Monday, August 19, 2019
VC Deals Only: Brazil’s RD Station Nets $50M In Series D Funding ...
VC Deals Only: Brazil’s RD Station Nets $50M In Series D Funding ...: Brazilian digital marketing startup RD Station has raised a $50 million Series D led by Silicon Valley-based Riverwood Capital . RD St...
Brazil’s RD Station Nets $50M In Series D Funding To Scale SaaS With SMBs
Brazilian digital marketing startup RD Station has raised a $50 million Series D led by Silicon Valley-based Riverwood Capital.
RD Station, which is focused on SMBs in emerging markets, claims the
round marks the largest funding round raised by a Latin American company
in the SaaS (software-as-a-service) space.
TPG Growth, DGF Investimentos, RedPoint Eventures, Astella Investimentos, and Endeavor Catalyst
also participated in the round. The new financing brings RD Station’s
total venture raised to about $90 million, according to CEO and
co-founder Eric Santos. It last round was a $19.2 million Series C led by TPG Growth in 2016.
Founded in 2011, RD Station has more than 700 employees (compared to
about 500-550 people at this time last year) and 13,000 customers in 20
countries. Its headquarters (and the majority of its staff) are in
Florianópolis, located in the southern part of Brazil, but the company
also has offices in Sao Paulo, Bogota, Mexico City, and San Francisco.
“Most SaaS companies in the world ignore the SMBs, especially in
emerging markets, due to difficulties with economics,” Santos said. RD
Station has worked to be able to provide an AI and machine
learning-driven solution that is “affordable” for smaller businesses yet
can still help them “grow in a predictable and sustainable manner.”
While the company declined to disclose its annual recurring revenue
(ARR), Santos said it has “basically grown [its ARR] by triple digits on
average year-over-year in the last four years,” with the exception of
last year.
“Of course as you grow, it gets harder to produce triple digit increases,” Santos points out.
In a phone conversation today, Santos told me that the company plans
to use the money in part to continue its expansion in Colombia and
Mexico. It also plans to invest in R&D to improve its product and
naturally, as do most just-funded companies, grow its headcount. Last
year, the company acquired another startup, Plug CRM,
so that it could incorporate a CRM product into its platform. The
startup now has two products: RD Station Marketing and RD Station CRM.
It also works with about 100 other SaaS companies which integrate RD
Station’s product, Santos said.
“Over the years we have become the leading marketing automation
vendor in Brazil by far,” Santos said. “And we believe that we have a
very differentiated competitive advantage in a market like Brazil want
to replicate that in other emerging markets.”
It seems that investors like what they see.
In a press release, Joaquim Lima,
the Sao Paulo-based managing director of Riverwood Capital, said his
firm believes RD Station “has enormous growth potential” both in Brazil
and globally.
The deal is the latest in a number of Latin American-focused investments for Riverwood Capital. In April, we covered the news that the firm was the sole investor in a $20 million Series B raised by another Brazilian SaaS and SMB-focused startup, Omie. It’s also previously backed Brazilian ride-sharing startup 99 and Mandic, among others.
Latin America, as a whole, is increasingly attracting global investors. This deal is just the latest example of a growing trend in the global VC market. Just last month, Silicon Valley venture firm TCV confirmed it led a $400 million round for Brazilian fintech startup Nubank, marking that firm’s first “significant” investment in Latin America.
Brazil is by far the largest recipient of funding in the region, according to LAVCA, the Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America, which found that venture funding in the country exploded in 2018
to $1.3 billion, representing nearly two-thirds of all venture money
raised in Latin America as a whole last year. That was 52 percent more
than the $859 million invested in 2017, and a staggering 369 percent
increase from the $279 million raised in 2016.
Source. Crunchbase News, Mary Ann Azevedo, August 16, 2019
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
VC Deals Only: Motif Ingredients Raises $27.5 Million, Rebrands a...
VC Deals Only: Motif Ingredients Raises $27.5 Million, Rebrands a...: The company formerly known as Motif Ingredients today announced that it has raised $27.5 million in new funding and rebranded itself as Mo...
Motif Ingredients Raises $27.5 Million, Rebrands as Motif FoodWorks
The company formerly known as Motif Ingredients today announced that it has raised $27.5 million in new funding and rebranded itself as Motif FoodWorks. The new funding was led by General Atlantic with participation from CPT Capital, and follows a $90 million Series A that Motif raised when it launched in February of this year.
Motif is carving out an interesting space for itself in the food tech world as they are in the business of helping other companies develop new alternative meat, dairy and egg products. Smaller startups that don’t have an R&D budget as big as Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods can enlist Motif as a more affordable alternative for creating alternative foods. As my colleague Catherine Lamb wrote about Motif earlier this year:
Motif will use engineered microbes (like yeast) to “brew” food proteins that can mimic the same ones that give animal products their unique taste and texture. The resulting ingredients can be used to make everything from regular ol’ cow milk and chicken meat to more unique offerings, like sturgeon eggs and camel milk.
Because of its approach and its unique business model, we named Motif to our Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Creating the Future of Food in 2019 earlier this summer.
We spoke with Jon McIntyre, CEO of Motif, a few months ago, who said that they’re in conversations to develop new ingredients with over twenty companies of various sizes.
Motif is certainly striking while the iron is hot. Demand for alternative proteins like plant-based burgers is growing, as the success of Beyond Meat’s going public and the nationwide rollout of the Impossible Whopper have illustrated. In its press announcement, Motif said it will use the new money to “add to and accelerate its product pipeline; expand academic collaborations across a broad set of molecular food science disciplines; scale its science and regulatory staff; and deepen its research and development efforts.”
As for the name change, Motif said the re-branding better recognizes its technology partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks, the Boston-based biotech company from which it spun out.
Michele Fite, Chief Commercial Officer of Motif Ingredients will be speaking at our Smart Kitchen Summit this October. Get your ticket now to see her and a ton of other great speakers.
Source. The Spoon, Chris Albrecht, August 15, 2019
Motif is carving out an interesting space for itself in the food tech world as they are in the business of helping other companies develop new alternative meat, dairy and egg products. Smaller startups that don’t have an R&D budget as big as Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods can enlist Motif as a more affordable alternative for creating alternative foods. As my colleague Catherine Lamb wrote about Motif earlier this year:
Motif will use engineered microbes (like yeast) to “brew” food proteins that can mimic the same ones that give animal products their unique taste and texture. The resulting ingredients can be used to make everything from regular ol’ cow milk and chicken meat to more unique offerings, like sturgeon eggs and camel milk.
Because of its approach and its unique business model, we named Motif to our Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Creating the Future of Food in 2019 earlier this summer.
We spoke with Jon McIntyre, CEO of Motif, a few months ago, who said that they’re in conversations to develop new ingredients with over twenty companies of various sizes.
Motif is certainly striking while the iron is hot. Demand for alternative proteins like plant-based burgers is growing, as the success of Beyond Meat’s going public and the nationwide rollout of the Impossible Whopper have illustrated. In its press announcement, Motif said it will use the new money to “add to and accelerate its product pipeline; expand academic collaborations across a broad set of molecular food science disciplines; scale its science and regulatory staff; and deepen its research and development efforts.”
As for the name change, Motif said the re-branding better recognizes its technology partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks, the Boston-based biotech company from which it spun out.
Michele Fite, Chief Commercial Officer of Motif Ingredients will be speaking at our Smart Kitchen Summit this October. Get your ticket now to see her and a ton of other great speakers.
Source. The Spoon, Chris Albrecht, August 15, 2019
***
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
Saturday, August 17, 2019
VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. D&D Pharmatech has...
VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. D&D Pharmatech has...: VC Deals Proterra has authorized shares to raise $75 million, a new round of funding that would push the electric bus maker’s valuation...
VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. D&D Pharmatech has raised $137.1 million to advance treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and fibrosis
VC Deals
Proterra has authorized shares to raise $75 million, a new round of funding that would push the electric bus maker’s valuation past $1 billion.The company authorized the sale of 10,857,762 shares at a price of $6.91 in a Series 8 round, according to a securities filing that was obtained by the Prime Unicorn Index, a company that tracks the performance of private U.S. companies. More
Wheels Up, the private aviation start-up that counts Tom Brady and Serena Williams as members, said Friday it completed a $128 million round of funding that values the company $1.1 billion. The funding marks an escalation in the air war between private aviation players to become leaders in a new era of consolidation and technological change that is remaking the industry. More
AI-powered search venture Lucidworks has raised $100 million from Francisco Partners and TPG Sixth Street Partners, the company announced. The funding amounts to nearly as much (a combined $109 million) as the twelve-year-old company has raised since it was founded in 2007. Its last raise took place in May 2018 – a $50 million Series E led by Top Tier Capital Partners. So this round is precisely double its last raise. More
Creating backups for massive enterprise deployments may feel like a solved problem, but for the most part, we’re still talking about complex hardware and software setups.Clumio, which is coming out of stealth today, wants to modernize enterprise data protection by eliminating the on-premise hardware in favor of a flexible, SaaS-style cloud-based backup solution.
For the first time. Clumio also announced that it has raised a total of $51 million in a Series A and B round since it was founded in 2017. More
VeriSIM Life, a San Francisco, CA-based company that is building digital animal and human simulations to avoid unnecessary drug testing in animals, raised $5.2M in funding. The round was co-led by OCA Ventures and Serra Ventures with participation from Susa Ventures, Intel Capital, Stage Venture Partners, Village Global, Twin, and Loup Ventures. More
Imagine a moving tower made of huge cement bricks weighing 35 metric tons. The movement of these massive blocks is powered by wind or solar power plants and is a way to store the energy those plants generate. Software controls the movement of the blocks automatically, responding to changes in power availability across an electric grid to charge and discharge the power that’s being generated.
The development of this technology is the culmination of years of work at Idealab, the Pasadena, Calif.-based startup incubator, and Energy Vault, the company it spun out to commercialize the technology, has just raised $110 million from SoftBank Vision Fund to take its next steps in the world. More
D&D Pharmatech has raised $137.1 million to advance treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and fibrosis. The series B will enable one D&D subsidiary to run phase 2 trials in Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s as well as set up another business to take a treatment for chronic pancreatitis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) into human testing. More
Renovacor picked up $11 million in series A financing from Novartis’ venture arm, Broadview Ventures, BioAdvance, New Leaf Venture Partners and Innogest Capital to push forward a gene therapy that could ward off disease progression in this group of patients, sparing them from drastic measures such as a heart transplant. More
Proterra has authorized shares to raise $75 million, a new round of funding that would push the electric bus maker’s valuation past $1 billion.The company authorized the sale of 10,857,762 shares at a price of $6.91 in a Series 8 round, according to a securities filing that was obtained by the Prime Unicorn Index, a company that tracks the performance of private U.S. companies. More
Wheels Up, the private aviation start-up that counts Tom Brady and Serena Williams as members, said Friday it completed a $128 million round of funding that values the company $1.1 billion. The funding marks an escalation in the air war between private aviation players to become leaders in a new era of consolidation and technological change that is remaking the industry. More
AI-powered search venture Lucidworks has raised $100 million from Francisco Partners and TPG Sixth Street Partners, the company announced. The funding amounts to nearly as much (a combined $109 million) as the twelve-year-old company has raised since it was founded in 2007. Its last raise took place in May 2018 – a $50 million Series E led by Top Tier Capital Partners. So this round is precisely double its last raise. More
Creating backups for massive enterprise deployments may feel like a solved problem, but for the most part, we’re still talking about complex hardware and software setups.Clumio, which is coming out of stealth today, wants to modernize enterprise data protection by eliminating the on-premise hardware in favor of a flexible, SaaS-style cloud-based backup solution.
For the first time. Clumio also announced that it has raised a total of $51 million in a Series A and B round since it was founded in 2017. More
VeriSIM Life, a San Francisco, CA-based company that is building digital animal and human simulations to avoid unnecessary drug testing in animals, raised $5.2M in funding. The round was co-led by OCA Ventures and Serra Ventures with participation from Susa Ventures, Intel Capital, Stage Venture Partners, Village Global, Twin, and Loup Ventures. More
Imagine a moving tower made of huge cement bricks weighing 35 metric tons. The movement of these massive blocks is powered by wind or solar power plants and is a way to store the energy those plants generate. Software controls the movement of the blocks automatically, responding to changes in power availability across an electric grid to charge and discharge the power that’s being generated.
The development of this technology is the culmination of years of work at Idealab, the Pasadena, Calif.-based startup incubator, and Energy Vault, the company it spun out to commercialize the technology, has just raised $110 million from SoftBank Vision Fund to take its next steps in the world. More
D&D Pharmatech has raised $137.1 million to advance treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and fibrosis. The series B will enable one D&D subsidiary to run phase 2 trials in Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s as well as set up another business to take a treatment for chronic pancreatitis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) into human testing. More
Renovacor picked up $11 million in series A financing from Novartis’ venture arm, Broadview Ventures, BioAdvance, New Leaf Venture Partners and Innogest Capital to push forward a gene therapy that could ward off disease progression in this group of patients, sparing them from drastic measures such as a heart transplant. More
Sponsor
This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.
New Funds
Croatia is about to get a shot in the arm, however, with the arrival of a home-grown dedicated VC fund, Fil Rouge Capital, which plans to invest in young entrepreneurs, startups and scale-up companies, as well as establishing a local entrepreneurial ecosystem in Croatia.
The fund is fully operational as of last month, having received funding commitments of more than €42 million ($46.6 million), demonstrating a strong interest of investors in the growing startup economy there. More
Construction technology is a growing sector, which is why Brick & Mortar Ventures has raised a $97 million fund to invest in both hardware and software for construction-related industries. The San Francisco venture fund was founded by construction tech investment veteran Darren Bechtel and is backed by high-profile corporate funding sources. More
IPOs
Luckin Coffee Inc., the chain trying to take on Starbucks Corp. in China, plunged the most since its U.S. trading debut in May after it issued earnings for the first time as a public company.Luckin, which is based in China and listed in the U.S, said it was taking a hit from trade tensions and the slowing Chinese economy as it races to open stores and burns cash to build market share in China’s nascent coffee market.
The shares sank 17% to $20.44 in New York on Wednesday. The shares were up 44% from the $17-a-share initial public offering price through Tuesday’s close. More
Samoyed Holdings Limited (Samoyed), a financial technology service firm that focuses on China’s credit card repayment market, withdrew its planned initial public offering (IPO) in the US, according to its latest filing with the US SEC. “The company has determined not to pursue the sale of the securities covered by the Registration Statement at this time due to unfavorable market conditions,” the company said.
The registration statement has never been declared effective by the US SEC and the company has not sold any securities yet, it added. More
Postmates plans to make its IPO paperwork public in September, TechCrunch has learned. Despite previous reports indicating the on-demand delivery company is seeking an M&A exit, sources close to the matter say Postmates is on track to go complete an initial public offering this year. More
Exits
Cryptocurrency firm Coinbase has acquired the custody business of Xapo, a service best known for storing Bitcoins in a vault under a Swiss mountain. The acquisition comes as part of an aggressive push by Coinbase to expand its custody services, and could result in the San Francisco company storing over 5% of all Bitcoins in circulation.
Coinbase paid $55 million for Xapo and, as a result of the deal, now has over $7 billion in crypto assets under management, according to a person familiar with the deal. The person, who was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the purchase came after Coinbase outbid investment giant Fidelity. More
VMware today confirmed that it is in talks to acquire software development platform Pivotal Software, the service best known for commercializing the open-source Cloud Foundry platform. The proposed transaction would see VMware acquire all outstanding Pivotal Class A stock for $15 per share, a significant markup over Pivotal’s current share price (which unsurprisingly shot up right after the announcement). More
ICT News
Two major U.S. carriers, AT&T and T-Mobile, announced this morning a plan to team up to protect their respective customer bases from the scourge of scam robocalls. The two companies will today begin to roll out new cross-network call authentication technology based on the STIR/SHAKEN standards — a sort of universal caller ID system designed to stop illegal caller ID spoofing. More
New Funds
Croatia is about to get a shot in the arm, however, with the arrival of a home-grown dedicated VC fund, Fil Rouge Capital, which plans to invest in young entrepreneurs, startups and scale-up companies, as well as establishing a local entrepreneurial ecosystem in Croatia.
The fund is fully operational as of last month, having received funding commitments of more than €42 million ($46.6 million), demonstrating a strong interest of investors in the growing startup economy there. More
Construction technology is a growing sector, which is why Brick & Mortar Ventures has raised a $97 million fund to invest in both hardware and software for construction-related industries. The San Francisco venture fund was founded by construction tech investment veteran Darren Bechtel and is backed by high-profile corporate funding sources. More
IPOs
Luckin Coffee Inc., the chain trying to take on Starbucks Corp. in China, plunged the most since its U.S. trading debut in May after it issued earnings for the first time as a public company.Luckin, which is based in China and listed in the U.S, said it was taking a hit from trade tensions and the slowing Chinese economy as it races to open stores and burns cash to build market share in China’s nascent coffee market.
The shares sank 17% to $20.44 in New York on Wednesday. The shares were up 44% from the $17-a-share initial public offering price through Tuesday’s close. More
Samoyed Holdings Limited (Samoyed), a financial technology service firm that focuses on China’s credit card repayment market, withdrew its planned initial public offering (IPO) in the US, according to its latest filing with the US SEC. “The company has determined not to pursue the sale of the securities covered by the Registration Statement at this time due to unfavorable market conditions,” the company said.
The registration statement has never been declared effective by the US SEC and the company has not sold any securities yet, it added. More
Postmates plans to make its IPO paperwork public in September, TechCrunch has learned. Despite previous reports indicating the on-demand delivery company is seeking an M&A exit, sources close to the matter say Postmates is on track to go complete an initial public offering this year. More
Exits
Cryptocurrency firm Coinbase has acquired the custody business of Xapo, a service best known for storing Bitcoins in a vault under a Swiss mountain. The acquisition comes as part of an aggressive push by Coinbase to expand its custody services, and could result in the San Francisco company storing over 5% of all Bitcoins in circulation.
Coinbase paid $55 million for Xapo and, as a result of the deal, now has over $7 billion in crypto assets under management, according to a person familiar with the deal. The person, who was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the purchase came after Coinbase outbid investment giant Fidelity. More
VMware today confirmed that it is in talks to acquire software development platform Pivotal Software, the service best known for commercializing the open-source Cloud Foundry platform. The proposed transaction would see VMware acquire all outstanding Pivotal Class A stock for $15 per share, a significant markup over Pivotal’s current share price (which unsurprisingly shot up right after the announcement). More
ICT News
Two major U.S. carriers, AT&T and T-Mobile, announced this morning a plan to team up to protect their respective customer bases from the scourge of scam robocalls. The two companies will today begin to roll out new cross-network call authentication technology based on the STIR/SHAKEN standards — a sort of universal caller ID system designed to stop illegal caller ID spoofing. More
Samoyed Holdings
Limited (Samoyed), a financial technology service firm that focuses on
China’s credit card repayment market, withdrew its planned initial
public offering (IPO) in the US, according to its latest filing with the
US SEC.
“The company has determined not to pursue the sale of the securities
covered by the Registration Statement at this time due to unfavorable
market conditions,” the company said.
The registration statement has never been declared effective by the US
SEC and the company has not sold any securities yet, it added.
Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/samoyed-cancels-us-ipo-149840/
Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/samoyed-cancels-us-ipo-149840/
Samoyed Holdings
Limited (Samoyed), a financial technology service firm that focuses on
China’s credit card repayment market, withdrew its planned initial
public offering (IPO) in the US, according to its latest filing with the
US SEC.
“The company has determined not to pursue the sale of the securities
covered by the Registration Statement at this time due to unfavorable
market conditions,” the company said.
The registration statement has never been declared effective by the US
SEC and the company has not sold any securities yet, it added.
Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/samoyed-cancels-us-ipo-149840/
Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/samoyed-cancels-us-ipo-149840/
Samoyed Holdings
Limited (Samoyed), a financial technology service firm that focuses on
China’s credit card repayment market, withdrew its planned initial
public offering (IPO) in the US, according to its latest filing with the
US SEC.
“The company has determined not to pursue the sale of the securities
covered by the Registration Statement at this time due to unfavorable
market conditions,” the company said.
Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/samoyed-cancels-us-ipo-14984
Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/samoyed-cancels-us-ipo-14984
Samoyed Holdings
Limited (Samoyed), a financial technology service firm that focuses on
China’s credit card repayment market, withdrew its planned initial
public offering (IPO) in the US, according to its latest filing with the
US SEC.
“The company has determined not to pursue the sale of the securities
covered by the Registration Statement at this time due to unfavorable
market conditions,” the company said.
Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/samoyed-cancels-us-ipo-14984
Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/samoyed-cancels-us-ipo-14984
Friday, August 16, 2019
VC Deals Only: Energy Vault raises $110 million from SoftBank Vis...
VC Deals Only: Energy Vault raises $110 million from SoftBank Vis...: Imagine a moving tower made of huge cement bricks weighing 35 metric tons. The movement of these massive blocks is powered by wind or so...
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