Unshackled Ventures
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Venture capital LPs are the missing link to solving Silicon Valley’s diversity problem
Pranavi is an investor and writer currently doing pre-seed and seed-stage B2B SaaS investing at Acceleprise Ventures and writing at publicbeta.substack.com.
In the last few months, we’ve seen much of Silicon Valley finally start to acknowledge generations of systemic racial inequity and take actionable steps to empower and support underrepresented people in tech. Funds are looking to invest capital more equitably and have started to take concrete steps to achieve this goal.
For example, Eniac Ventures and Hustle Fund have started to meet with more Black founders via consultations and encouraging cold inbound pitches. Initiatives like venture capital fellowships run by Susa Ventures and Unshackled Ventures will allow for increased representation in investment teams. While these initiatives are exciting, it’s important to explore how we can enable sustainable change and solve the diversity problem at the root.
It’s as simple as this: Investing in diverse perspectives makes for a far more efficient economy. The data also confirms this, given that homogeneous investing teams had a success rate for M&A and IPOs that was 26.4%-32.2% lower. Data since 1990 shows that approximately only 8% of VCs identify as women, with 2% of VCs identifying as Latinx and less than 1% identifying as Black.
It’s clear that the inequitable deployment of capital that results from homogenous investment teams at VC funds has translated into missed opportunity for outsized financial returns. Since this really comes down to how venture funds operate at their core, an entity that can greatly influence this and reinvent the status quo are VC funds’ limited partners.
Limited partners are the often unheard of backers of venture capital funds. Institutional venture capital funds raise money from sources such as high-net-worth individuals (HNWs), endowments, foundations, fund of funds, banks, insurance/pension funds and sovereign wealth funds that they will in turn use to invest money into high-growth, category-defining startups (the part that you do hear about).
LPs hold a lot of power in the venture financing life cycle as institutional venture capital firms can’t write checks at the scale they do without the external financing that LPs provide. Since LPs are the source of capital, they can control who they invest in (GPs) and how they invest and manage their capital. What if LPs are the missing link who can control the flow of capital to GPs who empower, find and fund more underrepresented entrepreneurs and keep them accountable?
That sounds great, but why does this matter?
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Afore Capital raises second pre-seed venture capital fund
As expectations from seed investors intensify, a new stage of investment has established itself earlier in the venture-backed company life cycle.
Known as “pre-seed” investing, one of the first legitimate outfits to double down on the stage has refueled, closing its second fund on $77 million.
Afore Capital’s sophomore fund is likely the largest pool of venture capital yet to focus exclusively on pre-seed companies, or pre-product businesses seeking their first bout of institutional capital. In many cases, a pre-seed startup may even be “pre-idea,” yet to fully incorporate. While some funds are happy to invest that early, Afore seeks slightly more mature companies.
Afore invests between $500,000 and $1 million in nascent startups. As it kicks off its second fund, founding partners Anamitra Banerji and Gaurav Jain tell TechCrunch they plan to lead all of their investments.
We have the opportunity to build a firm that defines a category. – Afore founding partner Anamitra Banerji
Standouts in Afore’s existing portfolio include the no-fee credit card company Petal — which has raised roughly $50 million to date — mobile executive coaching business BetterUp, childcare information platform Winnie and Modern Health, a B2B mental wellness platform.
Afore portfolio companies have raised more than $360 million in follow-on funding, with an aggregate market cap of $1.5 billion, Jain, the founding product manager at Android Nexus and former principal at Founder Collective, tells TechCrunch. “These are high-quality teams with high-quality projects and ideas.”
Jain and Banerji — a founding product manager at Twitter and former partner at Foundation Capital — began raising capital for Afore’s $47 million debut fund in 2016. Since then, the landscape for seed investing has shifted. Early-stage investors have begun funneling larger sums of capital to standout teams at the seed, while billion-dollar venture capital funds set aside capital for serial entrepreneurs working on their next big idea. As a result, deal sizes have swelled and deal count has shrunk simultaneously.
“Pre-seed has replaced seed in the venture ecosystem,” Banerji tells TechCrunch. “We saw this early as a result of both of us having been at funds. We knew that this was going to be a massive category just like seed was before it. Now we think it’s clearly here to stay and we have the opportunity to build a firm that defines a category.”
Since launching the firm, the pair explain they’ve noticed more and more founders explicitly stating that they are in the market for a pre-seed round, a statement you wouldn’t have heard as recently as two years ago.
This is a result of Afore’s efforts to legitimize the stage through investments and programming, including its annual Pre-Seed Summit. Though Afore is certainly not the only VC fund focused on the earliest stage of startup investing — other firms deploying capital at the stage include Hustle Fund, which closed an $11.8 million debut fund last year, plus the $20 million immigrant-focused pre-seed fund Unshackled Ventures and the predominant seed and pre-seed stage firm Precursor Ventures, which announced a $31 million second fund earlier this year.
In the past year alone, more than $200 million has been dedicated to the pre-seed stage, with at least nine new funds launching to nurture early-stage startups.
More and more firms are setting up shop at the pre-seed stage as competition at the seed stage reaches new heights. As we’ve previously reported, monster funds are becoming increasingly active at the seed stage, muscling seed funds out of top deals with less dilutive offers. While the pre-seed stage, for the most part, remains protected from competition at the later stage, these firms still have to compete.
“Nobody wants to lose sight of a deal, so they are willing to toss small amounts of capital very early behind interesting founders,” Jain said. “But frankly, we aren’t sure if it’s good for a company to raise that much capital that early in their life cycle.”
Working with a fund that isn’t passionate about what you are building or familiar with the plights of the stage of your business is terrible for founders, adds Jain. Pairing with a focused fund like Afore, on the other hand, allows for “incentive alignment.”
Afore invests across all industries, preferring to back startups in categories “before they are categories.”
“What we are looking for is deep authenticity and passion around the product they are building,” says Banerji. “Ideas on their own aren’t enough. Founder resumes on their own aren’t enough. While we do care about all of those aspects, we get crazy about their clarity of thought in the short term.”
“We don’t take the point of view of ‘here is some money, it’s OK to lose it,’ ” he adds. “For us to invest, the founder must be all in. And we generally don’t invest in celebrity founders; we are going after the underdog founder.”
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Pod Foods gets VC backing to reinvent grocery distribution
Larissa Russell and Fiona Lee founded a cookie startup called Green Pea Cookie in 2014. The cookies were 100% natural, vegan and “handcrafted with love.”
The company failed, but not because the cookies weren’t selling. The business couldn’t keep up with the antiquated wholesale food distribution system’s steep costs. Two incumbent players, United Natural Foods Inc. and KeHE Distributors, essentially controlled its only pathway to grocery stores across the country. So the founders shut down Green Pea and focused their efforts on building the tool Green Pea had needed to survive: Pod Foods, a distribution and logistics platform for emerging food brands.
“We were like so many other young entrepreneurs,” Russell, Pod Foods’ chief executive officer, tells TechCrunch. “I had studied government and economics and did the cookie company because I wanted to create something better for the world but we realized there was a much bigger issue at hand and it wasn’t enough to solve for the end product, we needed to solve for the way the product reached consumers.”
Pod Foods co-founders Fiona Lee (left) and Larissa Russell
“The distribution system hasn’t evolved since World War II,” Lee adds. “For so many years, there’s been little evolution in this space, even since the advent of technology and the internet.”
Today, Pod Foods is announcing a $3 million seed round led by Moment Ventures, with participation from M12 and Unshackled Ventures to fuel the growth of its software and data-enabled platform. The capital follows a $250,000 pre-seed investment from Unshackled, a venture capital firm that invests in immigrant founders and, if necessary, helps them navigate the complex visa process.
Lee immigrated to the U.S. from Singapore five years ago to double down on Green Pea Cookie. Her business partner, Russell, had been handling operations in the U.S. while she helped build the business from her home country. With Pod Foods up and running, the founders now have the opportunity to bring Green Pea back from the dead. Instead, they tell me their focus and efforts are entirely on scaling their B2B software upstart. Green Pea is gone for good.
Pod Foods is an end-to-end platform that connects retailers with manufacturers, facilitating the overly complex wholesale-food distribution market. The startup works with a third-party network that handles both fulfillment and logistics to create a tool beneficial to emerging brands, big retailers and consumers. The company charges retailers on a subscription basis and takes a cut of each transaction. The end goal is to simplify an age-old process, allow startup brands the opportunity to sell products inside big retailers and make great products accessible to customers at a lower price.
The San Francisco-based startup has launched in the Bay Area and Chicago. Currently, it’s working with 350 food brands and 100 retailers. With a fresh funding deal, Pod Foods plans to scale 10x in the next 12 months.
“We want to change the way food is distributed,” Russell said. “We want to turn [the system] on its head so the consumer can get what they would like to buy in retail stores at an affordable price.”
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Startups Weekly: Will the Seattle tech scene ever reach its full potential?
Greetings from Seattle, the land of Amazon, Microsoft, two of the world’s richest men and some startups.
I’m always surprised the Seattle startup ecosystem hasn’t grown to compete with the likes of Silicon Valley — or at least Boston and New York City — since the dot-com boom. Today, it’s the strongest it’s been due to the successes of companies like the newly minted unicorn Outreach, trucking business Convoy and, of course, the dog walking startup Rover. But the city still lags behind, failing to adopt the culture of entrepreneurship that defines San Francisco.
I spent a lot of time wondering why it hasn’t reached its full potential. Is it because Microsoft and Amazon pay their employees so well they don’t have the same urge to build something from the ground up? Is it a lack of access to capital? Is the city not attracting top talent? If you have thoughts, send them my way.
“We think part of the issue is a lack of capital and a lack of help,” Rover and Pioneer Square Labs co-founder Greg Gottesman told TechCrunch earlier this year. “If we can provide a little bit of both of those things, we can really put Seattle where it deserves to be, should be and will be.”
Despite its shortcomings, there is still some action in the city I want to highlight this week. A same-day delivery business, Dolly, is on the rise. The startup told me on Thursday it had raised a $7.5 million round from Unlock Venture Partners, Maveron and Jeff Wilke, the chief executive officer of Amazon Worldwide Consumer. Maveron, if you remember, is the VC fund co-founded by Starbucks founder Howard Schultz.
In other Seattle news, Madrona Venture Group, a well-regarded fund, raised an additional $100 million this week. Typically, Madrona focuses on companies based in the Pacific Northwest, but this fund will deploy capital throughout the entire U.S. Hmmm, that’s not necessarily a good sign for Seattle founders, but great progress for the ecosystem nonetheless.
If you’re interested in learning more about Seattle tech, I’ve covered it a bit because it’s my hometown! Start with this story, which dives deep into a Seattle accelerator that’s working hard to encourage entrepreneurship in the city. Alright, on to other news.
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WeWork: The co-working giant now known as The We Company submitted confidential IPO documents to the SEC, the company confirmed in a press release Monday. Is this the next massive startup win or a house of cards waiting to be toppled by the glare of the public markets? TechCrunch’s Danny Crichton investigates.
Slack: The business is in its final steps toward a much-anticipated direct listing, with one source telling TechCrunch the listing will be complete within 45 days. The WSJ reported this week that Slack will make an online presentation to potential shareholders on May 13. This week, we dug deep into Slack’s S-1 and decided to evaluate just how well the tech press, us included, did in covering the company. For the most part, the tech press did decently well, except for one curious, $162 million gap.
Uber: Finally! That ride-hailing company is going public next week. That latest news? Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick won’t be ringing the opening bell. Uber would not be where it is today without Kalanick, but him being there would surely be a reminder of Uber’s rocky past.
Beyond Meat: Shares of the company surged up 135 percent in their market opener last week, valuing the company as high as $3.52 billion. Volatility was so high on the company’s stock that the Nasdaq had to pause trading of “BYND” shares.
Ofo has run into its fair share of issues, laying off hundreds of workers, shutting down its international division and more. Now, you can buy a piece of the startup’s history.
Now you can buy a piece of startup history… Ofo bikes for ~$60 https://t.co/LLJbDOXm0C
— Jon Russell (@jonrussell) April 29, 2019
In other micro-mobility news, Lyft’s head of scooter & bikes Liam O’Connor, who was hired to help transportation company Lyft build its bike and scooter operations, has left after seven months with the newly-public company. TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden has the scoop. Plus, Bird, the electric scooter unicorn doing its best to overcome regulatory barriers, has made its way back to San Francisco. Bird is using its business license in San Francisco to introduce monthly personal rentals in the city. The program enables people to rent a scooter for $24.99 a month with no cap on the number of rides. We’ll how that goes.
For some reason, people are giving Magic Leap more money. The company has secured another $280 million in a deal with Japan’s largest mobile operator, Docomo. Do you know what that means? The developer fo AR/VR headsets has raised a total of $2.6 billion. We’re just as confused as you.
Brand new venture capital funds:
Unshackled Ventures raised $20 million.
Exclusive: @UnshackledVC has a new $20M pre-seed fund to invest only in immigrants. Why? Because immigrants are “inherently more entrepreneurial:” https://t.co/ZLiZ1UczJV
— Kate Clark (@KateClarkTweets) May 2, 2019
Jungle Ventures closed on $175 million.
And Toyota AI Ventures launched a $100 million fund.
- UiPath nabs $568M at a $7B valuation
- Utah’s Divvy raises another $200M to eliminate expense reports
- Glovo, the on-demand app, raises $169M Series D
- Awair raises $10M to help companies like WeWork monitor their office environments
I have the inside story on Menlo Ventures early Uber stake and TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos goes deep with early Uber backer Bradley Tusk.
This week, we offer TechCrunch Extra Crunch subscribers exclusive tips on building extraordinary teams. Plus, the final piece in TechCrunch’s Greg Kumparak’s series on Niantic, the fast-growing developer of Pokemon Go. If you recall, we’ve captured much of Niantic’s ongoing story in the first three parts of our EC-1, from its beginnings as an “entrepreneurial lab” within Google, to its spin-out as an independent company and the launch of Pokémon GO, to its ongoing focus on becoming a platform for others to build augmented reality products upon.
If you enjoy this newsletter, be sure to check out TechCrunch’s venture-focused podcast, Equity. In this week’s episode, available here, Crunchbase News editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm and TechCrunch’s Danny Crichton chat about updates at the Vision Fund, Cheddar’s big exit and more of this week’s headlines.
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