![]() ![]() Bumpa, a Lagos, Nigeria-based retail automation platform, raised $4 million in seed funding. Initialized Capital and Offline Ventures co-led the round and were joined by investors including Coalition Partners, Muse Capital, Arkitekt Ventures, and other angels. Cofertility, a Los Angeles-based egg donation, freezing, and donor matching company, raised $5 million in seed funding. Refinery Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Techstars, Elkstone Partners, Collective Capital Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and others. StoryFit, an Austin-based machine learning and audience insights provider for the entertainment industry, raised $5.5 million in Series A funding. Union Square Ventures and Greylock led the round and were joined by investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Carbon Removal Partners, Carbon Drawdown Initiative, Fall Line Capital, and Cavallo Ventures. Lithos, a Seattle-based agricultural carbon removal company, raised $6.29 million in seed funding. Fin Capital led the round and was joined by investors including TTV Capital, Argonautic Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Haymaker Ventures, and others. Bookkeep, a New York-based accounting automation platform, raised $6.6 million in seed+ funding. Chip City Cookies, a New York-based cookie brand, raised $10 million in funding from Enlightened Hospitality Investments and Union Square Hospitality Group. Baird Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Sands Capital Ventures, Grotech Ventures, and Veraz Investments. Tellius, a Reston, Va.-based decision intelligence platform, raised $16 million in Series B funding. ![]() Collaborative Fund and Fine Structure Ventures co-led the round and were joined by investors including Systemiq Capital, AgFunder, MCJ Collective, Founders Fund, BACKED VC, Presight Capital, CPT Capital, and Sustainable Food Ventures. Hoxton Farms, a London, U.K.-based company growing animal fat without animals, raised $22 million in Series A funding. My bet is things probably won’t get much more frothy anytime soon-but, these firms can’t wait forever to start spending their LPs’ money.Ĭall out: Are you a founder or investor in the crypto/Web3 space? I’d love to hear about what you’re seeing and hearing (and doing!). We’ll have to see if the chill in the crypto venture space, alongside the broader drawdown in VC funding, will last in the coming quarters-and whether heavy hitters like a16z will remain content with their slower pace. She’s been less involved in Web3 over recent months, too, Isford told me. “A lot of companies don’t need the capital right now,” Isford noted. And lots of crypto companies raised ample funds in 2021 or early 2022, and are likely not keen on raising a downround and taking a valuation cut (nor are their investors). ![]() To be sure, many of these firms may have long deployment schedules, so they might not be in a rush to spend their money right now. Meanwhile a recent TechCrunch article suggested VCs are waiting for even lower valuations. “There may be some good hedge fund opportunities,” she suggested, though Lux Capital doesn’t participate in such hedge fund strategies. Isford did note that she’s heard some crypto funds are focusing more on liquid positions at the moment (meaning actual tokens versus equity investments) given compressed market prices. My question is, if valuations have come down a lot, and these firms have tons of cash to deploy, why not take the opportunity to snap up lots of deals at lower prices? I recently asked Grace Isford, a principal at VC firm Lux Capital who focuses on fintech and Web3 investments, and she suggested that for crypto VCs in general, “it’s hard to know how active they’ve been recently because a lot of their investments could have also been made in stealth,” she posited. (A spokesperson for a16z said the firm couldn’t confirm these stats given there are deals yet to be publicly disclosed.) Of note, the value of a16z’s crypto deals in the third quarter of 2022 is still higher than the year-ago quarter. The value of the firm’s investments, meanwhile, dropped from nearly $2.4 billion in the first quarter of this year to around $600 million last quarter, per PitchBook data. Though the firm has continued doing deals, a16z crypto, which manages $7.6 billion in funds and raised a whopping $4.5 billion fund in May, participated in only seven crypto and blockchain VC deals in the third quarter of 2022, a huge drop from its peak of 26 deals in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to PitchBook data, and nearly 60% lower than the second quarter this year. If you look at mega crypto investor Andreessen Horowitz’s activities, the slump looks pretty dramatic. But just how much of a drop-off is actually hitting the industry? Whether you’ve been reading or scrolling through Twitter lately, you’ve likely noticed a slowdown in funding for crypto startups. ![]()
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