A few housekeeping notes:
I’ve been going through Notation Capital’s podcast Origins. It’s excellent. The podcast looks at the business of limited partners (LPs). There are so many great interview guests. The episode with Naval Ravikant, who is an investor in Notation, is a must listen for anyone interested in the Venture Capital business, and specifically early-stage investing. There are too many great episodes to name but the one with Josh Abramson, co-founder of TeePublic, is worth a listen.
In the interesting companies sections below, I’ve highlighted some health and wellness companies that I think are great, which reveal my own interests. But in particular, Parsley Health caught my eye. They just raised a USD 10m Series A to continue building out their preventative digital healthcare as a service business.
Lastly, if you’re in a hurry, skip everything and read this piece by Christopher Mims in the WSJ which looks at how some millennials and Gen Zers see doorbells. TL;DR: doorbells are out.
Data from the Week 📊
Last week, I tracked 41 early-stage startup capital raises totaling USD 322.54m, up from USD 312.42m the week prior. The median amount remained flat at USD 6m.
A full list of deals tracked last week can be found here.
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Sectors of Interest 🚀
Interesting Companies
Chefling, a Sunnyvale, California-based smart kitchen startup, raised a USD 1m pre-Series A round from XVVC.
Sword Health, a Portugal-based digital physiotherapist, raised a USD 4.6m seed round. Green Innovations and Vesalius Biocapital III participated in the round.
Parsley Health, a New York City-based medical health startup, raised USD 10m in capital, in a round led by FirstMark Capital.
AI
DimensionalMechanics, a Bellevue, Washington-based company which gives organizations the ability to build customs AI models, raised a USD 1.25m in a Series A round.
Citrine Informatics, a Redwood City, California-based materials data and AI platform, raised an USD 8m convertible note. Tencent Holdings and B&C Holdings participated in the round.
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AntVoice, a Paris-based marketing tech startup, raised a EUR 2m back in late March.
The company responded to a few questions about the deal, via email, noting that, to date, AntVoice has raised a total of USD 6m. The recent round took three months to close, and the company spoke with only one VC firm and two business angels.
To what extent, if at all, will GDPR regulations impact your business?
We are privacy by design. We only use anonymous data of people, so the GDPR will not impact our business.
Are there other macro factors that you foresee having an impact on the space?
Advertisers are looking for more transparency and efficiency advertising (contribution models vs last click), and publishers for less dependency on GAFA and a better use of their adslots & audience data.
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Read 📕
Pentagon Wants Silicon Valley’s Help on A.I. — NYTimes
I’ve been thinking a lot about this op-ed piece. The argument: The US Department of Defense is uneasy about China’s AI advances and “ominous, state-led fusion of civil and military technology development” and that a similar fusion in the US would be a mistake. There are many good points in here for why the Googles & co. of the world should avoid developing military applications for AI.
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Questions
What does “pre-seed” mean to you? How does it differ based on geography?
Why don’t LPs do a better job of marketing themselves?
What are your favorite early-stage funds?
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Job List: Show Me the Equity 💰
Your time is important. You should pick the right startup to work for. Below are all the early-stage startups that raised capital this week that have job postings on AngelList with a minimum equity amount offered of 0.01%.
Business Development Manager at Chefling — Sunnyvale, California * 0.4% – 1.0%
Visual Designer, Product Designer, Front End Engineer, Head of Sales and Sales Development Rep at SquareFoot — NYC * 0.01% - 1%
Backend Engineer, Data Engineer, Frontend Engineer, VP Growth, Senior Director Content & Story, General Manager California, Director Ecommerce, Director People & Recruiting, Director Real Estate & Development, Director of Membership Experience, Chief of Staff and Product Manager at Parsley Health — NYC * 0.01% - 0.225%
Engagement Partner Implementation and Engagement Partner, Partnerships at Aula — London * 0.1% to 0.4%
Visual Designer, Senior Full Stack Software Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, Scientific Software Engineer, Full Stack Software Engineer, Backend Software Engineer, Senior Backend Software Engineer and Software Engineering Manager at Citrine Informatics — Redwood City, Denver and Remote * 0.05% - 0.25%
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Partner 🤝
Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) is something that I use personally and I find it to be to an incredible time-saving tool. Ok, so I think YAMM is great, so what? Well, Siftery named YAMM as the Best-In-Class winner for the Top Product by Market Share in the Email Marketing Platforms Category. YAMM is also a top Google Sheets add-on, with approximately 940,000 users. Check it out here.
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If you’re a startup and you’re raising capital and would like to be featured in next week’s newsletter, reach out by emailing: chris@pdreporter.com.
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