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Hello! We're experiencing a mildly alarming allergic reaction at the moment, so we're taking some Zyrtec and calling it a day. (We know, some of you have bigger problems at the moment.)
More tomorrow.:)
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Holy bleep. While Snap just reported its first-ever quarterly net profit, Meta Platforms' one-day crash now ranks as the worst in stock-market history. Facebook's parent company plunged 26% today on the back of disappointing earnings results and lost about $251.3 billion in market value. That’s the biggest wipeout in market value for any U.S. company ever, says Bloomberg.
Tiger Global Management, the New York–based hedge fund that made more private tech investments than any other firm last year, has garnered more than $11 billion in capital commitments for its latest venture fund and plans to close the vehicle, Private Investment Partners 15, next month with a total of $12 billion at its disposal. The Information has more here.
A bill that would upend how Apple and Google run their mobile app stores easily made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today. If the bill passes the full Senate and is signed by President Biden, Google and Apple would essentially have to give up full control of their app stores. Axios has more here.
Amazon today said profit nearly doubled in its most recent quarter, as the company managed to control labor and supply costs and saw gains in its cloud-computing and advertising businesses. Amazon also saw a huge boost from its big bet on EV maker Rivian Automotive; that investment added nearly $12 billion in profits, accounting for the majority of its earnings for the quarter, notes the WSJ. More here.
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| This Venture Firm Just Closed a Second Fund to Back Greek Founders Around the World |
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Marathon Venture Capital, an Athens, Greece-based venture firm cofounded in 2017 by two stalwarts of the Greek startup scene, has added €30 million in capital commitments to its second fund roughly a year after completing a first close with €40 million.
Backers of the vehicle, which is more than twice the outfit's €32 million debut effort, include the European Investment Fund, the Hellenic Development Bank of Investments (which really upped its investment, we're told), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
We traded emails yesterday with one of the outfit's cofounders, George Tziralis, who said that he, cofounder Panos Papadopolous, and the rest of the team have been writing seed-state checks of between €1 million to €1.5 million into a wide variety of startups in exchange for a targeted 15% to 20% ownership stake. He made it sound from the exchange like the startup ecosystem in Greece is more active than ever, but far from frothy as in many regions around the world. Part of that exchange follows.
Are you exclusively backing Greek founders, no matter where they are in the world? Do they have to be natives of the country or do Greek Americans, for example, or Greek Australians interest you?
No, absolutely not [they don't have to be born in Greece]. If you are an ambitious Greek founder, we want to talk no matter where you're based.
How many women founders have you backed? Are you talking with many female founders of Greek ancestry? Like many other countries, Greece long had a very paternalistic culture, so I wonder what you've observed on this front.
We have invested in 14 companies so far, and only two had female founders. There is an increasing number of female founders starting up in our broader community, and some of them have been quite successful. Still, obviously, we have lots to do on this front and we started by tracking related figures. [Specifically], we recently released a compensation report for tech roles in startups based in Greece in which we also studied gender ratios. The results further highlighted the underlying gender gap, especially in leadership roles. On the flip side, product and QA/testing roles proved to be more balanced, and we hope they can serve as an example.
What percentage of your founders are based in Greece versus elsewhere?
I'd say roughly half. We've invested in founders starting from Nicosia to Munich to Berlin to Stockholm to London, all the way to San Fransisco, and we're increasingly getting access to more opportunities across Europe and the U.S. At the same time, our domestic market has been growing really fast. The next generation of Greeks want to build a career in startups rather than anything else.
It's also interesting to highlight that an increasing part of Greek founders based internationally maintain part of their operations in the country. Culture, quality and compensation-wise, this is becoming appealing to more and more companies.
More here.
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Dewpoint Therapeutics, a four-year-old, Boston-based biomolecular condensates startup, has raised $150 million in Series C funding. SoftBank led the round, joined by Mubadala Capital, 3E Bioventures, Mirae Asset Capital, NS Investment and earlier backers. EndPoints News has more here.
Future, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based digital fitness company that pairs users with coaches, has raised $75 million in funding led by the private equity firms SC Holdings and Trustbridge Partners. They were joined by a variety of celebrity investors, including Fabletics cofounder Kate Hudson, her brother and actor Oliver Hudson, golfer Rory McIlroy, the NFL’s J.J. Watt and Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Ventures, among others. The outfit has now raised $110 million altogether. Bloomberg has more here.
Productboard, an almost eight-year-old, San Francisco-based product-management software business, has raised $125 million in new funding led by Dragoneer Investment Group, with Tiger Global as a secondary lead investor. Earlier investors, including Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures, also participated, says Bloomberg. More here
Trust Machines, a new, New York-based company planning to develop decentralized finance applications, DAOs and NFTs on a blockchain called Blockstack that was developed by the company's cofounder, Muneeb Ali, has raised $150 million in funding. Backers in the round include Breyer Capital, Union Square Ventures, Digital Currency Group, GoldenTree, Hivemind, among others. Forbes has more here.
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| Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings |
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Continu, a nine-year-old, New York-based learning platform that helps companies create and distribute training and other tailored materials for their employees, has raised $13.5 million in Series A funding led by Five Elms Capital, with participation from earlier investor Reformation Partners. More here.
Flip, a four-year-old, Stuttgart, Germany-based startup whose communications app for frontline workers invites them to chat with each other, receive communications from management and carry out activities like swapping shifts, has raised $30 million in funding co-led by Notion Ventures and HV Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Getlabs, a nearly four-year-old, Miami, Fl.-based startup that overseas in-home visits by roving phlebotomists, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Emerson Collective and the Minderoo Foundation. The round includes participation from Tusk Venture Partners, Labcorp, Healthworx, Byers Capital, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and other backers. TechCrunch has more here.
Jar, a seven-month-old, Bangalore, India-based fintech app that rounds up an individual’s daily spending and sets aside some of that money as savings, ha raised $32 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global, just months after securing seed funding. Other backers in the round include Rocketship.vc, Stonks, and Force Ventures Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Modern Electron, a six-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.-based company whose tech aims to transfer boilers’ and furnaces’ heat into power for use onsite, has raised $30 million in funding. At One Ventures participated in the round, along with Extantia, Starlight Ventures, Valo Ventures, Irongrey, Wieland Group, and earlier backers Bill Gates and MetaPlanet. TechCrunch has more here.
Mos, a four-year-old, Bay Area-based fintech startup that hopes students who use its financial aid services will stick with the app to manage their savings and investments, take out home mortgages, compare options on auto and other loans, and search for jobs, has raised $40 million in Series B funding. Tiger Global led the round, joined by a mix of new and earlier backers, including Sequoia Capital, Expa, Emerson Collective, and Lux Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Novi, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based startup that's building a B2B marketplace to enable the diligence, discovery and purchasing of raw materials for consumer goods companies that want to tout their sustainability, has raised $40 million in new funding from Tiger Global, Defy Partners, and Greylock. TechCrunch has more here.
Soelect, a four-year-old, Greensboro, N.C.-based battery technology startup, has raised $11 million in Series A funding co-led by Lotte Chemical and KTB Network. General Motors’ corporate venture capital arm, GM Ventures, also signed on as a strategic investor. TechCrunch has more here.
Studytube, a 12-year-old, Amsterdam-based online education platform that provides courses from third-party providers, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Energy Impact Partners and earlier investor Verdane Capital. The company has already used some of that funding to acquire a smaller company. TechCrunch has more here.
Wrk Technologies, a three-year-old, Montreal-based automation start-up, says it has now raised $43 million in cumulative seed, Series A, and debt financing after completing a Series A round led by White Star Capital and OMERS Ventures. The company had previously disclosed just the seed funding ($9.6 million) from Real Ventures and Desjardins Capital. VentureBeat has more here.
Zero, a three-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based startup on a mission to deliver groceries and other home and personal care items in two hours andusing a plastic-free approach, has raised $11.8 million in new seed funding led by Sway Ventures. The company has now raised $16.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.
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The Breakaway, a 1.5-year-old, Truckee, Ca.-based coaching app that was founded by early employees of Strava and which uses the power data that cyclists generate on regular indoor or outdoor rides to create assessments, workouts and challenges, has raised $2.9 million in seed funding. Backers in the round include General Catalyst, Norwest Venture Partners, and Zone 5 Ventures. More here.
Cynomi, a two-year-old, Israeli cybersecurity startup that has built a virtual CISO platform for small- and medium-size businesses, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by Flint Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Parallel Markets, a nearly four-year-old, New York-based startup that works with investors and investment platforms to simplify the onboarding and verification process, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Union Square Ventures. A mix of new and earlier investors also joined the round, including Comcast Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Lux Capital, RiverPark Ventures and Supernode Ventures. More here.
Pluto, a four-month-old, Toronto, Ontario-based spend management startup focused on the Middle East, has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Global Founders Capital. Other participants in the round include Soma Capital, Graph Ventures, Adapt Ventures and notable angel investors like Ramp founders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh and Plaid co-founder William Hockey. TechCrunch has more here.
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New York City: This startup helps you diversify your portfolio in minutes. Fully 73% of high net worth Americans surveyed by UBS consider portfolio diversification as an important factor when buying art. After all, blue-chip art prices have outpaced the S&P 500 by 164% from 1995-2021. And Masterworks.io, the NYC start-up valued at over $1 billion, helps you diversify your portfolio with multimillion-dollar art by Banksy, Picasso and Warhol -- in minutes. Get priority access with this StrictlyVC link.* (See important disclosures.)
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Wag, the nearly seven-year-old, San Francisco-based dog-walking app, says it is going public via a blank check company. The combined company will have a value of about $350 million, according to a corporate announcement that confirms an earlier Bloomberg News report. As industry watchers will know, Wag was once valued far higher by investor SoftBank, which singlehanded provided the outfit with $300 million in funding back in 2018. More here.
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How Saudi Arabia will pass power to MBS when his ailing, 86-year-old father dies. ("He will probably be in that position for a long, long time.")
Jack Sweeney, teen tracker of Elon Musk's jet travels and budding blackmail artist, weighs a new job offer.
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Coinbase has launched a direct deposit program with TurboTax to send state and federal tax refunds to Coinbase accounts, with the option to automatically convert dollars into cryptocurrency.
The Biden administration has formed a panel of senior administration officials and private-sector experts to investigate major national cybersecurity failures, and Heather Adkins, senior director of security engineering at Google, has been tapped as the vice chair. The WSJ has more here.
Wait, how much is Chicago's Jump Trading Group making in crypto?
Remote work isn’t the problem. Work is.
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"Gorilla arm syndrome" and other injuries tied to VR headsets. (“Why don’t you go to the gym like a normal person?”)
Toyota's outrageous self-driving Supra drift car.
People are downloading the next 2,000 days of Wordle.
How factories make pasta.
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Want to know about using DAOs to develop therapeutic drugs? Drug discovery and development is a very slow and unpredictable process. The world needs faster and more accurate ways of developing new treatments or repurposing existing, safe drugs already on the market. Sign up to Linqto Learn on Feb 15th to hear from Nobel Prize winner Gennaro D’Urso and Lee Hartwell, cofounder of Genetic Network, to discover how blockchain can reduce time to market in the pharmaceutical industry.
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