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| Hey Insiders, Today's newsletter covers: - 💵 Upwind's $50M funding round at $300M valuation
- 📉 Dip in seed to Series A graduation rate
- 💰 Butternut Box's $354M funding round
If you find this newsletter useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Israeli cybersecurity startup Upwind bagged $50M in fresh capital at a $300M valuation. Greylock Partners, Cyberstarts, and Leaders Fund led the funding round. The startup intends to use part of the fresh capital to double its staff count within a year, per CEO Amiram Shachar. More: - Upwind has previously raised funding from Penny Jar Capital, a fund anchored by NBA champion Stephen Curry and former Golden State Warriors teammate Casspi.
- The new fundraiser brings the firm's total capital raised to date to over $80M.
- Upwind has over 70 employees across its two offices in Tel Aviv, Israel, and San Francisco, California.
- The firm develops software to help enterprises detect and respond to threats to cloud infrastructure.
- Shachar formerly founded Spot.io, which NetApp acquired for $450M in 2020.
Q: What specific attributes of cybersecurity startups make it an appealing investment opportunity for venture capitalists? Join the conversation here. |     | |
| 2 | | Seed-stage startups are facing difficulty raising the subsequent Series A funding rounds. AngelList's CEO Avlok Kohli added, "The graduation rate to Series A is way below historical norms." 
What the numbers say: The median time U.S.-based seed stage startups take to raise the subsequent Series A funding rounds has widened to 25 months, per Crunchbase data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The median duration between the rounds was 21 months in 2022 and 14 months in 2014. Relevance: 24% of U.S.-based startups that raised more than $1M in seed funding could secure post-seed or Series A rounds. The figure drops to 6% for startups that raised seed funding in 2022. Investors are exercising caution with their investments due to economic uncertainties, higher interest rates, and heightened inflation. Why it matters: Given the challenging fundraising climate, some startups opt to raise seed extension rounds rather than raise following Series A rounds. Real-time fraud and risk management software maker Effectiv is one of the startups that opted for a second seed round earlier this year. Effectiv's CEO Ravi Sandepudi said that the $4.5M seed extension round in July allowed his company more time to build the business and "gives us the opportunity to raise a Series A round from a strong position down the line." The round was an extension of the firm's initial $4M seed round from Mar. 2022. | | | |
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| 3 | | London-based Butternut Box, a startup that develops food and supplements for dogs, raised $354M led by General Atlantic and L Catterton. The company sells its products in Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, and the U.K. More: - Butternut claims to produce health-focused snacks and supplements.
- The charity People's Dispensary for Sick Animals says that up to 65% of U.K. dogs are overweight.
- The startup last raised a venture round of an undisclosed amount by HSBC in September 2022. Prior to that, L Catteron led a ~$50M round with the participation of Five Seasons Ventures and White Star Capital, among others.
- Grand View Research estimates the value of the global pet food market to have been at $99.1B in 2022, with dog food comprising 40% of the total.
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| 4 | | Hero MotoCorp announced its plans to invest $66.5M in Bengaluru-based electric moped manufacturer Ather Energy. This brings Ather's total raised since inception to $336M from firms such as Tiger Global and Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, among others. More: - Hero MotoCorp held a 33.1% stake in Ather prior to the announcement.
- Ather was reportedly on track to generate $1B in revenue by this December; however, India's Ministry of Heavy Industries removed the state subsidy for two-wheel EVs.
- The startup was reportedly negotiating to secure a $250M round at a $1B valuation before the policy change.
- Ather had a turnover of $218.3M for the 12 months preceding the end of March.
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| 5 | | London-based Koios emerged from stealth to deploy voice AI algorithms for teams. The company raised a $550,000 pre-seed round led by Seedcamp, with the participation of Evolvient Capital. More: - The startup collects and processes 90 seconds of an employee or candidate's speech to generate personality or management insights.
- Koios was founded by Tom Sherwood, formerly a recruiter for Snap and Spotify; Alex Lewis, talent manager at Seedcamp; and Martin Lukac, data scientist at QuantCo.
- "After speaking with industry leaders, they made it clear that if friction from self-assessment could be removed and a more cost-effective model be put in place, then there was a great opportunity for mass adoption," said Lewis.
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| 6 | | Growth Warrior Capital is launching a generative AI-powered pitch deck-building software, Elevo, later this October. The firm is opening its waitlist today, which founders can join to gain first access once the product is officially launched. More: - The new product was the brainchild of Growth Warrior Capital's managing director, Promise Phelon, and venture partner Ashley Pilipiszyn, a former technical director at OpenAI.
- Phelon said, "I thought, what if we could take the most successful pitches from a VC's perspective and from founder outcomes, like getting the valuation they wanted or getting funded quickly, and build a generative product that enable you to do that quickly."
- The platform has analyzed hundreds of pitch decks from publicly available databases.
- Once founders have input details such as the funding round stage, product, team details, and other relevant information, Elevo generates a pitch deck that focuses on key points that VCs are looking for.
- The product will be available to all founders for free.
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| 7 | | 
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| 8 | | Quick Hits: - Launch your MVP with AWS. The Build Accelerator offers access to on-demand content, technical support, and $2K in AWS Activate credits. Apply today!*
- Former President Donald Trump's social media venture Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company behind Truth Social, secured 65% votes from shareholders of blank cheque company Digital World Acquisition Corp. to extend its SPAC merger and public listing deadline to next September.
- Generative AI startup Midjourney expects to cross $200M in revenue this year, per The Information.
- Cincinnati startup accelerator Mortar elected former Cincinnati City Council member Yvette Simpson as the board chair.
- HR startup Atomicwork emerged from stealth with a $11M seed funding round led by Blume Ventures and Matrix Partners, with additional support from Storm Ventures, Neon Fund, and others.
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INSIDE STARTUPS LEADERBOARD (7 DAYS) |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot.
Nicolas is a Sr. Analyst at Inside, covering startups and transportation trends. He is an avid map maker and data nerd. Nicolas has worked in the shared-scooter space, as well as advised e-bike and moped start-ups. | | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
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