Racket, Nomod, Nirvana, Ditto, Judo –22nd November, 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.
Racket
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Social media app to asynchronously share audio stories and snippets
Lead Investors:
K50 Ventures, American Public Media, irrvntVC, Loup Ventures, Active Capital, Laurion Capital Management, Foundation Capital, Greycroft Underscore VC, LightShed Ventures, Tribe Capital, Ran Neuner
Total Raised:
$3M
Comparables:
Twitter, Clubhouse
My Thoughts:
I really like the audio social media space, but see quite a lot of friction in Clubhouse’s live nature. Racket has an asynchronous approach to the category which might just be the medium to win big. What a party round as well!
Nomod
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Mobile app that lets anyone take card payments from their smartphone
Lead Investors:
Global Founders Capital
Total Raised:
$3M
Comparables:
SimplePayMet, Square
My Thoughts:
This seems like a category that has been saturated, but when looking at the professional service industry, I see a ton of opportunity here to build a category-winning product. Imagine any painter, gardener, street artist, or valet just whipping out their smartphone to take payment.
Nirvana
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Service that manages the reimbursements of mental health service costs by health insurance providers
Lead Investors:
Inspired Capital Partners, Arc Ventures, Eniac Ventures
Total Raised:
15M
Comparables:
N/A
My Thoughts:
I see the biggest friction point for the adoption of mental health services in the ability of individuals to get costs reimbursed by health insurance providers. If Nirvana is able to grease this friction point, it could truly act as a valuable infrastructure layer for the massive and rapidly expanding mental health space.
Ditto
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Database that drives status synchronization through peer to peer device connections and therefore is ideal for edge devices with imperfect internet connections
Lead Investors:
True Ventures
Total Raised:
$9M
Comparables:
YottaDB
My Thoughts:
Ditto looks to be an important piece of software infrastructure that reduces data status conflicts for the expanding IoT ecosystem. Traditional databases do not nearly cater as well to this use case.
Judo
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
No-code mobile app development platform that lets users build beautiful, interactive, and engaging apps in a drag and drop fashion.
Lead Investors:
TenOneTen Ventures, Freestyle
Total Raised:
$3M
Comparables:
AppGyver, Passion.io
My Thoughts:
Explosive EVA traffic, with the business going from 0 to rank 22k within just weeks of being launched — super impressive!
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.
