Iterative Venture: Launching A Podcast 📣 + Upcoming Deal Q&As 📆
Welcome to everyone who just joined Iterative Venture! 🙌 We have so many exciting events and deals coming up soon - please spread the word about us by sharing this newsletter!
Hello Iterative Community,
Over the last few weeks, we’ve successfully launched various events featuring a group of alumni founders and experts (See ML/ AI Founders & Experts Roundtable, Alumni Founders Talk, and Crypto Panel discussion). These are great forums to connect everyone for peer education, networking, and cross-pollinating ideas. We look forward to hosting these events IRL (in real life) sometime soon- please stay tuned for an announcement!
Next up: we are launching a Podcast!! 📣 Every month, we will interview a Facebook alum who launched successful startups or is a leader at the next breakout companies. Our goal is to connect the $13.6 billion network together to strengthen the community.
This Friday, our first guest will be Krishna Gade, CEO, and Founder of Fiddler.ai ( RSVP here 📆)! We are thrilled to have Krishna and learn more about his journey of building the leading Responsible AI platform, backed by Insight Partners, Lightspeed, Lux Capital, and many other best VCs in the Valley. The podcast will be a live stream to host live Q&A as well. Please find more info in the event section below!
Market View and Interesting Reads 🔍
This week, we recommend reading the State of Venture Q2’21 Report by CB Insights (Thanks to Peter for sharing this on Slack!)
Global funding to startups smashed new records, $156B, 157% year-over-year
In Q2 alone, 136 new unicorns 🦄 were born globally — nearly 6X the 23 unicorns born a year ago in Q2’20
22% or $1 out of every $5 global funding goes to Fintech
IPOs/ M&A exits are up 109% year-over-year, reaching an all-time high of 2,893.
Demystifying Termsheets video by SignalFire
Great 101 video if you have questions such as the pros and cons of SAFE notes vs. priced rounds, how dilution works across multiple rounds, or what is considered "middle of the fairway" for founder vesting and other terms.
Other interesting contents:
Marc Andreessen: From the Internet’s Past to the Future of Crypto by a16z
IPO Deal Volume Reaches a New High in H1 2021 by Crunchbase
The World’s Unicorns are Now Valued At $3T - Who Invested? by Crunchbase
Robinhood’s Guinea Pig for Upending Public Offerings by NY Times
Iterative Venture Update
Update on Kargoo deal: ConcreteRose Capital just came onboard to co-lead the round with Sixers Innovation Lab! Invest alongside Lightspeed Scout Fund, Yellow (Snap Accelerator), and Seth Berger (AND1 CEO) via the link!
Please find the Q&A sessions for the upcoming deals in the event section below. We’d love to collect feedback from the Q&As before moving forward with syndication.
Upcoming Events 📆
FB Alumni Founders Talk with Krishna Gade, Founder & CEO of Fiddler AI @ 12 PM PST on Fri, 7/30 - RSVP
Fiddler AI is a leading Explainable AI platform that helps businesses to build, deploy, and maintain trustworthy AI solutions.
Recently closed $32M Series B round, led by Insight Partners, and backed by existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lux Capital, Haystack Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Lockheed Martin, and The Alexa Fund.
Recent Articles:
[Deal Q&A] EarthSense with Founder & CEO, Chinmay Soman @ 12PM PST on Wed, 7/28 - RSVP (deck will be distributed via email upon RSVP)
Agtech company delivering a 10x more efficient Robotics & ML-based solution for improving agricultural product development cycle
Traction: $1M+ contract in 2021 (3x y-o-y growth since 2020). On track for 5X growth in 2022
Team: Founding team is made of industry leaders and faculty at UIUC’s Agricultural and Biological Engineering department
Market: Targeting $10B markets in the Field Crops Product Dev market
$2M Seed Round is already fully subscribed, but the team is willing to oversubscribe for acquiring strategic advisors (in Machine Vision/ ML/ Robotics/ Enterprise Biz Dev) from Iterative Venture
[Deal Q&A] GPUAudio with Katya Akudovich @ Softbank @ TBD - RSVP (deck will be distributed via email upon RSVP)
Developing Audio processing technology (DSP) that optimizes up to 30% of audio production for small and large media enterprises
Traction: Over 1,000 beta users on waitlist & Ongoing pilot projects with Netflix and Radio France
Market: Targeting $7B markets in the Media Enterprise industry
$2.5M Seed SAFE Round (deal term to be finalized)
Investors: Katya Akudovich (Director @ Softbank Robotics)/ Gregory Coleman (Director @ Amazon Studios)/ Venture Crew Syndicate (specialized in Voice AI/ Audio tech space) and others
Let us know how we did!💡
As we continue to grow and scale, we’d love to hear from you about how we can be better and what you’d like to see more of. Want to get involved with the Iterative community? We’d love to have your help supporting the community. Please use the link below to give feedback & share your interest in joining our efforts.
Keep iterating 💪