1.
HelloFresh inks $277M deal for US meal delivery startup
Germany's HelloFresh has agreed to buy Illinois-based meal delivery business Factor75 for up to $277 million, as European food companies turn their attention to the US to fuel growth. The deal comes just a few weeks
after Nestlé completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of New York-based meal delivery startup Freshly. In June, Just Eat Takeaway.com fought off a rival bid from Uber to buy Grubhub in an all-stock transaction worth about $7.3 billion. Factor75 will join HelloFresh's existing US portfolio including EveryPlate and Green Chef, which it bought in 2018. The deal will give HelloFresh its first office in Chicago, as well as four production and fulfillment facilities. [ Pitchbook ]
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2.
AvePoint to go public via SPAC valued at $2B
AvePoint, a company that gives enterprises using Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint and Teams a control layer on top of these tools, announced today that it would be going public via a SPAC merger with Apex Technology Acquisition Corporation in a deal that values AvePoint at around $2
billion. The acquisition brings together some powerful technology executives, with Apex run by former Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein and former Goldman Sachs head of technology investment banking Brad Koenig, who will now be
working closely with AvePoint’s CEO Tianyi Jiang. Apex filed for a $305 million SPAC in September 2019. [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Special:
How Venture Capitalists Are Deforming Capitalism
In 2008, Jeremy Neuner and Ryan Coonerty, two city-hall employees in Santa Cruz, California, decided to open a co-working space. They leased a cavernous building a few steps from a surf shop and a sex-toy boutique, and equipped it with desks, power strips, fast Wi-Fi, and a deluxe coffee-maker. Neuner and Coonerty named their company NextSpace Coworking. Neuner, who had attended Harvard’s Kennedy School after serving in the Navy, was looking to be part of a movement. “We really believed that this would be a totally new way of working,” he told me. NextSpace provided a refuge for local freelancers desperate for office camaraderie, and within six months the company was turning a small profit. Soon, NextSpace opened locations in San
Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Jose. Neuner and Coonerty also started looking for venture capital. They had raised some money from family and friends, but, as Neuner put it to me, “V.C. funding is the stamp of approval.” He noted, “In every startup story, the V.C.s supercharge everything. They’re the fairy godmothers of success.” [ Newyorker ]
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3.
Robert Smith's image rehab
Robert Smith on Wednesday made his first public appearance since copping to tax fraud, and agreeing to pay $140 million in back taxes and penalties, appearing on a "Race and Corporate America" panel at the New York Times DealBook Summit. Why it matters: Smith didn't just get a pass, he got image rehab from his fellow panelists. The private equity titan's legal situation didn't come up until the 52-minute mark of
the hourlong conversation, when he was asked by moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin about lessons learned. - Smith, who remains legally precluded from directly discussing settlement terms, replied: "A big part of life is that if you make mistakes you have to in some way clarify them, clear them up and get beyond them ... I can learn from my mistakes and I have. In order to focus on the
problems of the present I need to resolve the issues of the past and the settlement offered me the opportunity to do that." [ Axios ]
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4.
Boom times have returned for venture-backed start-ups, says co-founder of $3 billion fintech Brex
The coronavirus pandemic should’ve meant disaster for Brex, the high-flying Silicon Valley start-up that lends to thousands
of other start-ups. Founded by a pair of Brazilian twenty-somethings who dropped out of Stanford in their freshman year, the company’s ascent has been dizzying, even by Silicon Valley standards. Brex reached unicorn status in 2018 months after launching its first product, a corporate charge card for start-ups. Then it doubled in value last year and raised funding in
May at a $3 billion valuation. Flush with nearly half a billion dollars in venture capital funding, Brex plastered San Francisco with ads, went on a takeover spree and even opened a restaurant. Its free spending raised eyebrows in the VC community, some of whom wondered in the aftermath of the WeWork debacle if Brex was another private company pumped up beyond reason. Its main
product, an unsecured, high-limit charge card for start-ups, exposes it to risky, money-losing companies that could fail in droves in a recession. [ CNBC ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
5.
Israel’s Forter gains unicorn status following $125 series E
Tel Aviv-based payment fraud prevention company Forter Inc. announced Thursday that it has raised $125 million in a series E funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Itai Tsiddon, the co-founder of Lightricks Ltd. Scale Venture Partners, NewView Capital, Sequoia Capital, Felix Capital, March Capital Partners, and Commerce Ventures also participated in the round. The current round raises Forter’s valuation to more than $1.3 billion, having raised $225 million in total. Previous funding rounds included some of the biggest VC firms in the business, including Sequoia, NEA and Salesforce. The Israeli company was founded in 2013
by Alon Shemesh, Liron Damri, and Michael Reitblat. The company developed a cloud-based solution to prevent fraud in electronic trade. [ Calcalistech ]
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6.
CoStar to Buy Homesnap for $250 Million
CoStar Group, Inc., one of the world’s largest providers of commercial real-estate information and analytics, has taken its first major step into the residential data business by agreeing to pay $250 million for Homesnap Inc. Founded in 2012, Homesnap is a fast-growing company that provides residential real-estate brokers with apps and other technology for managing and analyzing their listings as well as the broader market. About 300,000 residential agents use it an average of 30 times a month. [ WSJ ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
Another EV Start-Up Is Going Public. Why This One Is Different
Another electric vehicle start-up is going public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Investors should pay attention to this one. It’s different from its peers in several key ways. It challenges conventional manufacturing and design wisdom in potentially disruptive ways. The company is U.K.-based Arrival, which plans to combine with CIIG Merger (ticker: CIIC) in a transaction that valued the enterprise at $5.4 billion. If a 60% surge in CIIG stock since the merger was announced on Wednesday holds, then Arrival will debut with a market value much greater than that. The companies expect the deal to close early next year, when Arrival will begin trading under the stock symbol “ARVL.” Arrival’s target niche in the EV market is commercial vehicles like city buses and delivery vans. It isn’t delivering vehicles yet, but has amassed orders for thousands of units worth hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Management expects to reach $14 billion in annual sales by 2024, and sell some 250,000 vans and buses that year. [ Barrons ]
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8.
American VC Ibex Investors raises $100 million fund to invest in Israeli tech
Ibex Investors has raised its second fund in Israel amounting to $100 million. The U.S.-based investment fund has invested in numerous companies in Israel, including Glassbox, Panoply and Nexar. Former Ibex portfolio companies have been purchased by the likes of Check Point, Intuit and Teradata. The team in Israel is led by Nicole Priel, vice president, and Gal Gitter, managing director. "The leveraging of our vast network of contacts in the U.S. and our specialty in public markets allows us to help our portfolio companies to enter the global market," said Priel. "We have a deep commitment towards our ambitious founders from all sectors and to support them in their journey to become the next generation of Israeli startups by creating
significant long-term value." Ibex's headquarters are in Denver, Colorado and it has approximately $670 million in assets under management. [ Calcalistech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
9.
Contour Venture Partners Closes Oversubscribed $82 Million Fourth Seed Fund
Contour Venture Partners, a New York City based seed stage venture capital firm, announced the closing of Contour Venture Partners IV with $82 million of capital commitments, exceeding its target of $75 million. Additionally, Contour closed its second Opportunity Fund (Opportunity Fund II) to invest in the later rounds of the more mature companies within the Contour portfolio. Founded in 2005 as the first seed fund focused on the New York City ecosystem, Contour invests in
seed stage technology companies focused on the enterprise SaaS, vertical B2B SaaS and financial services sectors. "Contour was the first institutional investor to commit capital to our seed round and they invested in every subsequent round," said Olivier Pomel, Co-Founder and CEO of Datadog. "They saw the potential for Datadog early on and have been valued partners to the company on many levels at each step along the company's journey from seed stage to IPO." [ PR Newswire ]
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10.
Verbit raises $60 million to expand automated transcription software
Tel Aviv-based transcription startup Verbit Software Ltd. has raised $60 million in a series C funding round led by Sapphire Ventures. Existing backers Viola Ventures, Vertex Ventures, HV Ventures, and Claltech, the tech investment arm of privately-held holding company Access Industries Inc. also participated in the current round. Verbit, which develops automated transcription software, was founded four years ago and completed its $31 million series B round in January, led by the U.S.-based Stripes Group. The new capital brings the company’s total raised to $100 million. [ calcalistech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
11.
FirstVet Is All Paws In For American Expansion Following $35M Round
12.
Catamaran Bio sets sail with $42M to create off-the-shelf CAR-NK treatments
Cell therapies have seen success in some blood cancers, but the same can’t be said for solid tumors. Several biotechs have sprung up to close that gap in different ways, but Catamaran Bio thinks single “linchpin” approaches won’t be enough. Instead, it’s taking a multipronged approach shepherded by a team of cell therapy and biopharma veterans. Seeded by SV Health Investors, Catamaran launches with $42 million in combined seed and series A financing to develop
off-the-shelf treatments based on natural killer (NK) cells. With its pipeline of CAR-NK cell therapies, the company hopes to go where today’s CAR-T treatments cannot. [ fiercebiotech ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
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