Wombo, Ditto, Simplified, Oak9, Stemma— 7th June, 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.
Wombo
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
AI-enabled consumer app that turns any picture or selfie of an individual into a lip-sync video
Lead Investors:
Global Founders Capital
Total Raised:
$6M
Comparables:
Tiktok, DubSmash
My Thoughts:
Wombo really reduces the friction to partake in the lip-sync video craze, especially for people who might not be comfortable or talented on video. I see this technology as an entirely new medium so I am excited to see what creative stuff people will come up with here. Looking at the EVA traffic, it looks like it's starting to take off!
Ditto
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Collaborative end to end product copy management platform that acts as the single source of truth for the entire product development cycle
Lead Investors:
Soma Capital, Y Combinator, Greycroft, Decent Capital, TwentyTwo VC
Total Raised:
$2M
Comparables:
Clubhouse.io, Airfocus, Favro
My Thoughts:
Building product with a team can be an incredibly fragmented endeavor with lots of different centers of excellence that can easily run off into their own directions. Having a single source of truth is therefore essential and it is about time that someone truly drives more efficiency in this process.
Simplified
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Collaborative and easy to use end-to-end design platform
Lead Investors:
Craft Ventures
Total Raised:
$2M
Comparables:
Canva
My Thoughts:
Adobe has a $240B market cap built on products that are too difficult to use for the everyday Joe. There is so much opportunity in this space and Simplified has created a beautiful product with early impressive signs in terms of early EVA traction.
Oak9
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Cybersecurity platform for engineering teams of cloud-native products with a “codified” interface for a frictionless user interface
Lead Investors:
Menlo Ventures
Total Raised:
$6M
Comparables:
N/A
My Thoughts:
Cybersecurity usually is brought too late into the conversation when building products as it is a headache no MVP product team wants to deal with. I love Oak9’s low friction approach which should drive adoption in the early stages of product development and I don’t see anyone ripping this out once the product is live.
Stemma
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Fully managed data catalog based on Amundsen (open-source data library), to ensure trustworthy data sources, accurate documentation, and real-time updates on changes within data sources across an organization
Lead Investors:
Sequoia Capital
Total Raised:
$5M
Comparables:
N/A
My Thoughts:
We at Headline love data, but you probably already know that. Having access to quality data sources with the proper documentation is still something most organizations struggle with. If Stemma delivers what they promise, this is definitely one to watch.
Hi, I am Nicolas von Blottnitz, an Associate at Headline’s SF office focusing on Consumer, Fintech, and SaaS business. Since joining the firm 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.
