A few weeks ago I started subscribing to a cool newsletter called RFS100. It highlights “Requests for Startups” from a community of investors, operators, and founders from all walks of life. It’s compiled by Mario Gabriele of Charge Ventures and Aashay Sanghvi of Haystack VC. Some examples on last week’s post included things like commercializing Ayahuasca and starting pickup-only grocery stores.
My favorite part of the community is its separate Telegram group chat hosted by the page’s creators. I’ve been able to chat with some fascinating people I otherwise never would have crossed paths with. You can apply to join it here, but you have to submit your own request for a startup!
Stuff I’m Reading:
VC Financing Deals:
Breezeway 🏘️
Crunchbase reported that property operations platform Breezeway has raised an $8M Series A from Schooner Capital, Tamarisc Ventures, Krillion Ventures, and Launch Capital. The product is meant to help landlords monitor and verify maintenance tasks using a platform that centralizes scheduling, messaging, and task management. I first wrote about them last December when they raised $4M.
I looked a bit deeper into the PropTech scene in Boston in February and highlighted a few other venture-backed property management startups that have raised in the last 18 months or so. Here’s an updated list:
HqO - Professional tenant experiences ($47M Raised)
Openly - Home insurance underwriting (~$22.7M raised)
OwnUp- Home loan marketplace (~$17M raised)
Regorra - Appraisal platform (~$13.9M raised)
LeasePilot - Lease drafting software (~$10M raised)
Knox Financial — Turn homes into investment properties (~$4.4M raised)
coUrbanize - Community engagement (~$2.4M Raised)
Tour24 - Self-guided apartment tours (~$2M Raised)
CrowdComfot- Tenant maintenance requests (~$1.8M Raised)
Stavvy - Modern lending marketplace (~$1.5M Raised)
UpEquity - Mortgage applications simplified (~$1.5M raised)
HomeBinder - Online home management ($1.1M Raised)
HomeProvider - Book maintenance services (~$250K Raised)
AssetBlock - Crypto real estate investment (~$200K raised)
Oda - Self-guided apartment tours (~$150K Raised)
Chord - Buy homes in increments (~$120K raised)
Bldup - Real estate market analytics (~$80K Raised)
Splitspot - Rental management solutions (Unknown raised from PJC)
BUILDIUM - Property management software (Acquired)
Cobu - Tenant engagement (Unknown raised)
Nesterly - Homesharing platform (Unknown Raised)
Did I miss anyone? LMK
Evolv Technology 🔫
Evolv Technology just raised an unknown amount from Stanley Security. They’re the developer of a touch-less, computer vision-based, smart threat detection system. (It’s a fancy metal detector). They can scan bodies to detect threats like weapons and explosives at a rate of 3600+ people per hour. Since founding, they’ve raised close to $84M from investors like Lux Capital, DCVC, General Catalyst, and the Gates Foundation.
You’d think a company that makes money from large venues and office buildings would be screwed right now, but they’re adapting the Evolv Express product line to help with safe business reopening plans. They recently introduced a thermal imaging package that can scan a visitor’s skin temperature in 2-3 seconds on top of scanning for other threats. I can’t imagine these not becoming a standard in all offices within a few years.
Indigo Ag 🌿
Boston’s Indigo Ag has raised an additional $360M in Series F financing, after already raising ~$200M this year. New investors joining the cap table include the Alaska Permanent Fund and Flagship Pioneering. Their total capital raised is now ~$1.2B. According to CNBC, the latest round of funding will help them develop a new carbon sequestration program to incentivize sustainable farming.
Brio Systems 🧪
Health biomarker startup BRIO Systems has raised $1.9M from investors including One Way Ventures, Nimble Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, and Wolfhead Capital (CTO of WHOOP). Before COVID, the company had focused on drawing blood from athletes to deliver health insights for training purposes. It turns out they were very well positioned to test for COVID-19, and they have since pivoted their operations to doing so. I wrote about them in mid-April when they first began to make the pivot after hearing about them from a virtual panel hosted by Venture Lane.
Take Brio, a health biomarker company operating out of GSVLabs in Boston. Before the outbreak, they would draw blood from athletes at gyms to deliver a deep analysis of vitals for training purposes. With all gyms closed, their product has ceased operations. After communicating with stakeholders, they recognized that their core strength was efficiently delivering lab results to end-users. They decided to put their fitness product on hold and re-direct their existing relationships with labs and suppliers to quickly spin up an FDA-compliant COVID—19 screening tool for employers that can deliver results to a patient’s door in 1-3 days.
Slim.ai 🤖
A stealth-mode DevOps company called Slim.ai is raising $6.6M, with $5M already closed.
According to the Form D filing, it’s led by John Amaral, Kyle Quest, Ron Zalkind, and Gil Zimmerman. It looks like the four met while founding CloudLock, a cloud data security company that was acquired by Cisco in 2016 for around $293M on ~$35M raised. They served as Head of Product, Chief Architect, CTO, and CEO at CloudLock, respectively.
Kyle’s Linkedin currently reads:
“Imagine the future where there are no more DevOps engineers and you, as a developer, can build and run your cloud-native apps without getting a PhD in infrastructure first. If it's the future you want to see, join me and change the world for developers just like you redefining how DevOps is done.”
Hydrow 🚣♀️
In late June, I wrote that Hydrow had raised a $25M Series B. A Form D shows that they just raised an additional $3M in equity last week. The Cambridge-based company has now raised around $60M. About a week after their Series B announcement, one of their closest competitors, Mirror, was acquired by Lululemon for $500M after raising around $75M. It leaves them, Tonal ($90M raised), and Tempo ($18M raised) to fight against the most established market player, Peloton.
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That’s all from me until next week — If you’d like to connect with me, you can find me on Linkedin and Twitter or check out my website at nickstu.art.
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