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SF Tech Week Whips Up Excitement, Bouncy Castles and All
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By Marc Vartabedian, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Last week, San Francisco played host to SF Tech Week, a city-wide smattering of tech-related events that blend networking, promotion and a general boost of morale to an industry that has taken some recent licks.
Some events are more tech-adjacent than others. The week’s kickoff party included a standup set by comedian Ali Wong. One party thrown by Starship Ventures featured an inflatable bouncy castle and ball pit. There was no shortage of open-bar happy hour socials.
The week functioned as a way to whip up excitement and give founders of small lesser-known startups the opportunity to show off their businesses despite the current gloomy economic environment in startup-land.
Tumble, a smart-washing machine and laundry delivery service startup, showed off its tech in its South of Market office over cocktails to a crowd of roughly 75 people. The San Francisco-based startup has raised $7 million since it was founded in 2019.
In Tumble’s back shop, roughly a dozen laundry machines had wires hanging out of them as they were being equipped with custom circuit boards. Tumble’s founder and CEO Scott Patterson said his startup was working hard to gain traction despite the relatively dry fundraising market.
Venture investors committed $37 billion to U.S.-based startups in the first quarter, a 55% drop from the same quarter in 2022, according to analytics firm PitchBook.
“You’ve raised a few million dollars since starting, which hasn’t been easy in over a few years," Tim Hsia, the founder of Context Ventures said in a Q&A with Patterson. “Right now it’s a challenging capital environment, challenging for founders to fundraise.”
And now on to the news...
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The Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund has deployed roughly $110 million, according to people familiar with the matter. PHOTO: CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH/SHUTTERSTOCK
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In April 2022, Amazon.com launched a $1 billion venture-capital fund to invest in logistics startups, a burgeoning technology sector with the potential to disrupt how the e-commerce giant ferries goods across the globe.
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Investors and entrepreneurs took notice of the fund’s size and Amazon’s ambitions to pour it into companies that could bolster Amazon’s dominance in the field.
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Just over a year later, the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund has made only a few new investments and has deployed roughly $110 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Venture funds typically aim to invest their capital into new companies within five years.
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The slow pace has been due in part to disagreements over which team—corporate development or the venture team assembled to help manage the fund—had the final say about whether to write a check to a startup, the people said. That led to deals getting done with less-than-ideal terms or deals falling through, leaving the fund lagging behind the typical pace at which funds of its size deploy capital, the people said.
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An Amazon official disputed internal politics have negatively affected the fund, adding it is deploying capital in step with the broader market, which has seen slowed investing over the past year and a half. Amazon teams, including the company’s venture unit and corporate development unit, have worked collaboratively, the official added. Read the full article here.
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3
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The number of days a week that Meta employees assigned to an office will have to start coming in starting in September.
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The Surprising New Source of Lithium for Batteries
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Large troves of lithium will be needed to make the batteries for growing numbers of electric cars on the road. To find new supplies, companies and researchers are turning to an unexpected source: oil-and-gas reservoirs, The Wall Street Journal reports. These oil-and-gas sites harbor not only hydrocarbons, but also brine that contains metals including sodium, calcium and some lithium. When drillers poke holes into oil-saturated formations, the brine flows back to the surface along with the molecules that end up as fuel, and companies have been prompt to discard the earthy marinade. But now that the EV battery material has become a prized commodity, lithium companies are developing technologies to remove it from this
brine—and oil-and-gas companies are also taking a second look.
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Forgoing an M.B.A. Gains Popularity in Private Equity
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As the industry developed over past decades, most early-career private-equity professionals went along a well-trodden path of interning at an investment bank or buyout firm while in college, followed by entering an associate program after graduating. These budding financiers would then go back to school for an M.B.A. before returning to a senior associate or vice president role in the industry. And for many younger professionals, the benefits of networking and obtaining a broader knowledge of business and finance still move them to pursue an M.B.A. Increasingly in recent years, however, professionals entering the industry are forgoing a graduate degree as fund managers shift away from the traditional, if informal, M.B.A. requirement, WSJ Pro reports.
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Funds
Accelerator program Fusion closed a $20 million fund to invest in pre-seed Israeli startups.
People
Cyber insurance provider Corvus Insurance named Albert Zhou to the post of chief risk officer. He was previously chief actuarial & analytics officer at SynchronoSure.
Hazeltree, a New York-based provider of treasury and liquidity management technology for the alternative asset management industry, appointed Richard Winter as chief technology officer. He was previously vice president and head of technology global services at Finastra.
Precision immunotherapy startup Affini-T Therapeutics appointed Thaminda Ramanayake as chief business officer. He was previously at Sanofi.
Linkwell Health, a healthcare consumer engagement technology provider, named Bill Van Wyck as chief product officer. He was most recently chief technology officer and head of product at Newtopia.
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Hostaway, a vacation rental software and management system provider, picked up a $175 million investment from PSG. The company has hubs in Finland, Canada and Spain.
Capillary Technologies, a customer loyalty platform headquartered in Singapore, closed a $45 million Series D round from Avataar Ventures and others.
Pixxel, a developer of hyperspectral earth-imaging technology, secured $36 million in Series B funding from investors including Radical Ventures and Lightspeed. The company has offices in El Segundo, Calif. and India.
Debut, a San Diego-based startup developing novel bioactive skincare ingredients and products, scored a $34 million Series B round led by BOLD, the venture capital fund of L'Oréal.
Vartana, a San Francisco-based business-to-business sales closing and financing platform, raised $20 million in Series B funding. Activant Capital led the round, with Partner Andrew Steele joining the company’s board.
MetaZone, a tokenized app platform for the metaverse, completed a $3 million seed round co-led by Sfermion and CMT Digital.
UnifyWork, a Cleveland-based provider of real-time data on job market supply and demand, landed a $3 million funding round from investors including North Coast Ventures and JumpStart Ventures.
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Twitter has suffered an advertising exodus following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company.
PHOTO: CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS
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Twitter safety executives exit as concerns about policing content grow
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Apple set to launch virtual-reality headset on Monday
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JPMorgan Chase working to reverse double payments on Zelle
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Can Apple save the metaverse? These startups hope so.
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AI’s rapid growth threatens to flood 2024 campaigns with fake videos
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