Religion-based apps, tools and communities aren’t brand new, including to investors. Pray.com, for example, an LA-based app for daily prayer and bedtime Bible stories that was founded in 2016, has raised at least $34 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins. Ministry Brands, a nine-year-old, Knoxville, Tennessee-based outfit that now includes dozens of software and payments […]
Maple VC locks down $16.5 million for its second seed-stage fund by waving the Canadian flag
Maple VC is based in San Francisco, but don’t let that fool you, says its founder, Andre Charoo. The young fund, which launched in 2016 with $1.2 million in capital commitments, just closed on $16.5 million in capital commitments for a second fund that promises to almost exclusively back savvy Canadian founders, no matter where […]
New Culture lands $25 million in seed funding to commercialize its cheesy vegan mozzarella
Led by sales of cheddar and mozzarella, the U.S. cheese market alone was valued at $34.3 billion in 2019, and is projected to reach $45.5 billion by 2027, growing at a compound annual growth rate of of 5.25%, according to Allied Research. By comparison, the vegan cheese industry is tiny, measuring around $1.2 billion in […]
Atomic has launched 14 startups in the last 12 months (and they’re getting funded); here’s how it works
In a world of copycat companies and investment firms that also increasingly operate in similar ways, Jack Abraham stands out a bit. His venture firm, Atomic, only writes checks to startups it spins up itself. It’s launching a lot of startups, too. Since founding and selling a company called Milo to eBay in 2010 at […]
An inclusive new DTC beauty platform secures $3 million in funding — and a supercharged offline strategy
Earlier this week, Thirteen Lune, a direct-to-consumer beauty platform that was launched last year in LA with $1 million in seed funding from Diddy, Gwyneth Paltrow and Beautycounter founder Gregg Renfrew, announced $3 million in additional seed funding. We might not normally pause on this kind of development, especially in a market where dozens of […]
A new venture studio, SuperLayer, aims to become a preeminent Web3 launch pad
There’s a new venture studio in the world that looks rather different from earlier venture studios from a structural standpoint. Unlike renowned outfits like Atomic or Science or Expa that create companies that then sell equity to VCs who expect that equity to rise in value, this new studio, SuperLayer, plans to spin up consumer […]
Cover, a modular home builder that’s modeled in ways after Tesla, has raised a $60 million Series B
There are lots of startups now working on modular home design. Among the most interesting is Cover, a seven-year-old, LA-based company that says it manufactures fully complete wall, floor and roof panels in its factory, then transports them on a standard truck and assembles them on site — without a crane. The materials it is […]
Fifty Years, a deep-tech investor, has raised $90 million from tens of “unicorn” founders
Fifty Years, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based outfit with a portfolio that’s already rife with mostly deep tech companies — many with a good story to tell about how they can have an impact on the environment — just closed its third and newest fund with $90 million in capital commitments. The money isn’t coming from […]
Marcy Venture Partners, cofounded by Jay-Z, just closed its second fund with $325 million
Marcy Venture Partners, the venture firm cofounded in 2018 by Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), former Roc Nation CEO Jay Brown, and former Walden VC general partner Larry Marcus, says it has closed its second fund with $325 million in capital commitments. The team, which closed its debut fund with $85 million, is now managing $600 million […]
Credo AI launches out of stealth with $5.5 million to help companies with ‘ethical AI’
There are many in the world of AI who worry about its implications. One of those people is Navrina Singh, a former product manager for Qualcomm, then Microsoft, who saw firsthand at Microsoft how a Twitter bot it developed in 2016 as an experiment in “conversational understanding,” was, to quote The Verge, “taught to be […]