Monthly Archives: September 2017

 Logistics and supply chain management is a notoriously outdated and labor-intensive process. ClearMetal uses artificial intelligence to help manufacturers and retailers climb out from underneath piles of spreadsheets. Today the San Francisco-based startup announced that it has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Prelude Ventures and Innovation Endeavors, the venture capital firm… Read More

 Patreon upgrades content creation from a passion to a profession by paying artists 95% of subscription payments from fans instead of 55% of skimpy ad revenue like Facebook and YouTube. Now Patreon itself is getting paid with today’s official announcement of the big series C funding round TechCrunch broke news of last week. Patreon has raised $60 million led by Chris Paik at Thrive… Read More

 As computer vision and object recognition technology continue to mature, we’re edging closer to automating away the exceedingly boring task of monitoring closed circuit TV cameras. Matroid is one of the startups leading the democratization of this variety of machine intelligence. The company is announcing a $10 million Series A this morning from NEA and Intel Capital that brings… Read More

 To wrap up our series of looks into the IPOs of tech’s Big 5, we turn to Apple. Being the first of five to go public, what can we learn from Cupertino’s debut? Heading back in time as we are, we lack readily accessible S-1 documents that the younger entrants to the group have posted. So what was Apple’s story as it raced to the public markets? Read More

 In an era where art is shared and streamed for free, Patreon offers new hope for turning content creation into a career. Illustrators, comedians, game makers, and musicians use Patreon to let fans pay a monthly subscription fee for special access to their work. In exchange, Patreon takes only a tiny 5% cut. With 50,000 creators and 1 million subscribers on board paying an average of $12 per… Read More

 The cannabis industry has lit up in the last year, including weed delivery startup Eaze, which just raised $27 million in Series B financing and claims a 300 percent year-over-year increase in gross sales. But the weed delivery startup has come under scrutiny recently for burning through at least $1 million in cash per month. In contrast, other software-based pot delivery startups like Meadow… Read More

 Apttus, the unicorn quote-to-cash vendor built on the Salesforce platform, announced a $55 million round, which is likely its final private investment on the way to an IPO. While CEO Kirk Krappe wouldn’t definitively confirm the company was going public, he did say that today’s round was about gaining the confidence of future investors. “We decided we needed a certain amount… Read More

 Genetics testing company 23andMe has formally announced that Sequoia Capital is leading an investment round in the company. This confirms the news we broke last week.  The press release says that the final amount was $250 million and that Sequoia’s Roelof Botha will be taking a board seat. Others participating in the round include new investors Euclidean Capital, Altimeter Capital and… Read More

 Well, this is quite a coup. Entrepreneur First (EF), the London headquartered company builder that invests in individuals “pre-team, pre-idea” to help create new technology startups, has raised $12.4 million in new funding led by Silicon Valley’s Greylock Partners. Read More

 Startup funding and exiting activity has been slow over the past few months in the U.S. Fewer companies closed rounds, IPO volumes were light, and not a lot of big M&A deals got done. But that’s to be expected, right? After all, it was summer break. Now that Labor Day’s over and we’re back at our desks, we can expect deal volumes to pick up. That seasonal explanation for… Read More