Inspired Capital Raise $330 Million & Sam Altman gets his board seat back

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👋 Hey, Sahil here! Welcome to today's quick rundown in the Venture Daily Digest Newsletter. I've got the scoop on startup fundraising, fresh VC funds, and some cool tech – all in just 5 minutes!

• Inspired Capital, a venture firm that focuses on "napkin to Series A". closed its third fund, Inspired Capital Fund III, at $330 million.

• OpenAI has announced the return of Sam Altman to its board of directors alongside three new members.

• OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever is reportedly still in talks about remaining with the company.

• Throne, a platform allowing fans to gift wishlist items to creators returned $830K raised from investors and opting for a bootstrapped.

• Featured Article : How Startups Like Reddit Raised Funding With Just an Idea, Without Writing A Line Of Code?

• Daily Digest Board: What's the best way to reach out to investors?

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STARTUP FUNDING UPDATES

Utila, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup provider of a platform that enables institutions to handle their crypto assets, raised an $11.5m in seed funding. Bakers included NFX, Wing VC, Framework Ventures, Fasanara Digital Ventures, North Island Ventures, Republic Capital, Liquid2, Inspired Capital, Lyrik Ventures, DCG Expeditions, Launchpad Capital, Shima Capita, K5 Global, Big Brain Holdings and Impatient, along with angels such as Balaji Srinivasan. More Here

Niko, a solar installation company based in Mexico City. The startup has been operating in stealth until now, has raised a $3.3 million seed round at a $16 million post-money valuation. Picus Capital and 468 Capital led the round with participation by a number of other VCs and angel investors. More Here

Baanx, a London, UK-based provider of payment services such as traditional credit cards and cryptocurrencies, raised $20m in Series A funding. Backers included Ledger, Tezos, Chiron, and British Business Bank. More Here

Pro Shop, a one-year-old New York startup that is focusing on media and commerce related to golf, raised a $19.25 million led by Powerhouse Capital, with EP Golf Ventures, Marquee Ventures, and Gametime Capital also contributing. More Here

Neural Propulsion Systems (NPS), a Pleasanton, CA-based software-defined radar company, raised $17.5M in Series B funding. The round was led by Cota Capital with participation from GM Ventures and RTX Ventures. More Here

Biobot, a Singapore-based company which specializes in robotic prostate biopsy and treatment solutions, raised $24M in Series B funding. The round was led by Mr. Tony Tan, with participation from ZIG Ventures, and the new strategic investors. More Here

LAVA, a Hong Kong startup that uses blockchain technology to create a system that mitigates impermanent loss in liquidity pools, raised a $1 million round. Recharge Capital was the deal lead. More Here

DocNow, a Bellevue, WA-based provider of electronic health record (EHR) and wound care management solutions for post-acute care providers, raised an undisclosed amount in Seed funding. The round was led by Waterline Ventures. More Here

Theia Insights, a two-year-old startup based in Cambridge, England, that provides AI-driven analyses for investors and financial institutions, raised a $6.5 million round led by Unusual Ventures, with additional participation from Fidelity International Strategic Ventures and Clocktower Ventures. More Here

Velosio, a Dublin, OH-based provider of digital transformation services, managed services, and managed cloud subscriptions for the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem, received an undisclosed investment from Court Square Capital Partners. More Here

CARiD, a Cranbury, NJ-based company which specialises in e-commerce platform specializing in car parts and accessories, raised $35M in funding. Fifth Star, Inc., an operator of consumer and consumer-adjacent technology businesses, acquired a majority stake in CARiD. More Here

IO Research, the developer of io.net, a Solana-based decentralized physical infrastructure network, raised $30m in Series A funding. The round was led by Hack VC with participation from Multicoin Capital, 6th Man Ventures, Solana Ventures, OKX Ventures, Aptos Labs, Delphi Digital, and The Sandbox. More Here

Vescent, a Golden, CO-based company which specializes in quantum 2.0 technologies enabling commercialization, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Corporate Fuel, with participation from Caruso Ventures. More Here

BREV/ɅN, a Sunnyvale, CA-based provider of a platform for building secure and customizable AI agents with enterprise data, raised $9M in Seed funding. The round was led by Felicis, with participation from investors and advisors like David Meyer, Tom Gillis, Jason Chan, Jure Leskovec, Eric Baldeschwieler, Opher Kahane, and Travis McPeak. More Here

Cayosoft, a Columbus, OH-based company which specializes in Microsoft active directory management, monitoring, and recovery, received $22.5M in minority investment from Centana Growth Partners. More Here

PeakMetrics, a Los Angeles, CA-based narrative intelligence company, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $5.7M, was led by York IE, with follow-on investment from Argon Ventures. More Here

Greenlyte Carbon Technologies, an Essen, Germany-based direct air capture startup, raised €10.5M in Pre-Series A funding. The round saw participation from Earlybird Venture Capital, Green Generation Fund, and Carbon Removal Partners, Board member Dr. Udo Jung, as well as Partech. More Here

Sonaverse, an Irvine, CA-based provider of a crypto data infrastructure platform, raised $7M in Seed funding. The round was led by BlockTower Capital with participation from United Overseas Bank, Aglaé Ventures, Third Prime Ventures, Ocular Funds, Aptos, FBG, and FJ Labs. More Here

Cosmology, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a tech suite that enables developers to build Web3 apps in the Cosmos ecosystem, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Galileo and Lemniscap with participation from Dispersion, Hashkey & Tuesday Capital. More Here

VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

Inspired Capital, a generalist venture firm that focuses on "napkin to Series A". closed its third fund, Inspired Capital Fund III, at $330 million. This brings the firm's assets under management to nearly $900 million. More Here

The Artemis Fund, NY based VC fund which invests in underrepresented founders, closed on its second fund with $36 million in capital commitments. It leads seed rounds for diverse founders in fintech, commerce and care, having so far composed a portfolio of more than 20 companies that are all led by female founders, with over 60% that have Black, Latinx or immigrant leadership. More Here

FEATURED ARTICLE

How Startups Like Reddit Raised Funding With Just an Idea, Without Writing A Line Of Code?

“Most founders think that investors will only invest if a startup has tons of traction or some million-dollar revenue, but this is not true! I have invested in around 28 startups just based on the idea with zero traction.” These are the exact words I received from a renowned investor who has been investing for the last couple of years.

Most founder don’t know how investors think when they pitches them which eventually caused them to miss their chance to raise funds at the idea stage. Remember - Investors always think about startup ideas in three parts -

• Problem: It’s the setting for a particular company that allows it to be able to grow quickly.

• Solution: The experiment that the founder is running within those conditions for it to grow quickly….

• Insight: Why the thing that founders trying to experiment is going to end up successful? …. Read More Here

STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

ACQUISITION & EXITS

Lensrentals, a titan in the online rental service for photo, video, audio and lighting equipment, has announced its acquisition of BorrowLenses, a key competitor in the space of photographic and video equipment rentals. More Here

Qonto, paris based startup originally started with online business accounts with debit cards specifically tailored for small and medium businesses has acquired Regate, an accounting and financial automation platform. More Here

LAYOFFS & SHUTDOWN

Inscribe, San Francisco-based platform works to detect fraud in areas like business underwriting, tenant screening and onboarding, has cut just under 40% of its staff, which equates to dozens of employees. More Here

The Body Shop Canada Limited, the Canadian subsidiary of the UK-based cosmetics company closed all its stores in the United States as it filed for bankruptcy. More Here

STARTUPS & PEOPLE

OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever is reportedly still in talks about remaining with the company. More Here

Astera Labs, which makes networking and memory management chips for cloud providers, intends to raise as much as much as $540 million in an IPO that could value the company at $4.5 billion. More Here

Turo, the peer-to-peer car rental service, reported $879.8 million in revenue for 2023, marking an 18% YoY increase. It has filed for the IPO. Despite profitability and a valuation over $1 billion, the company's growth rate has slowed, potentially influencing its cautious approach to an IPO, with Q4 2022 to Q4 2023 growth slightly improving at 14.3%. More Here

Throne, a platform allowing fans to gift wishlist items to creators, is launching a new portal called Happy Wishlist for personal gifting among family and friends. After returning $830,000 raised from investors and opting for a bootstrapped route in 2023, Throne aims to monetize through affiliate links and brand partnerships, diversifying revenue sources. More Here

LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

OpenAI has announced the return of Sam Altman to its board of directors alongside three new members, including Sue Desmond-Hellmann, Nicole Seligman, and Fidji Simo. This follows Altman's removal as CEO in November, which was later attributed to a "breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust" by an investigation conducted by law firm WilmerHale. The move comes after criticism of the board's all-male makeup and concerns over a lack of diversity. More Here

VENTURE DAILY DIGEST PICKS

• The Opposite of a Good Idea is a Good Idea By Tomasz Tunguz. Read Here

• Marc Andreessen's Guide to Finding Product-Market Fit! Read Here

• Paul Graham: Are You Building Fake Product-Market Fit ? Read Here

• Successful Startups Follow Quadratic Growth, Not Exponential. Read Here

• Remaking the app store by Benedict Evans. Read Here

DAILY DIGEST BOARD

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Yesterday’s Poll: 🙃. Read More report on apple and epic games legal battle.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

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That’s It For Today! Will Meet You Tomorrow!
Happy Monday! 🥂

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✍️Written By Sahil R - The Venture Crew