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Last March, 29-year-old Melanie Fellay announced her employee training startup Spekit had raised a $12.2 million Series A. Only ten months later, she’s announcing that the company has raised an additional $45 million Series B led by Craft Ventures (bringing total funding to a cool $60 million).

Though Spekit was founded back in 2018, it didn’t truly take off until the pandemic and Great Resignation forced companies to take a more serious look at how they onboard and train employees. Rather than have individuals rely on in-person training sessions or user handbooks, Spekit adapts training manuals and integrates them directly into the platforms themselves. That means when an employee is unsure of how to navigate an area of Salesforce, for example, they can click a pop-up to walk them through the process.

“I think the shift was inevitable,” explains company CEO Fellay, who has tripled the company’s headcount to 130 employees over the past year. “When you explain that instead of people having to go look for information, it's right in your workflow where you need it... that just makes sense.”

This Week's Money Moves

With ecommerce booming, consumers increasingly want to know, “Where is my order?” Three-year-old package tracking firm Route aims to answer that question in real time with its AI-driven software. That’s a growing and increasingly valuable business: Route cofounder and CEO Evan Walker tells Forbes that the startup is now worth $1.25 billion, following a $200 million fundraise.

Berlin-based seed fund Cherry has raised a new $340 million fund after backing some of Europe’s recent crop of unicorns including Auto1, fast grocery startup Flink, and Greyhound Lines’ new owner Flixbus. 

Serena Williams just joined the board of Sorare, the $4.3 billion fantasy soccer game on the Ethereum blockchain. The tennis star will also personally invest in Sorare as part of her growing crypto portfolio. She'll advise the Parisian start-up on its move into American sports and women’s sports leagues.

Microsoft's biggest acquisition yet: it's set to acquire famed but scandal-stricken video game publisher Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in cash, the clearest sign yet of the company's ambitions to become a giant in the world of gaming.

The Inside Scoop: Exclusive Under 30 News

Why not get a tattoo? Well, because it lasts forever. That is, until 2015 when Forbes Under 30 Joshua Sakhai founded Ephemeral, a tattoo startup inking art that lasts for just one year. 

After dropping out of New York University, Sakhai and his chemical engineer cofounders worked for six years to formulate non-permanent tattoo ink (testing over 50 formulations in their own bodies) with the goal of making a harmless product that lasts only 365 days. And now, with $20 million in funding, the company owns and operates tattoo studios in New York and Los Angeles that do just that. 

Though the company only opened its first parlor in March, it has inked over 5,000 semi-permanent tattoos. Rather than sell Ephemeral ink through traditional tattoo shops, Ephemeral owns and operates its own parlors. Sakhai also says that all Ephemeral artists have equity in the company and get benefits like healthcare and paid-time off, subverting the contract-based employment model of many tattoo shops. But like traditional tattoo commerce, customers submit inspiration to an Ephemeral artist, and the artist and customer work together to execute the Ephemeral’s tattoos, which cost between $195 and $550, priced by complexity.

“In the next five years, we want to bring self-expression to as many people as possible, and in as many ways as possible,” says Sakhai, who hopes to expand the brand globally. “We’re launching things like color and more tattoo complexity so people can really express themselves wherever they are in the world.”

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