Welcome to The Beat, a roundup of local technology news. |
Breaking down the day's biggest Inno story. |
The Bay Area continues to dominate when it comes to being the land of startups. On Tuesday, Forbes announced its eighth annual list of the "Next Billion Dollar Startups" and nearly half of the 25 companies are local.
One is already a so-called unicorn. San Francisco-based Fountain develops automated hiring and workforce management software, and in June, the team raised a $185 million Series C that boosted its valuation more than 11-fold to $1 billion, according to PitchBook.
Inc. Magazine also published a listicle about high-growth companies on Tuesday: the "Inc. 5000 2022." While a much, much larger crop, the Bay Area landed 167 spots including five in the top 100: Vanta (SF) #25, Empower (SF) #55, ArtsAI (SF) #56, Truework (SF) #64 and Moloco (Redwood City) #95. Cromwell Schubarth rounds up the top 10 Bay Area companies here. Dive more into the "next billion dollar startups" list from Forbes in my story about it here. |
Inside the people, companies and organizations making moves around the Bay Area. Information comes from LinkedIn profiles, press releases and Inno reporting. |
Fresh Faces
Menlo Park-based Onymos hired Keith Feingold as its VP of worldwide sales. Feingold was previously an SVP at Privacera and also worked at Aginity, Talend, Mercator, TIBCO Software and Oracle, according to a press release. The startup develops software for mobile apps. M&A Watch
Cybersecurity and risk management startup Coalition acquired Digital Affect Insurance Co., a Vermont-based insurance company which will allow San Francisco-based Coalition to expand to all 50 states. The terms were not disclosed. New York-based asset management firm KKR says it has acquired Barracuda Networks from Thoma Bravo. The terms of the deal were not disclosed but the Campbell-based cybersecurity company was bought by Thoma Bravo in 2018 for $1.6 billion, according to PitchBook.
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All the best seed and series A funding rounds.
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The business of dating is booming. Dating apps nearly tripled their revenue to $5.61 billion in 2021 from $2 billion in 2020, and Palo Alto-based Schmooze is carving out a niche. Specifically for meme lovers.
The dating app attempts to match people based on their sense of humor through cultural memes. Reddit users and Twitter aficionados need no introduction to memes, but Merriam Webster defines it as a noun: "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media" or "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture." Schmooze recently raised $3.2 million.
Get more details on recent seed rounds in today's Early Money. |
The biggest news from the tech world. |
Stories from around the Inno network we think you'll dig. Sign up for Inno+ to access the entire Inno network |
The events and happenings to know in the ecosystem |
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Where the Beat does its own thing... |
I recently spent a few weeks talking to startup founders about why they're developing services to help other businesses take action around diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Leaders at organizations of all types and sizes have been talking more about these issues since 2020, but talk is cheap and their stakeholders are demanding more. In the Bay Area, there are startups tackling things like wage gaps, bias in hiring, mentorship opportunities and cultural inclusion. You can read more about it in my story, "The Rise of DEI Startups."
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