Last Week in Boston Tech Deals (1/26-2/2)
A Look at Real Estate Tech in Boston & Tech Deals Last Week
Welcome Back!
It seems like the tides are shifting for early-stage companies fundraising from high numbers of investors. Just last week, two startups raised large rounds with no lead investor. DTC wine company Haus raised $4.5M from ten funds and 100 individual investors. Email platform Front also raised a good chunk of its $59M Series C from a handful of industry-aligned executives and individual investors with no lead.
A few years ago, this would have been seen as a huge red flag, but founders are flipping the script and letting influential operators and founders participate in their growth for better investor alignment. From a cap table management perspective, this does seem a bit tricky. I’m curious what your thoughts on this trend are.
Locally, last week was an eventful one. We saw eleven companies raise over $98M. Going forward, I’m thinking of doing a deeper dive on one or two deals a week and keeping the rest brief. I’m also changing up my formatting a bit for aesthetic purposes. Let me know what you think.
If you’re new to my emails, welcome! My name is Nick Stuart and I write a weekly newsletter on tech VC financing trends in Boston. You can learn more about me on my website here and about the micro-VC I help run here.
VC Financing Deals:
Real Estate Tech Spotlight: Knox Financial
Following a $1.4M Angel Round in March of last year, Knox Financial has received $3M in Seed Funding from Greycroft and Pillar VC. Pillar partner Sarah Hodges outlined in a Medium post why her firm is excited about backing Knox. Founded in 2018, the company has developed a proprietary earnings approach that helps everyday homeowners easily generate income from their property. The company claims that, if the Knox platform had existed from 1998 through today, Knox users would generate a 369% greater return for the same investment made into the S&P 500 over the same period.
They help users do almost everything required to run an income property: from the renting, legal, background checks, credit checks, collections, maintenance, and insurance. Their main customers are homeowners hoping to move/retire and turn a house into an income property, and landlords who are fed up with the hassle of real estate investment management.
They make money by charging a fixed percentage of rent collected after they find you a well-vetted tenant for your property. This requires a two-year commitment to the service, in which time they’ll even coordinate maintenance contractors to renovate a home so it’s ready to get it on the market.
Pillar is no stranger to the property and real estate tech space. Their portfolio outlines an investment strategy that spans across the real estate tech stack. Last May, they invested alongside Lux Capital into a 3D home design tool called Higharc. They also participated in a $12M Series A investment into Hometap back in 2018, which went on to raise a whopping $100M just last month. Hometap allows homeowners to borrow against the equity in their homes without taking on debt. Considering Knox already partnered with OwnUp, perhaps there’s a potential for a Knox & Hometap partnership down the line?
In the last twelve months, over 200 real estate tech companies in the US have brought in $3.3B in capital. Several of these are MA-based companies like:
HqO - Professional tenant experiences ($47M Raised)
OwnUp- Home loan marketplace ($17M raised)
BUILDIUM - Property management software ($15M raised)
Openly - Home insurance underwriting ($8M raised)
Regorra - Appraisal platform (Raised $3M from Spark Capital)
UpEquity - Mortgage applications simplified ($1.3M raised)
HomeProvider - Book maintenance services ($250K seed in March ‘19)
AssetBlock - Crypto real estate investment ($200K raised)
Chord - Buy homes in increments ($120K raised)
Bldup - Real estate market analytics ($80K Raised)
Splitspot - Rental management solutions (Unknown raised from PJC)
Cobu - Tenant engagement (Unknown raised from Beni.vc)
Stavvy - Modern lending marketplace (Unknown raised in March ‘19)
HomeBinder - Online home management (Seed raised in July 2019)
Image: A market map of real estate tech companies in Boston (Raised TTM)
If anyone would like to collaborate on a more exhaustive market map of real estate/proptech companies in the area, let me know!
Gravyty 💰
Gravyty, a four-year-old fundraising analytics platform, just secured $21M from K1 Investment Management bringing their total raised to $24.3M. The company makes a suite of AI-enabled products that enables streamlined fundraising efforts in the healthcare, non-profit, and education spaces. They currently offer five products that help email potential donors, develop outreach plans, track donor travel plans, send thank-you’s, and network with other organizations. This round marks their third round of funding following their graduation from the Babson MassChallenge back in 2016. Previous investors include Band of Angels, Lodestar Ventures, Venture Capital Fund of New England, Launchpad Venture Group, NXT Ventures, and Stage 1 Ventures.
Image: The Gravyty Connect mobile app
Legacy 🥚
Sperm testing and freezing company Legacy has just raised a reported $3.5M from Section 32, Y Combinator, and Bain Capital Ventures. TechCrunch has published a Q&A with founder and CEO Khaled Kteily outlining why men should be getting their sperm tested. He claims that “Women are taught about their fertility but men aren’t, yet the quality of their sperm is degrading over the years. Sperm counts have gone down by 50 to 60% over the last 40 years, too.” Legacy offers a collection of packages that help men cryogenically store sperm, get fertility reports and recommendations, and speak with fertility experts. The company spun out of the Harvard i-Lab in 2018.
SmartByte 🥡
SmartByte, a weight loss management device developer with offices in MA and Georgia, raised $454K. The company has created a mouthpiece that forces you to take smaller bites of food, a differentiator from the many stomach-based food inhibitors on the market. The FDA-approved, retainer-like contraption impacts how fast you’re able to eat and hopefully tires you out before you can finish an entire package of Oreos in one sitting as I do. According to a plastic surgeon that offers the device in his practice, patients can achieve a consistent loss of 7-9% of their weight. The company has now raised $10.3M in funding. With an increasing number of IoT-enabled refrigerators, perhaps there’s a market for an app on your fridge screen that makes you solve a brain teaser to unlock your fridge door.
Image: The SmartByte oral medical device
Imuneering 🧬
Bioinformatics startup Imuneering has secured $20M in Series A funding led by Boxcar PMJ. The company uses computational biology to, “develop new medicines unlikely to be found by traditional drug discovery methods” using its proprietary Disease Cancelling Technology. The 25-person startup now has offices in Cambridge, San Diego, and New York City. BioSpace writes that the Imuneering CEO Aims to Identify 90 Drug Programs Within Five Years.
Vizgen 🔬
A few weeks ago, I wrote about ReedCoor raising a $27M Series B to expand its spatial sequencing process, FISSEQ, fluorescent in situ sequencing. This week, it was reported that Vizgen has raised a $14M Series A from ARCH Venture Partners and Northpond Ventures to develop “next-generation spatially resolved, single-cell transcriptomics.” The specific way in which they do this is through their patented MERFISH process, or “multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization.” It seems like both companies are trying to analyze genetic interactions in situ, as opposed to the current process of grinding genetic samples into fragments, which diminishes the possibility of analyzing spatial data associated with a gene sequence.
GelSight 🤙
According to Strictly VC, GelSight has raised $10M in Series B funding led by Billerica’s Anzu Partners. Forbes has called their product, “A fake finger that could save fortunes.” What they mean is that GelSight uses elastomeric imaging to scan objects. Elastomeric is a fancy way of saying that a polymer is very rubber-like. They’ve put this rubber-like “finger” at the end of their imaging device and it can be rubbed across object surfaces to provide detailed 3D images. Forbes notes that “[When the CEO] visited aerospace companies that machine metal parts, he learned that many were relying on experienced workers to conduct a “fingernail test” to quickly judge whether a surface defect was just a small scratch or deep enough to potentially compromise the part.” The rubbery gel tip of the scanner acts a bit like a key mold as it presses into an object and takes the form of its nooks and crannies.
Image: The GelSight 3D Scanner
AdmitHub 🏫
AdmitHub has raised a $7.5M Series A led by Salesforce, Google Assistant Investments, and University Ventures. Much like Drift, Tawk.to, and others, AdmitHub is a conversational AI product “chatbot.” It’s meant to help educational institutions maintain more consistent engagement with students from recruitment all the way through coursework and graduation. The product is meant to improve student outcomes and reduce “summer melt.” As someone who has worked in admissions and recruitment at a university, the value add is so obvious. Even as the administrative bloat at colleges continues to worsen, there are still so many human touchpoints required to guide students. Imagine if you could count how many questions a student asks from the day they apply to a university to the moment they follow up with alumni relations about a printed diploma. What if you could reduce that by 2%? What about 50%?
CustomerGuage 💭
Riverside Acceleration Capital just invested in CustomerGuage, a B2B customer experience and retention SaaS product. The company has created a customizable customer feedback management product to help decision-makers improve customer experiences quicker. They’re going up against companies like HappyorNot and SparkCentral that focus on analyzing customer experience “CX” to help reduce churn proactively.
Wyebot 📡
WiFi analytics company Wyebot has raised $1.1M in debt in a $1.25M funding round according to BostInno and an SEC filing. The company’s cloud-based wireless intelligence platform optimizes networks, detects potential threats, and improves uptime for enterprise customers. The product is highly similar to NH-based Minim, which also provides a vendor-agnostic WiFi security solution and received investment from Founder Collective and Flybridge Capital back in 2018. Wyebot has now raised $8.6M in venture funding from Innospark Ventures, Launch Capital, Neotribe Venture, and Tectonic Ventures.
Agrify 🍁
Burlington-based cannabis growing solutions company Agrify just raised $4.5M. They provide hardware, software, and capital solutions to companies looking to start an indoor growing operation. The company, previously known as Agrinamics, pivoted from originally providing growing solutions for microgreens in urban areas.
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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