Venture Daily Digest - 15/12/2023

🗞️ TODAY’S MAJOR UPDATES

• a16z will give literally any politician money if they help deregulate tech

• Higher hurdles for Series A funding - Seed Investors Worried

• Artis Ventures, BoxGroup, Playground Global and Singular all closed on new VC funds…

• Featured Tweet: How to Get Your First Customers? By Gustaf Alströmer

• What do you think: Get Access to 10000+ Investors Contact (Email/LinkedIn) Database?

  
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💰 MASSIVE FUNDING UPDATES

Udaan, The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which helps merchants in smaller Indian cities and towns secure inventories from major brands as well as gain access to working capital, raised $340m funding highest in 2023 raised by any Indian startup by The investment arm of the U.K. retail bank M&G. More Here

Prevu, A New York–based startup that hires agents as salaried employees with healthcare benefits and retirement plans, and operates under the premise that “the role of an agent is changing.” It has raised $6 million in a Series A funding round that included participation from new investors Citi, Alpaca Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Metropolis Ventures, Simplex Ventures and Liebenthal Ventures. More Here

Tome Biosciences, a two-year-old startup based in Watertown, Ma., that is developing gene editing technology that enables the insertion of varying sizes of genetic material anywhere in the genome without damaging or breaking DNA, raised a $213 million round. Investors included Andreessen Horowitz, ARCH Venture Partners, GV Management Company, and Longwood Fund. More Here

Twin Health, a five-year-old startup based in Mountain View, Ca., whose platform and app help patients manage chronic metabolic diseases like diabetes and obesity, raised a $50 million Series C round led by Temasek, with additional participation from previous investors Iconiq Growth, Sofina, Peak XV, and Helena. More Here

Dynamic Labs, a two-year-old Palo Alto startup that is rolling out non-custodial wallet tools to give developers the ability to incorporate FaceID and TouchID into web3 wallet design, raised a $16.5 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Founders Fund also anteing up. More Here

Freya Biosciences, a three-year-old Copenhagen startup that is developing women’s reproductive immunotherapies, raised a $38 million Series A round co-led by Sofinnova Partners and OMX Ventures, with The Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, Angelini Ventures, Mike Jafar Family Office, CE-Ventures, Corundum Systems Biology, and Indaco Venture Partners also taking part. More Here

Kapital, Mexico City based provide financial visibility to small businesses, using data and artificial intelligence, that large enterprises have. It has raised $40 million in Series B dollars and $125 million in debt financing. Tribe Capital led the Series B and was joined by backers, including Cervin Ventures, Tru Arrow, MS&AD Ventures and Alumni Ventures. More Here

Andalusia Labs, an Abu Dhabi startup that builds tools to help developers manage risks associated with cryptocurrencies, raised a $48 million Series A round at a valuation “north of $1 billion’. Lightspeed Venture Partners was the lead, while other investors included Mubadala Capital as well as previous investors Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Digital Currency Group. The company has raised a total of approximately $51 million. More Here

Andalusia Labs, Abudabi based Digital asset risk infrastructure-focused formerly known as RiskHarbor startup, has raised $48 million in a Series A round at a valuation “north of $1 billion,” Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round; other investors include Mubadala Capital as well as existing participants like Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Digital Currency Group, among others. More Here

Metafuels, A Zurich based startups sets out to change the landscape of sustainable jet fuel, and has just picked up an $8 million suitcase. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners and Contrarian Ventures. More Here

Certainly Health, a New York startup whose marketplace affords consumers the ability to book doctors with upfront prices, raised a $2.3 million round. Investors included Pacific 8 Ventures and Y Combinator. More Here

Chalk, a San Francisco startup that is building high-speed data pipelines specifically designed for AI and machine learning projects, raised a $10 million seed round led by General Catalyst and joined by Unusual Ventures and Xfund. More Here

Encellin, a seven-year-old San Francisco startup that is developing cell encapsulation platforms to treat endocrine disorders, raised a $9.9 million round led by Khosla Ventures, with additional investment from Y Combinator. More Here

Featureform, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that helps developers manage the features in their AI or machine learning models, raised a $5.5 million seed round co-led by GreatPoint Ventures and Zetta Venture Partners, with Tuesday Capital and Alumni Ventures also backing the company. Featureform has raised a total of $8.1 million. More Here

I-Virtual, a nine-year-old French startup that claims it can measure vital signs through a video selfie, raised a $3.3 million round. Backers included Malakoff Humanis as well as previous investors Elaia and UI Investissement. The company has raised a total of $6.6 million. More Here

Distributional is building the modern enterprise platform for AI testing and evaluation. It has raised $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Martin Casado with participation from Operator Stack, Point72 Ventures, SV Angel, Two Sigma and angel investors. More Here

Google's climate tech initiative, Nest Renew, is spinning out and merging with OhmConnect to form Renew Home. Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP) is investing $100 million and becoming a majority owner, while Google remains a minority shareholder. More Here

Lolli, a bitcoin and cashback rewards application, has raised an $8 million Series B round. The Series B round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures, with participation from Sfermion, Ulta Beauty’s Prisma Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, ZebPay’s CEO Rahul Pagidipati, 2 Punks Capital, MZ Web3 Fund and others. More Here

💰 VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES

a16z will give literally any politician money if they help deregulate tech: Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz plans to lobby the U.S. government as "non-partisan, one-issue voters" advocating for a technology-enabled future. Critics argue their approach is a thinly veiled attempt to advance a deregulatory and pro-capital agenda, potentially supporting politicians with conflicting views on civil rights, reproductive care, and education, raising concerns about a lack of consideration for broader societal impacts. More Here

Higher hurdles for Series A funding: The Series A funding landscape is more challenging, with seed-stage companies facing lower valuations and stricter criteria. VC firms like Lightspeed are responding by formalizing mentorship programs, such as Lightspeed's Launch, to help portfolio companies navigate key challenges and reach Series A. The changing environment reflects a shift towards a focus on fundamentals, profitability, and cash flow, as exuberance from 2020-2022 gives way to a more realistic approach in building successful startups. More Here

Boxgroup, New York and San Francisco, closed on $425 million in capital commitments across two new funds: BoxGroup Six, a pre-seed and seed-stage fund, and BoxGroup Picks, its third opportunity fund. Each fund is $212.5 million, The 13-year-old firm has made investments in companies like Ramp, Warp, Hex, Solugen, Vial, Arcadia, Nourish, Coast, Turquoise Health and Backbone. More Here

Playground Global, A Palo Alto based early-stage venture capital firm, brought in $410 million in capital commitments for its Fund III to invest in early-stage deep tech and science companies. The new fund gives over $1.2 billion in assets under management. Previously it made investment in startup including d-Matrix, Ideon Technologies, Amber Bio, Infinimmune and Atomic AI, along with other portfolio companies operating in stealth. More Here

ARTIS Ventures, a pioneer in this “TechBio” revolution, announces the closing of its second fund, TechBio II, with $200M focused on healthcare and biology innovation. The fund aims to support early-stage companies to transform human health and well-being by leveraging growing data sets, advanced analytics, and insights. More Here

Singular, a Paris-based VC firm co-founded by Raffi Kamber and Jérémy Uzan that invests across Europe, has two pieces of information to share on this front. First, after raising €225 million for its initial fund ($245 million at today’s exchange rate), Singular managed to raise €400 million for the second fund. More Here

Climactic VC Firm, closed a $65 million inaugural fund for their climate tech-focused firm, Climactic. The fund aims to back founders launching climate tech software companies, leveraging Kapoor and Felser's extensive backgrounds in tech. With support from Silicon Valley luminaries like Reid Hoffman and Chris Sacca, Climactic plans to focus on seed-stage investments, expecting to make 20 to 25 investments over its lifetime with a strong emphasis on software solutions to address climate challenges. More Here

𝕏 FEATURED: TODAY’S FEATURED TWEET

“How to Get Your First Customers?” Gustaf Alströmer

Recently Gustaf, YC Partner and former Head of Growth at Airbnb shared an interesting perspective on how to get your first customer.

He also explained how the great startups like Airbnb/stripe followed the startup curve to become successful…Read More Here

→ Follow us on twitter - to get daily tactical advice from the greatest founders & Investors.

💡 STARTUP’S LATEST BUZZ

Acquisition

Linktree, Australia-based link-in-bio platform, has acquired competitor Koji from its parent company GoMeta for an undisclosed amount. This is Linktree’s second acquisition in the link-in-bio space this year. In June, the company acquired Sequoia-backed link-in-bio startup Bento. More Here

People

The former executive assistant of former Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng has filed suit against her former boss, accusing him of forcing her to sign a "slave contract" and subjecting her to multiple years of "sexual abuse, torture and assault." More Here

A federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk must testify in the SEC's ongoing probe of his Twitter purchase. "You’ve got one more four-hour deposition, one more day of depositions to survive, and it’s over," the judge remarked. More Here

🤖 LATEST IN EMERGING TECH

OpenAI's Superalignment team is working on controlling AI smarter than humans, aiming to develop governance and control frameworks for superintelligent AI systems. The team, led by Ilya Sutskever, is exploring the use of weaker AI models to guide more advanced ones, addressing the challenge of aligning AI systems that surpass human intelligence. OpenAI is launching a $10 million grant program to support research on superintelligent alignment, with funding from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. More Here

Supply chain attack targeting Ledger crypto wallet leaves users hacked: Hackers compromised Ledger's crypto protocol code, pushing out a malicious version of its Ledger Connect Kit used by various web3 applications. The attackers, gaining access through a phishing attack on a former employee's NPMJS account, rerouted funds using a rogue WalletConnect project. Ledger quickly deployed a fix, limited the fund-draining window to less than two hours, and is actively assisting affected users, with estimates suggesting over $600,000 in crypto stolen. More Here

📰 TODAY’S MUST READ ON: STARTUP, TECH & VC

• How Can You Use Airbnb's & Stripe's Strategy To Build Your MVP? Read More (Startups)

• "Land & Expand" To Improve Your Odds of Getting to Yes With a VC Read More (Startups)

• A GP’s View on VC Fund Performance (When It’s “Early”) Read More (Venture Capital)

🤔 WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Previous Poll: As Expected…. If you look at the data - VCs focus shift from “Growth at all cost” to “profitability and sustainable growth”. But who known - this approach might get reverse by mid of next year….

With lot of request from founders & investors - we have internally made curated list of Investors contact database (Email/LinkedIn) - This is the database …

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

✍️Written By Sahil R | Venture Crew Team

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