Carefull, Talkshop, Zencastr, Citadel, LocTax — February 22nd, 2021

Nicolas von Blottnitz
4 min readFeb 22, 2021

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We see about 5,000 startups each week, and I want to give you a glimpse into how we at e.ventures 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.

To start, some top news out of the venture and tech landscape from last week:

e.ventures portfolio company Bumble and dating app where women make the first move goes public. This makes the founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd the youngest woman ever to take a company public. What an incredible success story for the team — we are extremely humbled and thankful to have been part of the ride!

Bitcoin cracks the $55k mark, making for a market cap of over $1T. Yes, that is a T for trillion — Satoshi must be proud.

Boast.ai gets a $100M credit line from Brevet Capital to help start-ups front their R&D tax credits. This a novel concept we have seen evolve over the last year, which seems like a no-brainer for tech-companies to adopt for additional liquidity. The company has taken on $23M in venture funding to date with Radian Capital leading their Series A in December last year.

Now to my top seed investments to track from the past week:

Carefull

EVA Growth Index:

Product:
Fintech-app that lets family caregivers monitor all transactions, bills, and payments that derive from their loved one’s account to catch any fraud or strange behavior

Lead Investors:
Bessemer Venture Partners

Total Raised:
$3.2M

Comparables:
Greenlight

My Thoughts:
There are 50M seniors in the US today, which will grow to over 70M in the next decade, so the TAM here is massive. Also, this age segment has been more deceptive to fishing attacks than any other, which makes Carefull a no-brainer product for family caregivers to adopt.

Zencastr

EVA Growth Index:

Product:
SaaS solution to record podcasts remotely via video

Lead Investors:
Kickstart

Total Raised:
$4.6M

Comparables:
Anchor

My Thoughts:
Podcasts have become a main-stream channel for individuals and brands to reach/engage their audience. In this remote world, Zencastr is a seamless solution to create content for this channel. The EVA growth speaks for itself.

TalkShop

EVA Growth Index:

Product:
Online platform for creators to host social-shopping live-streams

Lead Investors:
Spero Ventures

Total Raised:
$3M

Comparables:
Bambuser, LiveBuy

My Thoughts:
Social shopping is mainstream in India and China, it seems only a matter of time until it takes over the western-world as well. We are seeing early signs of this with Bambuster and LiveBuy in Europe.

Citadel

EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth

Product:
Software platform for real-time income and employment verification

Investors:
Abstract Ventures

Total Raised:
$4M

Comparables:
Mati, Fincity

My Thoughts:
A core ingredient to drive seamless experiences across all types of fintech, proptech, or employment platforms — definitely a massive market opportunity.

Loc.Tax

EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth

Product:
Software platform to streamline the tax-management of global organizations

Investors:
Cavalry Ventures

Total Raised:
$3.6M

Comparables:
N/A

My Thoughts:
The only thing more complicated than taxes are taxes on an international stage — we at e.ventures can speak from our own experience. There is a clear why now as well, with remote-work driving more international workforces for modern companies.

Hi, I am Nicolas von Blottnitz, an Associate at e.ventures’ SF office focusing on Consumer, Fintech, and SaaS business. Since joining the firm in 2018, I have led our investments in Codota, Polygon, Flockjay, Wise, 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.

e.ventures — eventures.vc

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Nicolas von Blottnitz
Nicolas von Blottnitz

Written by Nicolas von Blottnitz

Early-stage venture capitalist at the global venture firm Headline and passionate surfer.

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