StrictlyVC: February 22, 2018

Hi! Happy Thursday, everyone.

 

Top News

 

Reality TV star Kylie Jenner wiped out $1.2 billion in Snap’s market value with a single tweet posted yesterday.

 

Sponsored By . . .

 

Today’s StrictlyVC is sponsored by Siftery Track. As a reader, get free early access to Track and easily optimize your team’s software expenditures. Simply sync your credit card or accounting system, and Siftery Track will automatically create beautiful visualizations of your historic and forecasted spend. You’ll also get alerts for new products, duplicate charges, unexpected increases in spend, and more.

 

 

Beauty Company Glossier Just Closed on $54 Million in Series C Funding

 

Glossier, the nearly four-year-old, direct-to-consumer beauty company, has landed $52 million in Series C funding in what it describes as a heavily oversubscribed round. The financing was led by earlier investors IVP and Index Ventures.

 

The New York-based company — which evolved out of the popular blog Into the Gloss by founder and CEO Emily Weiss — began selling its own make-up at the outset but has more recently added body and fragrance products, too, bringing its total number of offerings to 22. One of the company’s most popular products is a mascara-like eyebrow filler called Boy Brow. Among its newest: a solid version of its fragrance, You.

 

The company says it launches something new every six weeks, on average, and that it spends a lot of time working on its formulas. (A spokesperson tells us Glossier spent 15 months developing a new $24 exfoliant.) But Glossier is just as well-known for brand-building and its ability to grow consumer awareness in a highly crowded global beauty industry that’s expected to grow from $433 billion today to $750 billion by 2024, according to one estimate.

 

The 150-person company doesn’t disclosed its revenue numbers, but it tells us Glossier saw three times as much revenue last year as in 2016. It also opened offices in London and Montreal, after quietly acquiring a small Canadian digital strategy studio called Dynamo. (One of Dynamo’s cofounders, Bryan Mahoney, is now Glossier’s CTO.)

 

And Glossier opened up a sixth-floor showroom in the same SoHo building where its offices are located. Even without a street-level window, it generates more sales revenue per square foot than the average Apple store, Weiss told New York Magazine in a glowing cover story about Glossier that ran last month. (The story also referred to Weiss as the “millennials’ Estée Lauder.”)

 

More here.

 

New Fundings

 

Agent IQ, a 2.5-year-old, Bay Area-based startup that has developed customer service bots, has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding led by Sierra Ventures, with participation from CRCM and Rubicon Ventures. The company has now raised $8.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

 

Beauty By Design, a two-year-old, L.A.-based personalized skincare platform, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding led by Resolute Ventures, with participation from Ludlow VenturesTenoneTen Ventures, and Troy Capital PartnersMore here.

 

Cota Healthcare, a New York-based healthcare data company that collects select oncological patient level data to provide real-time functions for oncologists, has raised $40 million in Series C financing led by IQVIA, with participation from EW Healthcare Partners and other investors. More here.

 

Dover Microsystems, a nearly eight-year-old, Framingham, Ma.-based cybersecurity company, raised $6 million in seed funding led by Hyperplane Venture Capital, with participation from DraperQualcomm Ventures, and the Hub Angels Investment Group. American Inno has more here.

 

Honcker, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based startup that acts as an aggregator and search engine for leasing services, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from IAC. TechCrunch has more here.

 

Indigo Fair, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based platform that helps small shop owners discover and try thousands of unique items from chocolates to travel goods risk-free, has raised $12 million in new funding from Forerunner Ventures and Khosla Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

 

KitSplit, a nearly three-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based startup that operates an online rental marketplace for creative equipment, has raised $2.1 million fromHearstLabEntrepreneurs Roundtable3311 VenturesNYU Innovation Venture FundWTI and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger. TechCrunch has more here.

 

KKDay, a nearly four-year-old, Tapei, Taiwan-based startup whose online platform helps travelers find local activities, has raised $10.5 million in funding led by Japanese travel operator H.I.S., with participation from earlier backer MindWorks Ventures, a Hong Kong-based venture firm. TechCrunch has more here.

 

Lindora, a 46-year-old, Costa Mesa, Calif.-based weight loss management company that says it’s among the largest in the country, has raised an undisclosed amount of growth funding from investors, including Montage CapitalSolis Capital Partnersand Innovate PartnersMore here.

 

Meritize, a two-year-old, Frisco, Tex.-based educational lender, has raised $6.8 million in seed funding co-led by Colchis CapitalChicago Ventures, and Cube Financial HoldingsMore here.

 

ParkBee, a four-year-old, Amsterdam-based startup that lets private car parks monetize underutilized spaces by making them bookable to the public, has raised roughly $7 million in new funding led by the German-based outfit Statkraft Ventures, with participation from existing investors. TechCrunch has more here.

 

SpinLaunch, a three-year-old, Bay Area-based startup that’s aiming to blast cargo into space using a catapult,  is raising $30 million in Series A funding. (Does it sound less crazy if you know its founder sold his last company, a drone startup, to Google?) TechCrunch has much more here.

 

Teampay, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based company whose software enables businesses to request, approve, pay for, and track employee purchasing in real-time, has raised $4 million in funding led by Crosscut Ventures, with participation from KEC VenturesPrecursor VenturesCoVenture, and numerous other angels and other venture funds. TechCrunch has more here.

 

Tinyclues, an eight-year-old, Paris-based digital marketing company that says it uses AI to help its customers push the right products to the right customers at the right time, has raised $18 million in Series B funding led by EQT Ventures, with participation from earlier backers AlvenElaia Partners, and ISAI. TechCrunch has more here.

 

Vence, a 1.5-year-old, San Diego-based startup whose wearable device creates a kind of virtual fence for livestock like cattle, has raised $2.7 million in new funding led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from the venture capital arm of the Dutch investment bank, Rabobank. TechCrunch has more here.

 

Vision Esports, a year-old, Beverly Hills, Ca.-based holding company set up to invest in esports businesses, has raised $38 million in funding led by Evolution Media, the investment firm backed by CAA and private-equity fund TPG Growth. Other investors include the New York Yankees, NFL star Odell Beckham Jr.; NBA star Kevin Durant and his business partner Rich Kleiman; MLB’s St. Louis CardinalsShamrock Holdings, the private investment arm of the Disney family;Seth Bernstein Capital Management; and Simon Tikhman of First Access Entertainment. Variety has more here.

 

Work well win, a nine-month-old, New York-based flexible office space provider that’s touting the health benefits of the spaces it’s leasing (think air purification systems, etc.), has raised a whopping $22 million in seed funding from undisclosed investors it describes only as New York real estate investors. Interestingly, the company was founded by someone who’d spent the previous year as the head of domestic development at WeWork. More here.

 

New Funds

 

SaaS Ventures, a 1.5-year-old, Washington D.C.-based enterprise technology SaaS focused fund, has raised $10 million for its first fund, says Fortune; according to SEC filings, the outfit was earlier targeting upwards of $40 million.

 

Exits

 

Solium Capital, a Calgary-based maker of software-as-a-service for equity administration, financial reporting and compliance, has acquired Advanced-HR, a 21-year-old, San Francisco-based company that sells compensation data and compensation planning software to private and venture-backed companies. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

 

Jobs

 

SK Telecom Americas, the development arm of large South Korean telecommunications company SK Telecom, is looking to hire a full-time associate. The job is in Sunnyvale, Ca.

 

Data

 

At the U.K. investment bank Barclays, women investment bankers earn 26 percent less than men and their bonuses are 60 percent lower, according to the lender’s annual report. Overall — and holy s — it pays women just under half as much as male colleagues. American Banker has more here.

 

Essential Reads

 

Voice-activated Siri AirPods could be coming.

 

Amazon is opening at least six more cashier-less stores in the U.S. this year.

 

Robinhood has opened cryptocurrency trading.

 

Detours

 

The meaning of “middle class” in Palo Alto.

 

When is a child Instagram-ready?

 

A clubby French bistro is ruffling feathers on New York’s Upper East Side.

 

Retail Therapy

 

Opus Camper. Just flip a switch and voila.

 


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