GloveBox, Copper, Exabel, Woflow, Cheese— March 15th, 2021
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 e.ventures portfolio from last week:
Leading contract management solution Icertis raises $80M Series F led by B Capital Group to triple their valuation from their last round to $2.8B. We participated in the round as well as an insider and are incredibly excited to be part of this journey.
Nigerian payment processor FlutterWave reaches unicorn status with their $170M Series C led by Venir Growth Capital and Tiger Global. The technology has processed >140M transactions worth >$9B to date and serves>290,000 business to date. A huge congratulation to the team on this impressive milestone.
Now to my top seed investments to track from the past week:
GloveBox
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
White-label app that enables insurance brokers to let their clients set-up and manage their insurance policies in real-time
Lead Investors:
Prelude Fund
Total Raised:
$4M
Comparables:
OneInsure, Coverfy
My Thoughts:
Statista estimates $1.2M insurance brokers in the US, which makes for a massive TAM here.
Copper
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Wireless energy monitor so utility providers can engage consumers with actionable insights
Lead Investors:
National Grid Partners and Moonshots Capital
Total Raised:
$5M
Comparables:
Efergy
My Thoughts:
Energy suppliers are set up to fulfill to peak energy consumptions of neighborhoods. Having detailed insights into the energy consumption on a household basis enables suppliers to create more flexible pricing structures for consumers but also drives more efficiencies in the volume of energy generated which reduces the carbon foot-print.
Exabel
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Easy-to-use platform for investment professionals to gain insights from alternative data sets
Lead Investors:
Awilhelmsen Capital
Total Raised:
$23M
Comparables:
Bloomberg
My Thoughts:
Data is the biggest alpha in the public investment firms, which has led funds to hire more data scientists than financial analysts over recent years. Exabel puts the power back into the financial analyst's hands.
Woflow
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Data management platform that lets marketplaces seamlessly plug into and manage the data of their merchants
Lead Investors:
Craft Ventures
Total Raised:
$4M
Comparables:
N/A
My Thoughts:
With the fragmentation of SMB software and the lack of data-sophistication of small merchants, this seems like a must-have tool for any digital marketplace servicing third-party sellers.
Cheese
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Cash-back debit card for Asian communities and beyond
Lead Investors:
Amplify.LA, iFly.vc, Idealab
Total Raised:
$4M
Comparables:
Chime
My Thoughts:
Taking a segmented approach to providing a cash-back debit card makes a ton of sense as one can more narrowly pick the partnering cashback products/services for a certain demographic. The EVA growth looks promising as well.
Sidenote, I have been trying to convince a friend to name his fintech start-up Cheese, because I love the name - now that is settled.
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.
