Beacons, Staking Rewards, Flume Health, Treet, Reclaim— 1st June, 2021
We see about 5,000 startups each week, and I want to give you a glimpse into how we at Headline think about trending tech companies and tracking new investment opportunities. In this post, I’m highlighting top tech companies that have announced or raised a seed round within the past week.
Beacons
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Website builder for creators
Lead Investors:
Andreessen Horowitz
Total Raised:
$6.15M
Comparables:
Linktree
My Thoughts:
As social media and content platforms become increasingly fragmented it is important for creators to have a central profile to link to all their content/destinations. Linktree is the true market leader in this market but the pace at which Beacons has been able to launch features is very impressive!
Staking Rewards
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Data platform for crypto staking platforms
Lead Investors:
Swiss Founders Fund
Total Raised:
undisclosed
Comparables:
CoinMarketCap
My Thoughts:
Lots of money in crypto and staking platforms effectively act like marketplaces, which notoriously build moats as they scale. Staking Rewards has impressive and fast scaling traffic, so this is one to watch!
Flume Health
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Helps self-insured employers make their health plans more affordable and easier to use
Lead Investors:
Crosslink Capital
Total Raised:
$10.15M
Comparables:
Aetna
My Thoughts:
Being European myself I don’t think having your health insurance tied to your employer makes a ton of sense. With remote work picking up, I see a world where people will shift towards finding their own health insurance and Flume looks to have built a best-in-class portal to make this happen.
Treet
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Allows fashion brands to host their own secondhand marketplace
Lead Investors:
Bling Capital, Techstars, BBG Ventures, v1.vc, Green Meadow Ventures, Interlace Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, BAM Ventures, Alante Capital
Total Raised:
$3M
Comparables:
Recurate
My Thoughts:
Being a lead investor in The RealReal we at Headline have seen the power and stickiness/engagement second-hand fashion marketplaces can drive. The Treet model therefore should be a no-brainer for any brand that finds a loyal following.
Reclaim
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Software-enabled calendar assistant that automatically blocks flexible time on your calendar so that you can get things done
Lead Investors:
Index Ventures
Total Raised:
$6M
Comparables:
Superhuman for your calendar
My Thoughts:
As an associate at a finance firm, I probably relate to this issue more than the average knowledge worker, as I have a bunch of meetings to attend while cranking out finance or market work. Finding time for the latter requires me to block off time to get things done on time and having this automated seems like an incredibly delightful experience. I need to give Reclaim a try!
See last week’s Seeds to watch in the link below:
Hi, I am Nicolas von Blottnitz, an Associate at Headline’s SF office focusing on Consumer, Fintech, and SaaS business. Since joining the firm in 2018, I have led our investments in Tabnine, Polygon, Flockjay, Solid, and Grin.
What is the EVA Growth Index?
The EVA Growth index is a composite of third-party data sources around a company’s website traffic. The vertical green lines in the charts represent a point in time where the company raised outside capital.
Spot, Roofr, Merge, Cortex, Evabot — May 24th, 2021
We see about 5,000 startups each week, and I want to give you a glimpse into how we at Headline think about trending tech companies and tracking new investment opportunities. In this post, I’m highlighting top tech companies that have announced or raised a seed round within the past week.
Some news out of the Headline portfolio from last week:
LucidLink raises their $12M Series A led by Headline with participation from Adobe, Baseline Ventures, and Bright Cap Ventures.
LucidLink is a revolutionary technology that transforms the cloud into a local storage system by providing direct access to files stored in the cloud and streaming them to applications on demand. I am incredibly excited to be joining the board as an observer alongside our partner Conrad Chu (former Munchery CTO) who will be taking the board seat.
Enough of the self-promotions, now to the most exciting Seed companies from last week.
Spot
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Mobile-first conference call platform with a focus on enabling users to take calls as they walk or are on the go
Lead Investors:
Kleiner Perkins
Total Raised:
$7M
Comparables:
Zoom, GoogleMeets
My Thoughts:
I am someone who is on the go a lot and loves being able to turn dead travel time into productive work time by taking calls. Zoom is by no means optimized for this, so I am looking forward to seeing how Spot might be able to create a superior experience for this use case.
Roofr
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Vertical SaaS platform for roofers with an initial focus on sales
Lead Investors:
Bullpen Capital
Total Raised:
$8M
Comparables:
N/A
My Thoughts:
I had a friend who worked in roofing and learned that this is an evergreen industry with over $30B in annual spend in the US, which is only growing with the increase of hurricanes across the east coast. Seems like a fantastic industry to build a beast of a vertical SaaS play.
Merge
EVA Growth Index:
No external source showing growth
Product:
API-first integration platform for the HR, payroll, recruiting, and accounting space.
Lead Investors:
New Enterprise Associates
Total Raised:
$5M
Comparables:
Segment for the HR SaaS world
My Thoughts:
HR is usually the greatest cost-center to any organization which comes with a plethora of fragmented HR tools that don’t speak to each other. Merge’s value proposition is incredibly compelling and I see the ability for themto build a massive business here.
Cortex
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Software platform for product and developer teams to manage their microservices
Lead Investors:
Sequoia Capital
Total Raised:
$3M
Comparables:
effx
My Thoughts:
Modern tech products are built by dozens if not even hundreds of micro-services which can be incredibly time-consuming and messy to manage. I am no dev-ops expert, but it only seems natural that a software platform like Cortex to streamline this.
Evabot
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Automated corporate gifting platform for sales teams
Lead Investors:
Bloomberg Beta
Total Raised:
$3M
Comparables:
Alyce, Sendoso
My Thoughts:
As Zoom replaces the need for sales reps and account executives to travel, I see a world where personalized gifting will become a norm across the sales industry. Evabot looks far more beautiful than other players in the space, so this should be one to watch.
See last week’s Seeds to watch in the link below:
Hi, I am Nicolas von Blottnitz, an Associate at Headline’s SF office focusing on Consumer, Fintech, and SaaS business. Since joining the firm in 2018, I have led our investments in Tabnine, Polygon, Flockjay, Solid, and Grin.
What is the EVA Growth Index?
The EVA Growth index is a composite of third-party data sources around a company’s website traffic. The vertical green lines in the charts represent a point in time where the company raised outside capital.
