Ann Arbor
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Detroit VCs weigh in on fundraising and building startups in Michigan and the Midwest
TechCrunch just hosted a small virtual meetup with Detroit startups and venture capitals. Like the one we held last month in Miami, the event was a blast and featured a talk with two local VCs on which startups work in Detroit and how to raise money from local investors.
In case you missed it, the video of this talk is below. Jonathon Triest from Ludlow Ventures and Patti Glaza from Invest Detroit Ventures spoke extensively on the wide-ranging types of startups that call Detroit home. They point to Bloomscape (houseplants) and StockX (sneakers) and the numerous medical and security startups in Detroit, nearby Ann Arbor and the surrounding metro area. Both firms invest in early-stage startups, but do so in radically different ways.
All about Detroit
- A quick peek inside Fontinalis, one of Detroit’s best-known young venture firms
- Origin story: How StockX became the stock market of hype
- Bloomscape’s Justin Mast explains how he built a thriving garden startup in Detroit
- Hardware is still hard in the Motor City
- Building tech for worker safety, Guardhat Technologies is a company that could only come from Detroit
The 20-minute conversation covers the types of founders who can find success in Detroit and other Midwestern areas.
This event was part of TechCrunch’s growing series of City Spotlights, where we focus on a growing startup ecosystem and highlight what makes the area attractive for startups. We’re going to Pittsburgh next and hope you can join us.
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Coupa Software snags Llamasoft for $1.5B to bring together spending and supply chain data
Coupa Software, a publicly traded company that helps large corporations manage spending, announced that it was buying Llamasoft, an 18-year-old Michigan company that helps large companies manage their supply chain. The deal was pegged at $1.5 billion.
This year Llamasoft released its latest tool, an AI-driven platform for managing supply chains intelligently. This capability in particular seemed to attract Coupa’s attention, as it was looking for a supply chain application to complement its spend management capabilities.
Coupa CEO and chairman Rob Bernshteyn says when you combine that supply chain data with Coupa’s spending data, it can produce a powerful combination.
“Llamasoft’s deep supply chain expertise and sophisticated data science and modeling capabilities, combined with the roughly $2 trillion of cumulative transactional spend data we have in Coupa, will empower businesses with the intelligence needed to pivot on a dime,” Bernshteyn said in a statement.
The purchase comes at a time when companies are focusing more and more on digitizing processes across enterprise, and when supply chains can be uncertain, depending on the location of COVID hotspots at any particular time.
“With demand uncertainty on one hand, and supply volatility on the other, companies are in need of supply chain technology that can help them assess alternatives and balance trade-offs to achieve desired business results. LLamasoft provides these capabilities with an AI-powered cloud platform that empowers companies to make smarter supply chain decisions, faster,” the company wrote in a statement.
Llamasoft was founded in 2002 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has raised more than $56 million, according to Crunchbase data. Its largest raise was a $50 million Series B in 2015 led by Goldman Sachs .
The company generated more than $100 million in revenue and has 650 big customers, including Boeing, DHL, Kimberly-Clark and GM, according to company data.
Coupa has been extremely acquisitive over the years, buying 17 companies, according to Crunchbase data. This deal represents the fourth acquisition this year for the company. So far the stock market is not enamored with the acquisition; the company’s stock price is down 5.20% at publication.
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3 views on the future of geographic-focused funds
For many investors, the coronavirus has effectively taken geography out of the equation when it comes to vetting new opportunities.
While this dynamic opens up startups to more investment opportunities, venture capital firms that focus on a specific region are in a thornier spot. The competitive advantage they once had when raising — the notion that they’re focused on an area no one else is — is potentially threatened.
Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and Alex Wilhelm of the TechCrunch Equity crew discussed the future of geographic-focused funds given the uptick of remote investing:
- Natasha: Early-stage regional funds can win if they remain focused
- Alex: Geo-focused venture funds will be weakened, but won’t die
- Danny: Geo-focused venture funds are dead (and should never have existed)
Natasha: Early-stage regional funds can win if they remain focused
Since 2014, Steve Case and his team have made an annual bus trip across the country to meet startups in emerging startup hubs. Five days, five cities and at least $500,000 of investment dollars given to startups. Case would even offer to fly out promising and hard-to-reach startups to have them join the trip.
The Rise of the Rest fund, with more than $300 million in assets under management, has invested in over 130 startups across 70 cities, including Austin, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Washington, D.C.
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FarmLogs raises $22 million to make agriculture a more predictable business
Ann Arbor, Michigan-based FarmLogs has raised $22 million in a Series C round of funding for technology that helps farmers monitor and measure their crops, predict profits, manage risks from weather and pests and more. Naspers Ventures led the round, joined by the company’s earlier backers Drive Capital, Huron River Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, SV Angel and individual… Read More
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