Excoastal Issue 56
Commerce platforms, connected devices, and ag-tech innovations.
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 📊
Subscribers: 176
Last Week’s Open Rate: 42% 📉
Last Week’s Views: 210 📉
ICYMI: the Excoastal Investors Airtable sheet:
Midwest Venture Capital Firms and Angels
Venture Capital Deals
📍 Chicago
Cashdrop, a Chicago-based contactless commerce platform for small biz owners, raised $2.7 million in seed funding. Harlem Capital led, and was joined by Founder Collective, Long Journey Ventures, and M25.
📍 Ann Arbor
Censys, a Michigan-based search engine for finding Internet devices, raised $15 million. GV and Decibel co-led and were joined by Greylock.
📍 Toronto
FleetOps, an AI-based freight marketplace that matches freight shipments with drivers, raised $6 million in seed funding. Inspired Capital and Resolute Ventures co-led, joined by investors including Hike Ventures, Basecamp Fund, Newark Venture Partners, BCF Ventures, and Panache Ventures. Term Sheet
Thriver (fka Platterz), a Toronto-based corporate catering and employee wellness startup, raised US$33 million in Series B funding. Viola Growth led, and was joined by Vertex Ventures Israel, Journey Ventures, FJ Labs, and return backers Aleph and Altair Capital. Axios
📍 The Dakotas
South Dakota-based Farmer's Business Network, the operator of an ag-tech platform that uses data science and machine learning to provide product performance, benchmarking, and predictive analytics for farmers, has closed a $250 million Series F led by BlackRock. Additional investors include Baron Capital, Balyasny Asset Management, Mandi Ventures, Lupa Systems, DBL Partners, Temasek, GV, Expanding Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and T. Rowe Price. Bloomberg reports the company's valuation at around $1.75 billion with the new funding.
📍 Kentucky
AppHarvest, a Morehead-based indoor farming and greenhouse operator, raised $28 million in Series C funding. Narya led, and was joined by ValueAct Capital’s Spring Fund, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Fund, Equilibrium, Lupa Systems, Breyer Capital, S2G Ventures, Black Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst.
📍 Denver/Boulder
Legaltech startup Term Scout raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by Hilltop Venture Partners. Techstars and eonCapital also participated.
📍 Texas
Ceresa, an Austin-based coaching and leadership development platform, raised $1 million in seed funding from investors including LiveOak Venture Partners and Next Coast Venture Partners.
Taysha Gene Therapies, a Dallas-based gene therapy startup focused on monogenic CNS diseases, raised $95 million in a Series B round. Fidelity led, and was joined by BlackRock, GV, Invus, Casdin Capital, Franklin Templeton, Octagon Capital, Perceptive Advisors, Sands Capital, ArrowMark Partners, Venrock, as well as return backers PBM Capital and Nolan Capital.
Houston-based Goodfair, a platform for thrift shopping, raised $3.6M in seed funding. Imaginary led the round and was joined by investors including MaC Venture Capital, Global Founders Capital, Willow Ventures, Watertower, Amplify.LA, Capital Factory, and Texas Ventures. Term Sheet
Retina-AI Health, a Houston-based provider of diabetic retinopathy screening tech, raised $5.2 million in Series A funding
Private Equity Deals
Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Foundation Software, a Strongsville, Ohio-based provider of accounting software and payroll services for small and mid-sized construction contractors.
Thoma Bravo and Madison Dearborn Partners invested in Syntellis Performance Solutions, a Chicago-based enterprise software and data analytics provider for healthcare, financial services, and education businesses.
M&A
Blackstone Group agreed to acquire Ancestry.com, the Lehi, Utah-based DNA testing and heritage tracing company, from Silver Lake, GIC, Spectrum Equity, Permira, and other investors, for an enterprise value of $4.7 billion. Term Sheet
ASG acquired ExtendedReach, a Littleton, Colorado-based provider of case management software for child and family social service agencies.
New Funds
Turnout Capital has launched as a Chicago-based, small-cap private equity firm by former High Street Capital principals Rob France and Andrew Simmons.
Others
Lordstown Motors Corp, a Lordstown, Ohio-based electric work vehicles maker, will go public via a reverse merger with DiamondPeak Holdings Corp, a SPAC. The company will be listed on the Nasdaq as “RIDE”. The deal is valued at $1.6 billion.
Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe is exploring a sale of Clearwater Analytics, a Boise, Idaho-based investment management software firm.
What I’m Reading
The 4 P’s of Fundraising for Emerging Managers
Public to Private Equity in the United States: A Long-Term Look
Understanding Portfolio Construction
SPAC Attack: everything a founder or investor should know
Startup/VC Twitter
Thread 👇🏼
Podcast Addiction
Retooling for Reality: Product Development in Pivotal Moments - Grey Matter
Culture Break
📚Read- The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch - By Miles Harvey
🎬Watch- Waves (film) (this is a beautifully filmed indie production that traces a family's journey into the depth of tragedy and its aftermath. The result is a compelling picture of forgiveness.)
🎧Listen-
🧐Think- TikTok and the Evolution of Digital Blackface
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