Not Another Fucking Newsletter

Happy Friday from Traded VC! 

What a week.

Insta & LinkedIn had an embarrassing shutdown, a Chinese spy infiltrated Google Drive & Vinod Khosla had an epic Twitter standoff with Elon.

Let’s get to our Dopamine Dealflow.

🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

Small Dopamine

• W again, Khosla 🟣

  Khosla Ventures led the $14M Series A round for Limbic, an AI mental health chatbot informing real-time hypotheses about what a patient may be struggling with 🏥 read more 

• Jake Paul  🥊

  Betr, the betting startup founded by Jake Paul & Joey Levy, raised $15M at a $375M valuation 🔥 Check out our post with Joey Levy here

• Seizing the post-cookie market 🍪

  Topsort, an auction-based advertising startup, is accelerating the clean advertising revolution and raised $20M 💰 LFG @reginazye 🔥 read more

• Avengers assemble 🦸🏻

  @sherylsandberg, @moskov (The Facebook), Jerry Yang (Yahoo!) invested into Ema, a universal AI employee 🤖 What is this? The startup helps automate day-to-day mundane tasks for employees. It can range from customer service to giving customers technical support 😴 They raised a whopping $25M 💸 read more

• Balling cap table 🏀

  Lachy Groom invested into Baseten, a platform that basically runs machine learning workloads (in the user's cloud) ☁ The startup raised a total of $40M 🔥…oh and investors include ballers like IVP, Spark Capital, Greylock 🫡 read more

• Gordon Gekko? No more 🔐

  Alphabet's VC (CapitalG), invested $50M into Dtex Systems. This startup is fighting insider trading & financial fraud…oh and they also mention their focus is on disgruntled employees stealing data haha ❌ read more

High Dopamine

• Let’s travel 🗺️

  Apollo is interested in exploring a bid for Tripadvisor 🌎 PSA: Tripadvisor is currently valued at $3.5B 💰 read more

• Big $ for team orange 🟠

  A16z is set to raise $7B for new funds. They're targeting a $6.9B master feeder fund (no hard cap). 10% will be allocated to their gaming fund, half will go to their growth fund (big size decline from the previous $5B btw) and 15% will be allocated for an AI infrastructure fund...and 10% to an "American dynamism" fund of course 🇺🇸🦅 read more

• Abu Dhabi X Brazil 👇

  Mubadala (sovereign wealth fund) is buying up Outback in Brazil 🇧🇷 They're moving quickly: they've already acquired Zamp (which operates Burger King and Popeyes) 🍔 read more

🐬 Deep Dive - Chipotle’s Double Scooped CVC

Chipotle, one of the few places where spending an hour in the bathroom isn't suspicious, has just announced that it is "double scooping" its commitment into its corporate venture capital (CVC) fund, Cultivate Next, by doubling the fund's size from $50 million to $100 million. Cultivate Next makes early-stage investments in strategically aligned companies that further Chipotle's mission to Cultivate a Better World.

It’s important to note that Cultivate Next is not only investing in startups for Chipotle; rather it invests in startups that fuel the future of restaurants. Therefore, Chipotle won’t necessarily be a customer of every startup Cultivate Next invests in. However, CTO Curt Garner “expects that there will be opportunities for us to partner with portfolio companies to test their solutions through our stage-gate process.” So, if your startup is offered an investment by Cultivate Next, don’t be surprised you are served up a term sheet with a side of collaboration agreement.

🥑🥑🥑

Cultivate Next has already invested in 7 startups. These include Local Line, a local food sourcing platform; GreenField Robotics, dedicated to making regenerative farming more efficient; Nitricity, seeking to tackle greenhouse gas emissions by creating fertilizer products; Hyphen, automating kitchen operations; Meati, producing whole-food products made from MushroomRoot; and Zero Acre Farms, focusing on healthy, sustainable oils. 

Oh, but wait, that's only six! Missing is Vebu, the creator of Autocado, the proprietary avocado processing robot. F*ck yeah. 🦅

Let’s take a quick look at CVCs in general.

Corporate venture capital investments now represent more than a fifth of total global venture, which is more than what you’d expect. And they are on the rise; between 2010 and 2020, the number of CVCs grew more than six times to over 4,000.

Why?

CVC’s are mostly used as a tool to avoid being “disrupted.” Large corporations often choose to “outsource” innovation because their bureaucratic corporate structure doesn’t allow them to do so in-house. They often do this “outsourcing” through M&As. However, these often fail due to poor due diligence. So, by taking a minority investment, corporations can obtain early access to a company that they may consider acquiring later.

And if they really hit the nail on the head and somehow invest in a unicorn, they can just cash out. 💰

🚀 Show your startup 

Agent Herbie

One-liner: Agent Herbie is a research agent that operates through email, providing tailored and contextualized research to any company, at scale.

What it does: Herbie specializes in research, writing and data analysis, allowing your team to focus on larger goals. Herbie can perform various tasks, including competitor and product research, writing blogs, articles and social media posts, as well as analyzing internal data and reports.

Founders: Victor Paraschiv, Calin Drimbau

Market: ~ $350M

Location: San Francisco / London

Fundraising: Currently seeking to raise $500K in pre-seed funding.

Now, get back to the grind

💌