Welcome to Excoastal, a newsletter covering deals, startups, venture capital, and more from Chicago to Boulder, Detroit to Columbus, and beyond. I’m Evan Lonergan, a native Midwesterner. 

You can connect with me on Twitter @evanjlonergan, on Medium, and send deals/jobs/intel to evanlon92@gmail.com

What’s New 

Excoastal Stats 📊

• Last Week’s Open Rate: 38%

• Last Week’s Views: 219

ICYMI: the Excoastal Investors Airtable sheet: 

Midwest Venture Capital Firms and Angels

Venture Capital Deals 

📍 Illinois

Chicago-based Foxtrot Market, an online and offline upscale convenience store chain, raised $42 million in Series B funding co-led by Almanac Insights and Monogram Capital Partners. The company operates brick-and-mortar stores offering products from nearby retailers, as well with an app-based delivery platform.

Natural Fiber Welding, a Peoria-based textile fibers company, raised $2 million from shoemaker Allbirds.

📍 Wisconsin

Redox, a Madison-based healthcare data company, raised $45 million in Series D funding. Adams Street Partners led the round, joined by Avenir, Battery Ventures, .406 Ventures, and RRE Ventures.

📍 Toronto

TradeCafe, a B2B marketplace for protein commodities, raised C$10 million from Round13 Capital.

📍 Silicon Slopes

Pocket Outdoor Media, a Boulder-based creator of active lifestyle content and experiences, raised $150 million in Series B  funding. Sequoia Heritage led and was joined by JAZZ Ventures, Zone 5 Ventures, and NEXT Ventures.

📍 Texas 

Austin-based FloorFound, developer of a service that facilitates returns and resales of oversized products for e-commerce retailers, raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by LiveOak Venture Partners.

Episode Six, an Austin-based payment processing and banking infrastructure company, raised an additional $30 million. Investors include HSBC, Mastercard, SBI Investment Co., and Anthos Capital. Term Sheet

Sunroom Rentals, an Austin-based real estate software startup, raised $11 million in a Series A round led by Gigafund.

Katana Graph, an Austin, Texas-based graph processing company, raised $28.5 million in Series A funding. Intel Capital led with participation from WRVI Capital, Nepenthe Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, and Redline Capital. 

VenoStent, a Houston-based developer of polymers for vascular surgery, raised $2.3 million in seed funding. Creative Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including IAG Capital Partners, C3 Ventures, Olima Ventures, Texas Halo Fund, Cowtown Angels, and SP Investment Fund. Term Sheet

Private Equity Deals

Abry Partners made a minority investment in Kingland Systems, an Iowa-based provider of enterprise data software for the financial sector. 

M&A

Buildout acquired Rethink, an Austin-based provider of commercial real estate deal-making tech.

AsTech acquired adasThink, a Toronto-based car calibration software company. 

Cision, a Chicago-based portfolio company of Platinum Equity, agreed to buy Brandwatch, a British social media listening platform, for $450 million. Axios

New Funds 

Lightbank, a Chicago-based VC firm, raised $180 million for its second fund. 

Austin-based Peak Rock Capital has raised about $1.6 billion out of a planned $1.8 billion for its third fund.

Alta Partners, a San Francisco and Denver-based early-stage healthcare venture capital firm, closed Alta Partners NextGen Fund III with $275 million. Term Sheet

Peterson Private Equity, a Salt Laker City-based firm focused on small and mid-cap businesses, raised $225 million for its ninth fund.

CORE Industrial Partners, a Chicago-based PE firm, raised $465 million for its second fund. 

Others

Fintech startup Brex, which provides business credit cards to technology startups, has filed to create a bank based in Draper, Utah. The company has hired Silicon Valley Bank veteran Bruce Wallace to be Brex Bank's potential CEO. Brex raised $150 million last May in a round led by DST Global, valuing the company at $2.75 billion, according to PitchBook.

What I’m Reading

Bitcoin and Buying Things

You’ve Heard of Ghost Kitchens. Meet the Ghost Franchises

FRAMEWORKS v0.2

How we tripled our first VC fund to raise a $33.6M Fund 2

Startup/VC Twitter

👇🏼 Thread

Justine & Olivia @venturetwins

Fast facts on the @coinbase S-1: 🌎43M verified users 🤝2.8M monthly transacting users 💰$90B in assets on platform 📈$1.1B in 2020 net rev (up 128% YoY) 📊$322M in net income 🪙90 crypto assets supported 🧑‍🤝‍🧑1,249 employees 👄 90% of retail users have found Coinbase organically

February 25th 2021

2 Retweets22 Likes

samir kaji @Samirkaji

Family offices have obviously leaned heavily into directs; often w/o professional help. Most shouldn't...unless through a fund sponsor co-invest. In today's world, things look better than they really are, and Dunning-Kruger effect is real. Most FO's should invest in funds first.

February 24th 2021

22 Retweets226 Likes

midwest.tech/connect @midwestdottech

Did you miss today's kickoff announcing our full programming lineup and the quick walkthrough of our new platform? You can watch a replay below - check it out and sign up to join 600+ startups and investors today! midwest.tech/connect spring 21 | kick-off + platform demo- welcome (0:00)- midwest.tech/connect spring 21 programming (4:40)- midwest.tech/connect event platform walkthrough plus Q&A (09:50)youtu.be

February 22nd 2021

3 Retweets10 Likes

Morgan Housel @morganhousel

If markets never fell they wouldn't be risky and if they weren't risky they'd get really expensive and when they get expensive they fall. Rinse, repeat.

February 23rd 2021

281 Retweets2,669 Likes

Podcast Addiction 

Chamath Palihapitiya - The Major Problems Facing The World - Invest Like the Best

Culture Break 

📚Read- Reagan Land by Rick Pearlstein

🎬Watch- Nothing new this week. I’ve had a busy schedule lately but if you have any interesting TV or film recommendations, send them my way.

🎧Listen- 

🧐Think- The Murder Chicago Didn’t Want to Solve

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