Streamlined Ventures Newsletter
Dear Friends, we hope 2024 has been going well for you. We are excited to bring you the latest updates on our firm, our funds, as well as our insights into the markets for early stage investments.
The six months since our last newsletter have been quite busy. We launched fundraising for our sixth Seed Fund and our fourth Opportunity Fund. We have completed several closings for these funds, increasing our total number of managed funds to 10.
In Q1, we had two new unicorns in our seed portfolio – OpenGov was acquired by Cox Enterprises for $1.8Bn and Flip completed a Series C round at a $1.2Bn valuation. This brings our total count of seeded unicorns to 18 in the last 13 years since our inception, with many more in the works.
We have also been actively investing in new and existing companies. In the last six months, we invested in new seed rounds in six companies and five follow-on investments from our Opportunity funds. Despite a difficult fundraising environment, 13 of our seeded companies were able to raise meaningful up-rounds in the last 12 months.
In our previous newsletter, we reported seeing a noticeable increase in investment activity in Q4 '23 across the early stage venture capital sector, especially compared to the sluggish investment period during 2022 through mid-2023. Fortunately, the trend continues into 2024, with early stage VC investments continuing at a healthy pace. The later stage markets continue to be challenging, other than the overly frothy category of AI foundation models.
We believe the AI foundation models category will see a lot of commoditization, with only a handful of winners succeeding, and the other overly funded companies falling by the wayside. We saw the first signs of this trend with Microsoft’s acquisition of Inflection – a suboptimal outcome for the investors in the company. We believe the true value in AI will be in AI-enabled applications, an area we have been focused on for many years.
Fundraising for Our New Streamlined Ventures Funds
The new year marked the commencement of fundraising efforts for our latest funds: Streamlined Ventures Fund V and Streamlined Ventures Opportunity Fund IV. Within just a few months, we have already exceeded 80% of our fundraising target and we are actively deploying capital from these new funds. We have completed three new investments from the new Seed Fund, with two more anticipated shortly, and we have made an additional four investments from our new Opportunity Fund.
We hope to complete fundraising for these funds in the next few months while maintaining our usual investment pace.
Our Portfolio
We are pleased to report continued success within our portfolio and we are excited to share several significant developments. Over the last few months, two additional unicorns have emerged from within our portfolio. Both OpenGov and Flip have now surpassed the $1 billion valuation mark, increasing our total count of seeded unicorns to 18 within the last 13 years since our inception. Additionally, we are anticipating two IPOs in 2024: Easypost and Rappi. The year thus far has seen some notable acquisitions within our portfolio, with OpenGov being acquired by Cox Enterprises, and Compliance AI being acquired by Archer.
On April 4th, our seed portfolio company DestinyTech100 celebrated the public listing of its first ETF on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: DXYZ) by ringing the opening bell, marking a significant milestone in its journey.
In terms of our firm’s investment emphasis, we continue to stay focused on applications employing AI, data science, and software automation, and we anticipate continuing our normal investment pace of investing in 12 new companies per year. The investment strategy will continue to focus on companies that leverage these technologies across specific vertical markets or across innovative consumer applications.
Our Firm is Growing
We are pleased to announce that the Streamlined Team has expanded, with Chase Dun joining the Investment Team as an associate, and Skye Addicks joining in Operations. In April, our team had the privilege of traveling to Mexico City for our first international team offsite. We enjoyed an incredible and productive week, during which we had the opportunity to meet with a number of founders from our Latin American portfolio companies and to experience some of Mexico City's extraordinary offerings.
At Streamlined Ventures, we are committed to continuously pushing the envelope and ourselves, striving to help our founders achieve ever-greater outcomes. We are immensely grateful for your partnership and ongoing support over the years. Should you come across outstanding founders looking to build exceptional companies, or if you or someone you know is interested in partnering with us on our newest funds, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.
Best wishes,
~ Streamlined Ventures Team
New Seed Investments
Is harnessing generative AI to develop the future of how TV content is created and consumed.
Is the operator of one of the world’s largest authenticated marketplace intended to browse and shop for luxury watches.
Is reinventing data-driven healthcare to benefit patients, physicians, payors, and MedTech, by helping physicians recommend patients for commonly overlooked procedures.
Is the #1 open source AI-powered diagramming and charting editor for enterprise teams to create and collaborate on complex diagrams in real-time.
Is a neuromorphic computing company revolutionizing the limitations of traditional AI in nextgen autonomous vehicles, robotics, edge devices, and high-frequency networks.
Is an innovative approach to managing diabetes. From glucose tracking and food monitoring to AI-powered insights, the comprehensive platform offers 24/7 access to care and experts
New Opportunity Fund Investments
Is the future of social commerce, offering an unparalleled experience for consumers to come together via the act of online shopping.
Is innovating the rental space, with a top-of-the market verification engine that verifies applicants in minutes, and streamlines the application process.
Is increasing the speed at which successful therapeutics reach clinical trials, using a proprietary in vivo drug discovery platform to identify targets and therapies for complex age-related diseases.
Is an AI talent intelligence platform, allowing companies to hire the best talent leaders with maximum efficiency.
Is transforming complex workflows with Gen-AI solutions to address the most complex, multi-system workflows, all from within their security perimeters.
What’s New with our Portfolio
Cox Buys Majority Stake in OpenGov, Prompting a $1.8B Valuation
Commerce Startup Flip Raises $144 Million to Challenge TikTok
Rappi Hires CFO to Get Ready for IPO
Activeloop nets $11M to give enterprises a better way to leverage multimodal data for AI
NobleAI Secures Over $10 Million in Series A Extension Funding
Mermaid Chart Raises $7.5M to Reinvent Visual Collaboration for Enterprise
Anoki Elevates Personalized Content Discovery with AI-Powered Experience on Google TV
