Swimlane brings in $40M
Plus a marketplace for farmland, software for DevOps, and Telehealth in AZ.
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: 42%
Last Week’s Views: 215
ICYMI: the Excoastal Investors Airtable sheet:
Midwest Venture Capital Firms and Angels
Venture Capital Deals
📍 Indiana
Bloomington-based Blueprint Stats raised $100K in seed financing from IU Angel Network.
📍 Illinois
CashRent, a dual-sided marketplace for leasing farmland has raised $750K in seed financing led by individual investors based in Illinois and Iowa.
📍 Denver/Boulder
Swimlane, a Denver-based data security company, raised $40 million. EIP led the round. Term Sheet
📍 Texas
Austin-based Quali, a developer of cloud automation software for DevOps teams, has raised $54 million in a new round co-led by Greenfield Partners and JVP.
Everlywell, an Austin, Texas-based in-home health testing platform, raised $75 million in secondary funding from HealthQuest Capital. The money was raised at the same $1.3 billion valuation as the recent Series D round from BlackRock, TCG, Foresite Capital, Greenspring Associates, Morningside Ventures, Portfolio, and Highland Capital Partners. Axios
📍 Arizona
Apricus Health, a Phoenix, Arizona-based telehealth company, raised $20 million from Virgo Investment Group.
Private Equity Deals
Spins, a Chicago-based provider of data and analytics to the wellness products market, raised funding from Warburg Pincus, General Atlantic, and Georgian Partners.
Equality Asset Management and First Analysis invested in PCMI, a Park Ridge, Ill.-based provider of administration software for insurance services. Term Sheet
HCAP Partners, invested in 83bar, an Austin-based leader in patient management software maker. Term Sheet
M&A
Desktop Metal has agreed to acquire Michigan-based EnvisionTec, a fellow provider of 3D printing services for $300 million. EnvisionTec has notable clients in the dental industry, including SmileDirectClub, which uses 3D printing to produce teeth-straightening aligners. Pitchbook
Toronto-based Wattpad, an online social storytelling platform, will be acquired by Naver in a cash and stock transaction valued at over $600 million.
IG Group agreed to buy Chicago-based trading platform Tastytrade for $1 billion. Tastytrade had raised nearly $60 million TCV, Lightbank, and others.
New Funds
Chicago-based Sheridan Capital Partners has closed a second buyout fund on $306 million. Sheridan primarily pursues lower-middle-market investments in the healthcare sector.
Others
What I’m Reading
Lemons and Mixology: 2020 In Review
Goodbye 2010s: techno-optimism edition
Notes on technology in the 2020s
Startup/VC Twitter
Podcast Addiction
Cloudflare Co-Founder Michelle Zatlyn’s Advice on Hiring, Fundraising, Scaling, and more - Venture Stories
Culture Break
📚Read- Black Wave by Kim Ghattas
🎬Watch- City So Real on Hulu (this National Geographic docuseries follows Chicago’s 2019 mayoral election while providing a portrait of the dynamic city with all its imperfections).
🎧Listen-
🧐Think- The Epic Hunt for One of the World’s Most Wanted Men
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