1.
Gong raises $200 million to surface sales insights with AI
Gong.io, a startup providing an “intelligence platform” for enterprise sales teams, today nabbed $200 million in funding at a $2.2 billion valuation, up from a $750 million valuation in December 2019 when the company raised $65 million. Gong CEO and cofounder Amit Bendov says
the new capital will be put toward fulfilling demand for Gong’s products and reinforcing the firm’s leadership as it invests in product, engineering, and go-to-market teams. A whopping 46% of business-to-business (B2B) sales reps list lead quantity and quality as their top challenge. That’s unsurprising given that only 44% of companies use lead scoring systems (according to a 2013 report by Decision Tree and Lattice) and only 5% of salespeople say leads they receive from marketing are “very high quality.” Suboptimal and delayed leads can have catastrophic effects — Harvard Business Review found that there’s a 10 times drop in lead qualification when reps wait longer than 5 minutes to respond and a 400% decrease when they respond within 10 minutes versus 5 minutes. [ Venture Beat ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
2.
SoftBank Invests in India’s Unacademy at $1.45 Billion Valuation
SoftBank Group Corp. is leading a round of venture investment in India’s education startup Unacademy, boosting its valuation to $1.45 billion as online learning surges during the coronavirus pandemic. Investors in the $150 million funding include existing backers Facebook Inc. and Sequoia Capital, while SoftBank’s money is coming from Vision Fund 2, a successor to its initial $100 billion fund. The startup’s valuation is tripling from $510 million in February. Bangalore-based Unacademy has distinguished itself in test preparation classes by recruiting star teachers who help attract ambitious students taking everything from civil service and banking exams to programming languages. [ Bloomberg Quint ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
Special:
Venture Capital Giant Marc Andreessen Joins Coinbase Board
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has been appointed to the board of directors at the leading crypto exchange Coinbase. Coming amid reports that the crypto giant is preparing to go public, the appointment of Marc Andreessen to the Coinbase Board was announced by CEO and co-founder Benjamin Armstrong. “As Coinbase continues on its path to growing the cryptoeconomy and creating an open financial system for the world, we’ll look to leaders and experts from a range of fields to help guide us. Of primary importance is our Board of Directors. We look to our Board members and Observers to draw from their areas of expertise to counsel us on everything from product development to world-class governance practices.” [ daily hodl ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
3.
Indonesian insurtech startup PasarPolis gets $54 million Series B from investors including LeapFrog and SBI
PasarPolis, the Indonesian-based startup focused on making insurance policies more accessible in Southeast Asia, has closed a Series B round totaling $54 million. Investors include LeapFrog Investments and SBI Investment, both firms that focus on financial services; AlphaJWC; Intudo Ventures; and Xiaomi. Gojek’s venture capital arm, Go-Ventures, which participated in PasarPolis’ Series A two years ago, returned for this round.
Founded in 2015 by chief executive officer Cleosent Randing, PasarPolis operates in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Randing said the the insurance penetration rate in the ASEAN region is currently just 3.6%, and the startup’s goal is to reach people who have never purchased insurance before with products like inexpensive “micro-policies” that cover broken device screens. [ Tech Crunch ]
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4.
Sarcos Robotics Lands $40M Series C To Commercialize Exoskeletons
Sarcos Robotics secured $40 million in an oversubscribed Series C financing round Tuesday. The Salt Lake City-based company produces robots that augment humans to enhance productivity and safety. Rotor Capital led the round, which included most of the company’s existing
investors, such as Schlumberger, the company said in a written release. With the new funding, the company has raised a total of $96.1 million in venture-backed investments since being founded in 1983, according to Crunchbase data. Prior to this investment, Sarcos last closed on a $30 million Series B round in 2018. [ Crunchbase ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
5.
Bambuser raises $45M after shifting focus to live video shopping
Bambuser is a name you may not have heard in a while, but the Stockholm-headquartered company is announcing today that it has raised $45 million in new funding this year, with $34.5 million of that amount raised during the pandemic. Bambuser’s
history goes back more than a decade (the first TechCrunch coverage appeared in 2008). CEO Maryam Ghahremani told me that the founders’ idea — using smartphones to stream live video journalism — made them “very, very much ahead of their time.” However, being ahead of your time isn’t always a good thing, and Ghahremani that the company has also struggled with having “too little capital” (although it publicly listed on Nasdaq First North in 2017) and also with turning its technology into a great product and a scalable business model. [ Tech Crunch ]
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6.
Outspoken investor Chamath Palihapitiya invested in this manufacturing company — here’s his thesis
One of the latest deals involving a blank check company will bring a “leader in Manufacturing 2.0” to the public markets, according to tech investor Chamath Palihapitiya. Boston-based Desktop Metal announced last week that it would merge with special purpose acquisition company Trine Acquisition Corp., with Palihapitiya helping to lead a $275 million investment to finance the deal. The founder and CEO of investment firm Social Capital said on Twitter that Desktop Metal was
well-positioned for a shift toward more sustainable and U.S.-based manufacturing. [ CNBC ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
7.
PicnicHealth Raises $35M in Funding
PicnicHealth, a San Francisco, CA-based startup that gives patients access to their medical records and the ability to contribute to scientific research, raised $35m in equity financing. This included a new $25m Series B led by Felicis Ventures, and a previously-unannounced $10m Series A led by Amplify Partners in 2018. Amplify also participated in the Series B. In conjunction with the funding, Managing Director of Felicis Ventures, Sundeep Peechu will join Amplify General Partner Sunil Dhaliwal on the PicnicHealth board.
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8.
Insurer Centene invests in start-up Hazel Health in $33.5 million venture funding round
Telemedicine start-up Hazel Health provides school-based virtual medical care and mental health for children in grade school. When the Covid pandemic shut down schools this spring, the company pivoted to home access. “We built what we’re now calling Hazel at Home, where you can now also have a doctor’s visit from your house from a laptop, or Chromebook, or from a cell phone,” said Josh Golomb, Hazel Health CEO. [ CNBC ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
9.
Workplace management startup Legion raises $22 million
Legion, an artificial intelligence driven platform for workplace management, has raised a $22 million series B round led by Stripes with participation from Workday Ventures and others. Legion is designed to help employers better manage their hourly workforces by automating certain decisions, like how much labor to deploy to meet the needs of the company and when to schedule workers. Taking into account demand forecasting, labor optimization and the preferences of employees, Legion then generates a
schedule that “ensures employees are able to work when they prefer to work,” Legion CEO Sanish Mondkar told TechCrunch. “These are all important problems to solve in the overall puzzle of labor management.” [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
10.
Real assets fundraising tops $100B in H1
After bringing in over $200 billion in 2019, real assets funds remain strong, with more than $100 billion raised through the first six months of this year. Notably, real estate fundraising has been remarkably resilient despite the ongoing economic crisis, accounting for more than half of that total.
Capital is continuing to pour into real assets funds as institutional investors bet on the pandemic's longer-term recovery, according to PitchBook's H1 2020 Real Assets Report. And as fund managers search for opportunities, the burgeoning life sciences sector, detailed in the report's spotlight, may be worth a look. Other key takeaways include: - Brookfield's $20
billion vehicle was the second infrastructure fund ever to reach that threshold
- Many physical infrastructure assets saw write-downs, while digital infrastructure assets outperformed
- The oil and gas sector hit low points for both fundraising and deal activity, as global shutdowns hammered demand. [ Pitchbook ]
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11.
Toss Lab, Inc. provider of the enterprise collaboration tool JANDI, announced $13 million in a Series B round
Toss Lab, Inc. provider of the enterprise collaboration tool JANDI, announced $13 million in a Series B round, bringing its total fundraising to over $20 million. The round was led by repeat investor SoftBank Ventures Asia, the venture arm of SoftBank Group. JANDI is an enterprise team collaboration platform with a suite of productivity tools that include topic-based group chat, file-sharing, task management, video conferencing, and integrations with 3rd party apps. JANDI recently added integration with Zoom, enhanced security controls and an admin dashboard. [ startup mgzn ]
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12.
Memo to Palantir: Be careful what you wish for
Filing papers for a proposed new stock listing can be a bit of a double-edged sword for private companies seeking to go public. That is a risk that Palantir Technologies, the data-mining specialist whose co-founders include CEO Alex Karp and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, seems willing to embrace—with gusto. Unveiling the all-important S-1 filing, which Palantir did last week, is a milestone marking a private company's coming of age. Companies use these filings to signal to Wall Street they've
arrived, presenting a valuable opportunity to tell a story of successes, aspirations and risks, especially to a wider audience of investors and potential new customers. [ Pitchbook ]
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13.
Oakland Black Business Fund Launches Investment Platform For Black-Owned Businesses
14.
The humbling of Europe’s most-hyped startup incubator: Rocket Internet
Rocket Internet, the German startup incubator that was once the darling of Europe’s technology sector and a thorn in the side of the Silicon Valley startups whose business models it shamelessly ripped off, announced Tuesday that it plans to delist from the Frankfurt and Luxembourg
stock exchanges after seeing its shares fall 13% this year. Rocket says it has plenty of access to money to fund its startups from private investors and doesn’t need the public markets anymore. But it's hard to read Rocket’s decision as anything other than a humbling blow for Oliver Samwer, Rocket’s brash cofounder and chief executive officer, who once boasted that he wanted to “own the Internet” and claimed his Berlin-based “startup factory” could churn out one successful tech firm after another. [ Fortune ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
15.
Mark Zuckerberg’s $300 million donation to protect elections must overcome Facebook’s past
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are donating $300 million to protect American elections. It is one of the couple’s largest-ever single gifts, meant to bolster democracy during a pandemic. But it’s also one that critics say is brimming with irony given Facebook’s past failures in protecting the integrity of elections. The Facebook
chief said on Tuesday that he had sent the money to two civic organizations which in turn will direct it to state and local election officials so they can prepare for an unprecedented Election Day. The coronavirus pandemic has caused many states to radically shift — on short notice — how they will administer elections to ensure safety. A majority of Americans say they are anticipating that they will vote
early or by mail this year. [ Vox ] Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
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