Plato, CommandBar, Kronologic, Trust, Beau— 17th August, 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.
Plato
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Software platform to drive mentorship and development programs for an organization’s product and engineering teams
Lead Investors:
Jason Lemkin, Slack
Total Raised:
$3M
Comparables:
Together, Mentorloop
My Thoughts:
With our investment in Flockjay we are learning that organizations don’t only want access to great entry-level talent, but even more so want programs/tools to evolve this talent to fill more senior positions as these are even more difficult/costly to hire for. The point being is that training boot camps like Lambda School are only the tip of the iceberg while Plato targets the whole rest.
CommandBar
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Integrated product widget that easily lets users pull up onboarding nudges, quick actions, search or support content
Lead Investors:
Thrive Capital
Total Raised:
$4.8M
Comparables:
Command E
My Thoughts:
No one wants to go through lengthy onboarding tutorials. Give me an intuitive interface and let me hit command K if I have questions or struggle to find something, that is how things should be — love it!
Kronologic
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
AI-enabled software that automatically sends calendar invites, coordinates times, and gets meetings booked with leads
Lead Investors:
Signal Peak Ventures
Total Raised:
$20M
Comparables:
Calendly, MixMax
My Thoughts:
I run a mini outbound prospecting/sales team here at Headline and see calendar scheduling as one of the most human time-consuming pieces of the process, as sending a Calendly link to a founder/CEO is just not good enough. I see plenty of room in the market for a more sophisticated solution like Kronologic, especially as everyone’s calendar has filled up with even more video conferencing meetings over the last 18 months.
Trust
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Corporate credit card to let SMBs invest in their main customer acquisition channels without a lengthy loan approval process
Lead Investors:
Upper90, Upfront Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau,
Manta Ray Ventures,
Total Raised:
$15M
Comparables:
ClearCo, Bravoo Capital, Brex
My Thoughts:
In this low-interest rate environment, non-dilutive financing is such a no-brainer for start-ups with profitable customer acquisition channels. Within this, I find Trust’s credit card first approach super compelling as it allows them to easily expand into other spend categories of a business as well.
Beau
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
No-code workflow builder to automate client-facing interaction and tasks
Lead Investors:
Y Combinator
Total Raised:
$125K
Comparables:
Typeform
My Thoughts:
It is actually insane to think how many digital onboarding and workflows are built on top of the relatively outdated Typeform. Building a more modern version with more powerful features around workflow automation looks to be a big opportunity in my eyes.
Hi, I am Nicolas von Blottnitz, an Associate at Headline’s SF office focusing on Consumer, Fintech, and SaaS businesses. Since joining 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.
