Boston Tech Deals (11/24-12/1)
Seven New Investments + November by the Numbers
Welcome Back!
I hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving and had lots of insightful dinner conversations explaining blockchain to your uncle and distancing your career from WeWork and Taylor Swift. The short week didn’t stop a handful of deals from closing over the last few days, and my guess is an influx of SEC filings will come in later this week.
I’m thankful for all the support over the past few weeks for those who have shared and subscribed to the newsletter. It’s really neat to write for an audience and it’s pushed me to improve my writing and reporting abilities. I’m always open to feedback and advice, so don’t hesitate to reach out and tell me your thoughts.
Last week, seven Boston companies raised $23M
First, November by the Numbers (and Gender)
December is here, and so are my finals. As my time frees up over winter break, I plan to do a deep dive into fundraising data. In the meantime, I wanted to take a look at November and October’s total tech VC investment. At the end of last month, I tallied up investment in Boston tech companies. Here’s where November stands in comparison:
43 Boston tech companies raised over $388M (down from October).
The average deal size was $9M, with a median of $3M.
Companies with at least one female founder accounted for just $35M of the $388M VC funding raised in November among Boston tech companies.
Image: A slight dip in tech VC funding & deal count compared to October. These numbers would look much bigger if life sciences were added to the equation.
Image: Companies with at least one female founder raised about a dime for every dollar raised by all-male founding teams.
Deals from Abroad
Several international companies with a strong Boston presence raised last week. I’m not going to include them in my weekly/total fundraise calculation, but I think they’re important to mention.
Toucan Toco, headquartered in France with Boston offices, has raised €12M from Balderton Capital. This marks the already profitable company’s first round of dilutive outside funding since its inception in 2013 (they have taken some grants). Toucan’s goal is to “deliver data and insights to the non-technical decision-maker.” Their platform helps decision-makers easily visualize, analyze, and report on internal company data.
Invivo AI, a bioinformatics company that uses AI to optimize drug development, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the C100 Association, a Canadian tech accelerator. The company’s product claims to help reduce R&D costs, improve safety, and decrease time to market for drug developers. The company’s primary offices are located in Montreal, but they also have a presence in Cambridge, MA. This marks Invivo’s sixth run through an accelerator program, accompanied by investments from Brightspark Ventures, Front Row Ventures, Panache Ventures, and Real Ventures. Here’s a detailed Medium piece by Front Row Ventures’ Makoto Rheault-Kihara on why they invested earlier this year.
Leeds, UK-based Panintelligence has raised a £4.5M Series A from YFM Equity Partners and Comhar Capital. The company allows businesses to “use data in almost any format to trigger bespoke reports and visualize trends in real-time, helping inform strategic decisions and lower costs.” The PE-backed company was founded in 2014 and plans to use this funding to further scale its data visualization, reporting, and analytics capabilities.
Detectify, based out of Sweden, has raised €21M for its ethical hacker network. The round was led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Paua Ventures, Inventure, and Insight Partners. The company develops two products (Asset Monitoring and Deep Scan) that scan and monitor websites for potential vulnerabilities to improve IT security. Baldterton capital has invested €33M into two Boston companies in the last week.
Vancouver-based DiscoverOrg, which owns Waltham-based ZoomInfo, has filed to go public. The company purchased ZoomInfo back in February 2019.
Boston VC Financing Deals Last Week
Openly, a Techstars Boston alumnus, has raised a $7.65M Seed Round led by Google’s Gradient Ventures with participation from PJC. Openly has developed a home insurance carrier platform that helps under-leveraged agents stay competitive against large DTC insurance carriers. Openly has now joined Wise Systems and botkeeper as the third Boston-based startup to receive investment from the Google-backed AI fund. Their operations are currently active in seven states. Here’s a great Builtin Boston piece on the company.
SunDensity, which has created photonic solar conversion products and services, received $75k from the Buffalo-based CDFI LaunchNY. Their products utilize Photonic Smart Coating Technology to convert light wavelengths in order to maximize efficiency for solar panels, architectural glass, optoelectronic instruments, and more. More on SunDensity Photonic Smart Coatings:
Video: SunDensity overview
LovePop, which designs 3-D pop-up greeting cards, has raised $10.1M from undisclosed investors, bringing their total raised to $41.56M. The company is on a mission to create, “one billion magical moments” from their laser-cut cards crafted from the ancient art of kirigami. You might remember them from their SharkTank appearance in 2015 and 2017. The company has previously raised from 16 investors, including TechStars, Highland Capital Partners, One Way Ventures, The Graduate Syndicate, Right Side Capital, and several individual angels.
Image: A LovePop 3D Christmas card
Wellist, which has developed a platform to help improve engagement and experience among hospital patients and caregivers, has raised $3.5M from undisclosed investors. Their total raised is now $16.4M. The company offers a digital engagement platform, concierge call center, and on-site patient support that follows patients throughout their hospitalization journey. Their current clients include Mass General, Beth Israel Medical Center, MemorialCare, and Sarah Cannon Research Institute. Previous investors include .406 Ventures, BOSS Syndicate, and Summation Health Ventures.
Givinga has raised a $185K convertible note from undisclosed investors. The company has created a corporate philanthropic giving platform on top of its “Philantech” API. The platform helps companies enable their employees to engage with charitable causes through employee benefits programs. This space is definitely heating up. A few similar companies I found: Alaya, Amicus, Pandapay, Givergy, Pledgeling, and EverGift.
QSimulate, a Cambridge-based developer of cloud-based quantum molecular simulations, has raised a $750K Angel Round to grow its computational R&D solution for chemical and pharmaceutical companies. The computer simulation method, known as Molecular Dynamics, helps researchers analyze the physical movement of atoms and molecules given specific parameters and interactions. Molecular Dynamics was developed back in the late 1950’s when a few American physicists used an IBM 704 to simulate perfectly elastic conditions between hard spheres. Now the technology is used by many companies to invent and test new molecules within a controlled, simulated environment.
Some day in the future, imagine your doctor has a digital signature of your personal molecular makeup and can trial how a drug will interact with your body and the other prescriptions you take, all in the cloud, all while you’re in the waiting room reading a three-month-old copy of Good Housekeeping. I think it’s easy to forget how impressive the biotech progress being made in Boston is when you’re around it all the time.
Image: A molecular dynamics simulation of water.
Lastly, I-PASS Institute, a medical training platform aimed at improving patient safety through “the reduction of communication failures during patient hand offs and transitions in care” has raised $658K from undisclosed investors, bringing their total raised to $2.38M.
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 www.nickstu.art. Enjoy the winter weather coming in tomorrow for those reading in New England.
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