It is the final week of the Quarter as we present the following as our World emerges from COVID. We present the following #RandomThoughts Courtesy the Team at the Visual Capitalist and a window into emerging technologies courtesy the team at Angel's List and the Information:
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Modern Fertility
Startups devoted to reproductive and women’s health—also dubbed femtech—are on the rise.
Innovations like hormonal birth control and AI-assisted in vitro fertilization are disrupting old markets and attracting venture investment. This all comes in the wake of global baby drought and spike in egg freezing brought on by the pandemic.
Natalist, a two-year-old company founded in Charleston, S.C., offers its line of ovulation and pregnancy tests and prenatal supplements in major retailers including Target. At Walmart you’ll find pregnancy tests from Modern Fertility (they’re hiring), a five-year-old startup out of San Francisco that was acquired this year for a reported $225M by telehealth startup Ro (which has received praise for its marketing intentionally void of cute babies).
Salt Lake City, Utah-based Sera Prognostics raised $100M for its advanced pregnancy test that delivers biomarker information to doctors and patients to help them identify pregnancy-related conditions.
Tulip, a San Francisco-based egg donor database, raised a $1.7M seed round for its database of 20k egg donors that’s supported by blockchain technology. Alife Health, which has offices in California and England, raised $9.5M to develop artificial intelligence-enabled software that assists in vitro fertilization. The technology is touted as a step forward for data-driven personalized medicine.
San Francisco-based Orchid recently raised $4.M to advance its preconception genetic screening. The company, which was founded by a Stanford University AI and genetics researcher, uses computer vision to assess genetic predispositions to diseases including heart disease, stroke, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, breast cancer and diabetes.
Future Family, also from the Bay Area, raised another $9M fertility treatments more accessible. The company negotiates terms with fertility clinics for customers, finances their treatments with monthly payment plans, and offers coaching.
Los Angeles-based Mate Fertility raised $2.8M to create a network of family planning services including affordable fertility treatments. San Francisco-based Oath Care recently raised $2M to deliver personalized “onboarding for parenthood” support to new moms with a new approach to support groups.
There are many other types of fem-innovation happening. Bobbie (they’re hiring) raised $22M so far to develop a European-style baby formula. Cake and Maude raised millions to develop sex toys. Others are advancing plant-based oral contraception.
One category remains elusive to entrepreneurs, despite the sizable market opportunity: men’s birth control pills.
Hot startups hiring now
Media companies are often hunting for merger partners and spinning off units, but this year the pace has seemed particularly frenetic. That’s partly due to the pressure these companies face as big tech companies muscle into their businesses—taking ad dollars, streaming subscribers, time spent—and reducing the confidence of investors that they can effectively compete. Add to that anxiety the emergence of SPACs as a newly popular (but recently volatile) way to engineer deals, and you have a recipe for a lot of noise.
To recap: Earlier this week, we reported that The Athletic was no longer in discussions to be acquired by The New York Times, thereby opening the subscription sports news site to another buyer. This came weeks after reports that the two companies were interested in each other, which themselves came after The Athletic abandoned merger talks with Axios. That news and politics site, meanwhile, is in talks to be bought by German media conglomerate Axel Springer, which owns Insider, as we first reported.
Meanwhile, BuzzFeed is hoping it is on the cusp of its big moment by going public via a SPAC and buying Complex Networks, just months after buying HuffPost. And its competitor Group Nine Media has also formed a SPAC to buy something to merge with Group Nine, while Vice is also in talks with another SPAC.
Dizzy yet? That’s just the half of it. In legacy media, all the major entertainment companies, from Comcast’s NBCUniversal to ViacomCBS, are figuring out their next steps in the wake of Discovery’s planned acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, the biggest media deal of the year so far.
And of course there is the question of whether other tech companies, like Apple, will follow in the wake of Amazon’s footsteps and buy a movie studio as the e-commerce giant is doing with MGM. Any of these landmark matchups could lead to other, copycat pairings. When one competitor finds a match, others wonder what they’re missing.
The rush to find a partner, and maybe abandon deals where the ink isn’t quite dry, is expected to hit a fever pace next month. That’s when, for the first time since 2019, tech CEOs, media moguls and bankers will hobnob at Allen & Company’s Sun Valley conference. No one wants to be left alone when the music stops. —Sahil Patel
OVERHEARD
“It will be used to turn American and allied warfighters into invincible technomancers who wield the power of autonomous systems to safely accomplish their mission.”—Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, writing on his Facebook page about the defense startup’s $450 million capital raise.
SPECIAL EVENT
Tuesday, June 22. What’s Next for Venture Capital. Our reporters regularly break some of the biggest news in private technology. Now, you’ll get the chance to join them on an exclusive video call, where they’ll share the latest shifts they’re seeing, from venture firms on the upswing and new deals to emerging trends in SPACs, IPOs and more. Save 50% on a subscription and join us.
CRYPTO STARTUP GOLDRUSH
Investor interest in crypto-related assets has never been more intense. Kate noted the deluge earlier this month when she broke the news that crypto wealth manager Blockfi was in funding talks just three months after it last raised money.
U.S. crypto startups raised $1 billion in May alone, and by early June, VC’s had poured $4 billion into the sector for the year—on track to take out 2018’s high of $4.3 billion, according to PitchBook.
On Friday, Bloomberg News gave another window into how white-hot this market has become, with a chart of crypto investments that included non-U.S. deals. These have reached $17 billion this year. That’s in large part due to one very big deal—Cayman Islands-based Block.one LLC’s investment into crypto exchange Bullish Global. Still, even taking out the $10 billion investment, investments this year are near the 2018 record. And there’s still more than six months to go. (For more on crypto deals and deal-makers, sign up for our new newsletter, Crypto Global.)—Laura Mandaro
Solana, Polkadot, Chiliz, and Keep Network are now available on Coinbase
You can now trade, send, receive, or store Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), Chiliz (CHZ), and Keep Network (KEEP). They are available on Coinbase.com and in the Coinbase Android and iOS apps.
Solana (SOL)
Solana (SOL) is a decentralized computing platform that uses SOL to pay for transactions. Solana aims to improve blockchain scalability by using a combination of proof of stake consensus and so-called proof of history. As a result, Solana claims to be able to support 50,000 transactions per second without sacrificing decentralization.
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Polkadot (DOT)
Polkadot (DOT) is a protocol that enables cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset. By uniting multiple blockchains, Polkadot aims to achieve high degrees of security and scalability. DOT serves as the protocol’s governance token and can be used for staking to secure the network or to connect (“bond”) new chains.
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Chiliz (CHZ)
CHZ is an Ethereum token that powers Socios.com, a platform that lets users trade tokens to show their support for professional sports teams. The tokens on Socios.com — called Fan Tokens — make users eligible for rewards and promotions and can also be used to influence team decisions by popular voting on the Chiliz blockchain.
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Keep Network (KEEP)
KEEP is an Ethereum token that powers the Keep Network, a platform that aims to bridge public blockchains and private data. One of Keep Network’s first products is an Ethereum token that represents 1 bitcoin, called tBTC. Keep Network enables users to deposit bitcoin and redeem tokenized tBTC, which can then be used in the Ethereum ecosystem without centralized intermediaries.
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