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Plant-focused startup The Sill raises $5M
The Sill, a startup that sells potted plants online and in physical stores, announced this weekend that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Raine Ventures.
The company was founded in 2012 and has now raised a total of $7.5 million. It was bootstrapped until last year, when it raised seed funding from Brand Foundry Ventures, Halogen Ventures, BBG Ventures, Tuesday Capital, Blueseed and The Chernin Group. (BBG Ventures is backed by TechCrunch’s parent company Oath.)
That seems like a long time for a startup to go without outside funding, and indeed, CEO Eliza Blank acknowledged that she “probably waited too long to go out and raise.” Still, she said those first few years also gave her time to find the right business model (like focusing “exclusively on the direct-to-consumer business,” rather than selling to offices as well).
And while it’s easy to group The Sill among all the startups using the internet to build a consumer business around a traditional category of retail, Blank said her vision is bigger than “just putting plants online and being another direct-to-consumer brand.”
After all, there are plenty of people (myself included) who are interested in owning plants but don’t really know how to care for them properly. And our casual interest level probably isn’t going to get us to the local horticultural society to learn more.
Blank said she founded the company in response to her own experience wanting to buy plants, and realizing how limited the resources were for learning “how to approach the category as a newbie.”
So The Sill doesn’t just sell you a plant (along with basic care instructions). It also allows you to ask questions of the company’s plant experts — and with the opening of its first brick-and-mortar stores in New York City, it also offers weekly workshops.
“We have a much longer relationship than a typical transaction business,” Blank said. “Making the purchase is almost like the start — or maybe the middle — of a conversation.”
The company says it sold more than 75,000 products in the last six months, with sales up 500 percent year-over-year, and anticipated revenue for the year of more than $10 million.
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Chat gaming startup Knock Knock raises $2M
Knock Knock, a startup building games for platforms like Facebook Messenger and WeChat, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding.
The goal isn’t to build interactive chat fiction, but rather fully fledged mobile games that are accessed from messaging apps, while also taking advantages of the opportunities offered by incorporating messaging and chatbots into the game mechanics.
“This is the most frictionless an experience can get,” said CEO Andrew Friday. “There’s no download, it’s hooked up to a fast messaging medium that you’re already using and people can bring their friends into the experience seamlessly.”
Friday was a senior product manager for chat games at Zynga, while his co-founder Andrew N. Green was previously the head of business operations at TinyCo. They plan to release their first game for Facebook Messenger later this year, and then a WeChat title in early 2019.
When I asked if there are any specific genres that will do best on messaging, Friday suggested that there’s actually “an embarrassment of riches.”
“Most great mobile game genres, and game genres in general, are good for the platform,” he said. “It’s just that if you try to just port those designs to the platform, it’s not going to work. If you rethink or reimagine these mechanics, how they would work best, how they would be most fun on the platform, there are so many genres that can work on chat.”
He also suggested that compared to FRVR, another recently funded startup looking to build chat games, Knock Knock is less focused on “hypercasual” games and instead taking “a deeper, more thoughtful approach.” Although thoughtfulness and depth are relative — Friday suggested that Knock Knock could still create the initial versions of its games in 90 days.
The funding was led by Raine Ventures, with participation from London Venture Partners, Ludlow Ventures and Gregory Milken.
“Knock Knock has the potential to usher in the next wave of chat games that will redefine the market,” said Courtney Favreau, a venture capital partner at Raine, in the funding announcement. “The founding team has an impressive track record in the mobile and chat gaming spaces and we’re very excited to help them bring their vision to life.”
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Waggle raises $2.3 million because the internet doesn’t have enough funny animal videos
A startup called Waggle raised $2.3 million in seed funding to become the go-to destination for animal lovers and pet parents online, and for sharing all the cute pups and madcap kitteh adventures they have to offer. The New York City-based startup was incubated at Broadway Video Ventures, the venture arm of the production company behind premium comedy shows like 30 Rock, Portlandia… Read More
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Vettery raises $9M as it expands its hiring marketplace to San Francisco
Vettery, a startup offering an alternative to the traditional recruiting process, has raised $9 million in Series A funding. On the Vettery website, the company pairs potential job-seekers with a “talent executive” who helps them through the process of creating a profile and looking over interview requests from employers. If they accept a job, Vettery will give them a $1,000… Read More
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