Webiny, Biller Genie, Prospr, Bttn, Circles— 23rd 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.
Circles
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Online emotional support platform that connects individuals with similar struggles to work through them as a team with sessions led by professionals
Lead Investors:
NFX, Flint Capital
Total Raised:
$7M
Comparables:
Focusmate
My Thoughts:
Often all that people need is someone to share their story with someone who can relate and make them feel like they are not alone in this. I see Circle as a super-powerful and cost-effective mean to democratizing access to mental health support to anyone with a smartphone.
Prospr
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Mobile-first frontline employee communication and management software
Lead Investors:
Bonfire Ventures
Total Raised:
$3M
Comparables:
Luma Apps, Staffbase, Crew
My Thoughts:
Engaging frontline workers with modern digital communication tools is still such a greenfield market opportunity and it looks like Prospr has built a beautiful product here. I especially like all the native integrations into best-in-class SaaS solutions like Gmail, Slack, or Zendesk — this should be super powerful!
Biller Genie
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
SaaS platform to automate the set-up, collections, and follow-ups for account receivables, directly integrated into existing accounting platforms
Lead Investors:
Henry Helgeson
Total Raised:
$4M
Comparables:
Bill.com
My Thoughts:
No operator likes or should worry about following up on invoices and the Quickbooks or Xeors of this world don’t address this issue. Bill.com has solved this for enterprises but there is still a huge unserved SMB segment that Billergenie can cater to.
Bttn
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Online marketplace that offers direct-to-supplier access to medical supplies and PPE
Lead Investors:
FUSE
Total Raised:
$7M
Comparables:
N/A
My Thoughts:
I can’t find anything comparable through a quick competitive search and this has to exist — no way that every hospital/medical provider should be going through local resellers. Fun fact, the original author of this newsletter, Brendan Wales, will be taking the board seat from Fuze — this is full circle I guess :)
Webiny
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Serverless application workflow to enable developers to seamlessly create GraphQL APIs, full-stack applications and websites and launch them to AWS with one line of code
Lead Investors:
M12 — Microsoft’s Venture Fund
Total Raised:
$4M
Comparables:
Hasura
My Thoughts:
I will be fully honest by saying I am no engineer and don’t fully grasp the differentiated value proposition of Webiny, but it’s growing and our Headline CTO says this cutting-edge tech. He said the same about Segment seven years ago, so this is one to watch.
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.
