Excoastal Issue 52

A Year of Excoastal

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.

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What’s New 

Excoastal Stats 📊

• Subscribers: 168

• Last Week’s Open Rate: 48% 📈

• Last Week’s Views: 180 📈

ICYMI: the Excoastal Investors Airtable sheet: 

Midwest Venture Capital Firms and Angels

Venture Capital Deals 

Rivian, a Plymouth, MI-based maker of electric pickup trucks, raised $2.5 billion. T. Rowe Price led, joined by Soros Fund Management, Fidelity, Baron Capital, and return backers Amazon and BlackRock.

Chicago-based Aclaimant, a workplace safety and risk management platform raised $10 million in Series A funding. Mercury Fund led, and was joined by Royal Street Ventures, EBSCO Capital, KEC Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Aspen Capital Group.

The Mom Project, a Chicago-based online talent marketplace for women, raised $25 million in a Series B round. 7CG led, joined by Citi Ventures, Synchrony Financial, SVB, High Alpha, as well as return backers Initialized Capital, Grotech Ventures, OCA, Aspect Ventures, Wintrust Financial, Irish Angels, and Engage VC.

Chicago-based VillageMD, a primary health care provider, has secured around $1 billion in equity ($250 million upfront) and convertible debt securities from existing backer Walgreens Boots Alliance.

Pattern89, an Indianapolis-based digital ad performance startup, raised $2 million from Break Trail Ventures, Elevate Ventures, F&M Investments, High Alpha Capital, and Vitalize.

Layr, an insurtech startup that uses AI and ML to help small businesses customize commercial insurance bundles, has raised a $5 million dollar seed round from investors including KC-based Flyover Capital.

Competitive Wedge, a Holland, MI-based video interviewing solution, has raised $1 million to date. Investors include Wade Burgess, chief revenue officer at Rev.com.

Growers Edge, a Johnston, Iowa-based provider of fintech products for farmers, raised $40 million in Series B funding from by S2G Ventures, Cox Enterprises, and Skyline Global Partners, Bunge Ventures, and Finistere Ventures.

Toronto-based Senso, a fintech startup using artificial intelligence to provide financial institutions with recommendations on how to strengthen client relationships, raised $3 million in a pre-Series A round led by Mendoza Ventures and BreakawayGrowth. Crunchbase

Inimmune, a Missoula, Montana-based developer of adjuvants for vaccines, raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Two Bear Capital.

Private Equity Deals

Abry Partners has purchased a majority stake in HealthEZ, a Minneapolis-based administrator of third-party, employer-sponsored medical plans.

M&A

Empower Retirement, a Colorado-based affiliate of Great-West, agreed to buy Personal Capital for upwards of $1 billion. Personal Capital is a California-based wealth management app that had raised around $325 million from Venrock, IGM Financial, Corsair Capital, BBVA Ventures, USAA Ventures, Jump Capital, IVP, Correlation Ventures, New York Life Ventures, BlackRock Private Equity Partners, and Crosslink.

Brainlab acquired Level Ex, a Chicago-based developer of professional medical video games designed for physicians. Level Ex was backed by investors including JAZZ Venture Partners, 4490 Ventures, and OSF Ventures.

New Funds  

Cincinnati-based Lightship Capital has closed a $50 million fund, according to The Wall Street Journal. The fund will focus on investments in underrepresented founders across the Midwest.

Scotts Miracle-Gro, a lawn care and landscaping products company, launched a $50 million corporate venture capital fund called 1868 Ventures.

What I’m Reading

The Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2020

Colorado Venture Ecosystem Review

The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup

Unpacking Lemonade’s S-1 Filing

Reserves

Startup/VC Twitter

Nikita S @singareddynm

A while back, I read @josh_nussbaum's 7 blog posts on API startups and summarized the elements of a great API business into these bullet notes. I come back to this again and again when evaluating companies.

Andrea Funsten @AndreaFunsten

Even as early as the seed stage, an organized data room can make you stand out from the crowd.   Sharing a list below of items that I received this week from a founder who is ~2 months away from raising. Left me so impressed and eager to move fast on the deal

Kunal Shah @kunalb11

>90 % of startups fail. But, 100% of startups help the founder and founding teams in knowing who they really are, reveal what they lack, accelerate maturity and eventually make all them better for future than their non-risk taking peers.

Brandon Moore @bk_moore

Living in a 1000 sq ft house in the Midwest is a cheat code for saving. These houses regularly go for around $75k. Small amount down and the payment can be around $500/mo including property taxes. Small houses are cheap to remodel. Easy to make your own like ones below.

logan bartlett @loganbartlett

I miss when we used to have lighthearted beefs. Like when people debated the best way out of a global pandemic and one person called the other “the dumbest, most over-confident piece of shit VC” and then the other responded “you are now literally killing people with your Tweets.”

Podcast Addiction 

Saurabh Sharma of Jump Capital // Series A and B capital for cloud infrastructure and enterprise software - Upside FM

Culture Break 

📚Read- The Predator’s Ball by Connie Bruck and White Fragility by Robin Diangelo

🎬Watch- I’ve been on a hiatus from TV and movies for a while, but check back here later.

🎧Listen- 

🧐Think- The True Cost of Dollar Stores

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