A new ransomware attack, an insane space balloon, and it gets worse for Lordstown Motors

July 2, 2021

Cheers, all! Wishing you a happy July 4th if you're here in the U.S. and also a terrific weekend if you are not.

Note that we will not be publishing StrictlyVC on Monday (with it being a federal holiday and us hoping to spend the day as a poolside blob). In the meantime, we hope you'll enjoy this week's StrictlyVC Download, newly recorded and featuring a quick tour through some of the week's news stories, along with an interview with Mighty, a e-commerce startup that's looking to empower kids as young as eight years old to be the boss.

It's in no way a "joke project," offers cofounder and CEO Ben Goldhirsh, who previously founded the magazine GOOD and was inspired to start Mighty after watching his own kids grow more confident after creating an online store. We've written about the newly funded outfit below, but if you'd like to listen to our fuller conversation with Goldhirsh and his cofounder, Dana Mauriello, you can find that here. We think it's an interesting concept. It also reflects growing interest in building businesses around the youngest generation online.

Much thanks to our partner in tonight's episode, TechCrunch. Ahead of the holiday, TechCrunch is offering a Fourth-of-July sale on tickets to not just one but all four TechCrunch events remaining in 2021: TechCrunch Early Stage (July 8-9), TC Disrupt (Sept 21-23), TC Sessions: SaaS (October 27) and TC Sessions: Space (December 14-15). Grab two tickets for the price while you can.

More Tuesday.:)

Top News

It gets worse: now the Department of Justice is probing Lordstown Motors, reports the WSJ. More here.

Didi Global's shares fell more than 10% in New York today after China's cyberspace agency said it has launched an investigation into the Chinese ride-hailing giant to protect national security and the public interest. The Cyberspace Administration of China said on its site that Didi isn't allowed to register new users in China during its investigation; Didi began trading on the NYSE just two days ago. Reuters has more here.

Kaseya, a software company that provides services to more than 40,000 organizations around the world, says it's investigating the possibility that it has been the victim of a cyberattack. The company today urged customers that use its systems management platform to immediately shut down their servers to avoid the possibility of being compromised by attackers. The New York Times has more here.

Sponsored By ...

Founded by serial tech entrepreneurs, this little-known startup has become the premiere platform for art investing. Demand is up and it’s no surprise why: contemporary art prices rose 14% per year from 1995 through 2020. Over 175,000 have signed up and when we see that much demand, our ears perk up. Discover more with this private StrictlyVC link.* See disclaimer.

Meet Mighty, a Young E-Commerce Platform Where Kids are Managing Their Own Storefronts

Until children reach a certain age, enrichment programs are somewhat limited to school, sports, and camps, while money-making opportunities are largely non-existent.

Now, a year-old, L.A.-based startup called Mighty, a kind of Shopify that invites younger kids to open a store online, aims to partly fill the void. In fact, Mighty -- led by founders Ben Goldhirsh, who previously founded GOOD magazine, and Dana Mauriello, who spent nearly five years with Etsy and was most recently an advisor to Sidewalk Labs -- hopes to woo families with the pitch that it operates at the center of fintech, ed tech, and entertainment.

As often happens, the concept derived from the founders' own experience. In this case, Goldhirsh, who has been living in Costa Rica, began worrying about his two daughters, who attend a small, six-person school. Because he feared they might fall behind their stateside peers, he began tutoring them when they arrived home, using Khan Academy among other software platforms. Yet the girls' reaction wasn't exactly positive.

"They were like, "F*ck you, dad. We just finished school and now you're going to make us do more school?'"

More here.

Massive Fundings

Licious, a six-year-old, Bengaluru, India-based e-commerce company that sells fresh meat and seafood, has raised $192 million in Series F funding co-led by Temasek and Multiples PE, with participation from 3one4 Capital, Bertelsmann India Investments, Vertex Growth Fund and Vertex Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Sirnaomics, a 13-year-old, Gaithersburg, Md. and Suzhou, China-based biopharmaceutical company focused on RNAi therapeutics, has raised $105 million in Series E funding led by Rotating Boulder Fund. FierceBiotech has more here.

Talkdesk, a 10-year-old, San Francisco-based enterprise contact center platform, is apparently raising up to $210 million in Series D funding at a price that's 3.2 times higher than its Series C round. According to the Information, which obtained a recent securities filing pertaining to the round, the round would value the company -- backed currently by Threshold Ventures, Viking Global Investors and Lead Edge Capital, among others, at more than $10 billion. More here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

FairMoney, a four-year-old, Nigeria-based fintech startup that offers users credit via cards or on an app and subsequently offers bank accounts as a gateway to other services, has raised $42 million in Series B funding. Tiger Global led the round, joined by earlier backers DST Global, Flourish Ventures, Newfund and Speedinvest. TechCrunch has more here.

Trainual, a three-year-old, Scottsdale, Az.-based software platform that helps businesses build playbooks to train and grow their team, just raised $27 million in Series B funding led by Altos Ventures. The company has now raised $33.75 million altogether. More here.

Smaller Fundings

Hello Cake, a three-year-old, Calabasas, Ca.-based company that sells products like personal lubricants, condoms and sex toys, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau. Crunchbase News has more here.

Exits

Swedish gaming giant Modern Times Group has acquired Indian game developer PlaySimple for at least $360 million, the two firms said earlier today. PlaySimple had raised just $4.5 million from investors; the deal marks one of the largest exits to date in the Indian startup ecosystem. TechCrunch has more here.

Going Public

Caribou Biosciences, a 10-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based CRISPR genome editing biotech, has filed for an IPO, using the proceeds to "propel three off-the-shelf CAR-T therapies into and through the clinic and boost Caribou’s work in natural killer (NK) cell therapies," observes FierceBiotech. The company has $156 million in venture funding from investors, including F-Prime Capital, PFM Health Sciences and Ridgeback Capital. More here.

People

IBM shares fell as much as 5% today after the enterprise software and hardware maker said that its president, Jim Whitehurst, has chosen to step down just 14 months after taking the job. Whitehurst arrived in 2019 through the $34 billion acquisition of open-source software company Red Hat, where he was president and CEO from 2008 until April 2020, when he became IBM’s president. It's a "shocker," the CEO of an IBM partner, tells the outlet CRN. More here

A new ransomware attack, an insane space balloon, and it gets worse for Lordstown Motors

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