a a three-year-old, Amsterdam-based e-scooter and bike-sharing startup, raised $85 million in equity and debt funding led by Sofina. TechCrunch has more here.
Lumiks, a six-year-old, Amsterdam-based developer of optical tweezers for manipulating molecules, has raised $93 million in Series D funding. Fallaron Capital Management and Lauxera Capital Partners co-led the round, joined by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, T. Rowe Price Associates, Parian Global Management, Pura Vida Investments, Irving Investors and Gilde Healthcare. FierceBiotech has more here.
Sense Biodetection, a seven-year-old, Oxford, England-based developer of rapid molecular tests (including a COVID-19 test), has raised $50 million in Series B funding. Koch Disruptive Technologies led the round, joined by earlier investors Cambridge Innovation Capital, Earlybird Health, entrepreneur Jonathan Milner and Mercia Asset Management. The Telegraph has more here.
Virta Health, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps individuals improve metabolic health and manage diseases like diabetes without medication (and which notably raised $65 million in Series D funding in December), just announced it has raised $133 million in Series E funding led by Tiger Global. The company, valued at $1 billion previously, is now valued at $2 billion. FierceBiotech has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Archipelago, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based risk data platform for commercial property brokers and insurers, has raised $34 million in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners. Other participants in the round include Canaan Partners, Ignition Partners, Zigg Capital and principals from Stone Point Capital and Prologis Ventures. Real Estate Weekly has more here.
Era Software, a nearly two-year-old, Seattle-based database architecture startup, has raised $15.25 million in Series A funding led by Playground Global, with participation from earlier backers Foundation Capital, Array Ventures, and individual investors. The company has now raised more than $22 million altogether. GeekWire has more here.
FintechOS, a four-year-old, Romania-based low-code platform that aims to help banks and insurers build new services and analytics atop their existing infrastructure, has raised €51 million in Series B funding. Draper Esprit led the round, joined by earlier backers Earlybird, Gapminder Ventures, Launchub and OTB Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Mantl, a five-year-old, New York-based maker of bank account opening software, has raised $40 million in Series B funding. CapitalG led the round, joined by D1 Capital Partners, BoxGroup and earlier backers Point72 Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures and OldSlip Group. TechCrunch has more here.
Smaller Fundings
Adyn, a 16-month-old, Seattle-based developer of personalized birth control, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding co-led by Lux Capital and M13, with participation from Civilization Ventures, Concrete Rose Capital, Y Combinator and numerous individual investors, including 23andMe founder and CEO, Anne Wojcicki. Crunchbase News has more here.
Fintor, a five-month-old, L.A.-based platform for buying and selling fractional equity shares in real estate properties, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, Hustle Fund, Graphene Ventures, and Mana Ventures, among a long list of other investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Injective Protocol, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based platform that says it's building a kind of Robinhood for decentralized finance, has raised $10 million in funding, including from Mark Cuban, Pantera Capital, BlockTower, Hashed, Cadenza Ventures (formerly BitMex Ventures), CMS, and QCP Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Leo AR, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based consumer-facing AR app, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Great Oaks Ventures, with participation from Dennis Phelps of IVP, betaworks, Deutsch Telekom, Quake Capital, and other angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Qapita, a two-year-old, Singapore-based maker of cap table management software for startups, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by MassMutual Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Rejuvenate Bio, a three-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based developer of combo gene therapy to reverse aging, has raised more than $10 million in Series A funding from Kendall Capital Partners, Kdt Ventures, V Capital, Digitalis Ventures and gene therapy exec Katherine High. FierceBiotech has more here.
SiteKick, a five-year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based startup whose software captures images from smart cameras and environmental readings from sensors at construction sites, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding led by Great North Ventures. The Star Tribune has more here.
STACS, a two-year-old, Singapore-based developer of blockchain platforms for financial institutions, has raised $3.6 million in seed funding led by Wavemaker Partners, with participation from the Tribe Accelerator, a program for blockchain startups backed by the Singaporean government. TechCrunch has more here.
Not-Saying-H0w-Much Fundings
Dataiku, an eight-year-old, New York-based business data analytics platform, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Snowflake Ventures. The deal comes several months after the two companies rolled out a joint offering that allows Dataiku customers to perform machine learning tasks in the Snowflake environment, notes Datanami. More here.
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New Funds
Cusp Capital, a three-year-old, Germany-based, Europe-focused early-stage venture firm, has closed on €300 million in capital commitments for its debut fund. TechCrunch has more here.
Kleiner Perkins, the nearly 50-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based venture firm, has raised $750 million for a growth fund that could target investments in existing portfolio companies but will also fund companies that it hasn't funded previously, according to general partner Ilya Fushman. Bloomberg has more here.
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Going Public
Oatly Group, the Malmö, Sweden-based oat milk producer, has formally filed paperwork for an IPO in the U.S., nine months after PE giant Blackstone Group and a handful high-profile celebrities (Oprah, Natalie Portman, Howard Schulz) took a stake in the company and roughly two months after the company committed this public atrocity. The WSJ has more here.
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People
Brian Brooks, a former Fannie Mae executive who served as Coinbase’s chief legal officer for two years before spending the last eight months of the Trump administration as the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has joined the digital asset exchange Binance.US as its CEO. The WSJ has more here.
Law professor Lina Khan tomorrow will get a Senate confirmation hearing to become the newest FTC commissioner. Axios takes a look at her ascent and why her appointment could prove a watershed moment.
Robert Mittendorff, M.D., has joined B Capital Group as general partner and head of healthcare investing. He previously was a partner at Norwest Venture Partners.
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Essential Reads
Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are slashing prices as the fake-meat market heats up.
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Retail Therapy
Budsy. (This concludes our 4/20 programming.)
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