Torre, Polymer, Mosaic, Factor, Gryps— April 5th, 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.
Some recent news out of the e.ventures portfolio:
Cameo raises a $100M Series C led by us at e.ventures. For those who have been living under a rock, Cameo is the leading platform for consumers to request or send shoutouts of their favorite celebrities like Floyd Mayweather, Lindsay Lohan, or Caitlyn Jenner. We are very much excited to be joining the journey and enabling creators to build more direct relationships with their fans.
Best-in-class employee experience platform Staffbase raises a $144M Series D from General Atlantic. The Chemnitz-born company (every non-German, give that city a google), now based out of New York, has taken on over $190M in venture funding to date with us having the pleasure of not only co-investing in this round but also leading both their Series B and C. Super excited to see the team continue to execute here!
Now to my top seed investments to watch from the past week:
Torre
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Professional network and job marketplace for the flexible worker
Lead Investors:
Simma Capital, and Emma Group
Total Raised:
$10M
Comparables:
LinkedIn, Upwork
My Thoughts:
Knowledge work has changed forever and with the work-from-home revolution, the flexible worker population will only grow as well. With that, I see an opportunity for a new community to emerge that is more transactional/honest than LinkedIn and more personal than Upwork.
Polymer
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Data governance solution to make sure sensitive data is not shared with integrated third-party services when it is not supposed to
Lead Investors:
Tensility Venture Partners, Motivate Venture Capital, Inspiration Ventures, 10X Venture Partners, Acceleprise
Total Raised:
$2M
Comparables:
Dasera
My Thoughts:
Integrations have become so frictionless and widely used across organizations that it has become far too easy to share sensitive data to third-party software. I see solutions like Polymer as a must for any modern start-up building on top of no-code and/or productivity tools.
Mosaic
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Visual-first project management and resource allocation software
Lead Investors:
Undisclosed
Total Raised:
Undisclosed
Comparables:
ActivTrak, WorkPlus
My Thoughts:
I really like the resource allocation aspect that Mosaic brings to the table and see it as a differentiator that might make it a winner across middle management.
Factor
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Supplier and order management system for factories and production facilities
Lead Investors:
Undisclosed
Total Raised:
$6M
Comparables:
FactoryFour
My Thoughts:
Our team has recently been spending plenty of time in the procurement software space and learned that traditional industries still primarily operate on spreadsheets. We see so much need for sleek and powerful software solutions like Factor here.
Gryps
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Automated document management software for construction operations
Lead Investors:
LDV Capital, Pear VC, Harvard Business School
Total Raised:
$2M
Comparables:
Procore
My Thoughts:
The construction market is large and fragmented with Procore only owning 2–3% of their TAM at ~$350M ARR. There is so much digitization left to be done in this space and going after small to medium-sized builders with a product-led growth strategy looks to be a massive opportunity.
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/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.
