What's Next for Boston Tech in 2021?
Plus Six Boston Companies That Raised $15M+
For over a year now, I’ve spent a few minutes each week reviewing every tech investment in Boston and writing it up in this newsletter. I wanted to jot down a few quick thoughts I had on investment themes going into 2021:
Boston Consumer Companies Do Exist
Back in 2019, Dave Frankel and Joe Flaherty covered this well:
“Aside from iRobot, Kiva, and if you include 3-D printers, Formlabs, and Desktop Metal, the Boston metro area actually has enjoyed more success in the consumer space. For instance, three of the five best exits in Boston during this period have been consumer businesses: Wayfair, TripAdvisor, and CarGurus.”
This is true, but which companies are the next Wayfair, TripAdvisor, and CarGurus? Look at this dated list of startup resources in Boston from BuiltIn. There’s a “success stories” section with consumer companies like DraftKings, Drizly, and Runkeeper — and several companies that don’t exist anymore. What does the next generation of Boston consumer successes look like?
In the last year alone, we saw quite a few consumer deals from the seed and later stage close. Check out Qatch, JobGet, Drizly, GoPeer, Hydrow, Babel Bark, TinyHood, Hemista, ianacare, Jassby, Flare, Whoop, Zingeroo, MomBox, Wagr, Cobbles, ColdSnap, and Embr Labs.
Connected Fitness & Quantified Self
Whoop has certainly gotten well-deserved publicity for pulling off an excellent HaaS model and creating arguably the best fitness and recovery tracker on the market. However, there are some other Boston-area companies doing some fascinating stuff in the fitness and bioanalytics space.
NH and Boston-based Liteboxer is bringing connected boxing to market.
NH-based Helios Hockey is bringing performance analytics onto the rink.
Hydrow is the Peloton of rowing.
Figur8 wants to track your movement on a musculoskeletal level.
Brio Systems, prior to successfully pivoting to tackle COVID, was helping athletes analyze their health via blood tests.
Dynocardia is building the only wearable that can continuously track blood pressure.
An Ireland-based company with a Cambridge presence that just raised a Series B to provide bioanalytics to pro athletes.
We even have some temperature control and echolocation wearables.
“Micro PE” is Really Interesting
I’ve covered Boston-based companies like Perch and Thrasio several times now because I’m fascinated by the model, and new competitors have raised some serious debt and equity.
Over $1B was raised in 2020 to acquire and run Amazon marketplace businesses. That craze started with Thrasio becoming that fastest profitable company to reach unicorn status, but I think it’s still just the tip of the iceberg for this new “digital rollup” industry. Now I regularly see people pitch the term “Thrasio for X” as a framework for buying internet businesses, newsletters, online communities, etc.
What if Boston became a hub for firms that want to raise money to acquire and run internet businesses that don’t perfectly fit the “venture-scale” profile? Check out MicroAcquire, where you can buy internet businesses for as little as $5k.
DeepTech SPACs
Right now, SPACS are clearly being abused as an investment vehicle, but there’s no doubt they’re here to stay. They also might be ideal for the types of deep tech companies Boston is best known for (science-ey ones that are tough to build a digestible narrative about). The $DM team was ahead of the curve, but I can think of several other late stage companies that could follow suit this year and beyond.
Five months ago, Michael Dempsey covered this well when he wrote about the narrative-driven nature of the private markets and how it impacts deep tech companies specifically.
Have a great week!
— Nick
Stuff I’m Reading:
The Unauthorized Story of Andreessen Horowitz — Eric Newcomer
MassVentures Sets is Sights on Seed-Stage Deep Tech — BostInno
First Writeup on Jason Jacob’s New Climate Fund, MCJ Collective — Protocol
Boston Tech Investments:
Dynocardia 💗
Dynocardia, which I covered above and back in November 2020 when they raised $1.75M, just raised another $250K for their continuous blood pressure monitoring wrist band.
Vysioneer 🧠
Vysioneer, a Cambridge and Taiwan-based startup that uses deep learning to identify tumors in brain scans, just raised $1.25M after raising $500K back in 2019. The two-year-old company is run by Jen-Tang Lu, who was previously an ML scientist at Mass General & Brigham Women’s Center for Clinical Data Science.
Beehive 🐝
According to Crunchbase, a seed round for a new social media company called Beehive led by Frontline Strategy recently closed. Although Frontline appears to focus on India-based companies and Beehive’s Linkedin shows Delhi as the location.
Hindsight Advice 🎓
According to a Form D, peer mentorship company Hindsight Advice raised $300k. The company has an app that matches college students with high schoolers for mentorship opportunities. It’s founded by Mukund Kumar.
Dock Health ✔️
Dock Health, which is essentially a HIPPA-compliant to-do list for doctors, just joined the LA-based KidsX Accelerator's inaugural cohort. KidsX supports early-stage digital health companies tackling the pediatrics market. I’m not sure what cohort members get in terms of equity/grant funding though.
Fuze ☎️
Fuze, the 15-year old Boston-based communications software company that’s raised $480M+ since its Series F, is raising another $20M with $13M closed so far.
Missing something? Spot an inaccuracy?
Email me and tell me about it! I’ll be sure to share it in my next update.