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Yet, alongside the rise of companies like Impossible Foods, the public debut of companies like , and the formation of funds like , exists a quieter subset of alternative protein. Startups around the world, from Israel to San Francisco to Memphis, are finding promise in alternative protein drawn from animal cells instead of plants.

Before we get into those cell-based meat startups, let’s do some housekeeping. , an investor at , a seed fund “that backs entrepreneurs solving the world’s biggest problems with technology” warns against using phrases like fake-meat or lab-grown meat.

“‘Fake meat’ isn’t accurate because the end product is essentially identical to meat harvested from a slaughtered animal. It’s made through the exact same biological processes that take place inside an animal that cause that animal to make meat, only those processes are outside the animal,” Bannon told Crunchbase News.

And in response to lab-grown meat, he said, “While it’s true that cell-based meat was initially developed in a food lab, it’s not made at scale in a lab, but rather in large cultivators that look a lot like beer breweries. Cheerios was also initially developed in a food lab, but we don’t call it ‘lab-made cereal’.”

That said, for clarity’s sake, let’s stick with cell-based meat when discussing this alternative protein source.

A Systemic Shift

“The biggest mistake investors make is viewing the movement toward alternative protein sources as a fad versus a systemic shift that’s here to stay,” Bannon told Crunchbase News.

Bannon is an investor in , which offers cell-based meat and raised a $161 million Series B round in January. Back when Memphis Meats only had $20 million under its belt, our own Joanna Glasner described it as a “pricey meatball maker.”

Memphis Meats’ nine-figure Series B round was a nod to how much promise a slew of venture capitalists think the cell-based meat company has. It’s worth noting that , the VC arm of the largest U.S. meat producer, has invested in the company, which despite its name is based in San Francisco. Other investors include , Venture Parnters and Holdings, as well as high-net-worth individuals like and .

Memphis Meats is also part of an alliance with other competitors, startups, in the cell-based meat space, such as the Alliance for Meat, Poultry & Seafood (AMPS) Innovation. The alliance additionally includes , , and

, head of communications at JUST, helped kickstart the alliance. He said the “informal coalition” wants to have a “unified voice for just explaining this technology … this new field, to folks who are interested in learning more about it in Washington.”

Noyes claims AMPS has met with the and , two groups which ultimately have “jurisdiction over cultured meat production, and distribution.”

“To take the step and form AMPS Innovation in advance of having a product on the market is actually a fairly new phenomenon, when you think of other groups in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “There is no [cell-based meat] product on the market yet, but we felt it was important to get ahead of it.”

While JUST lobbies in D.C. for its future cell-based meat product, it already has its original roots in a shelf-friendly product. The San Francisco startup just celebrated its one year anniversary of selling a plant-based egg substitute. The product is based on the mung bean, which when cooked scrambles just like an egg.

What Came First? The Cell Or The Plant

I talked to JUST founder to find out about his turn to cell-based meat as a growth strategy and his dream.

JUST started out with reinventing the egg because it’s the most abundant source of animal protein, Tetrick said. Thanks to deals with large grocers like , JUST has sold the equivalent of 25 million chicken eggs in its first full year on the market.

Before JUST Egg was released, however, Tetrick was brainstorming what to do next. And he landed on cell-based meat. Tertick thinks a cell-based meat will be the future of menus, which brings me to his Waffle House dream.

He imagines “the only meat that will be on the menu is one that doesn’t come from killing animals … all the meat, all the chicken, all the beef.”

“A plant-based approach is really solid for optionality, but how do you create a situation where you’re not just adding an item to a menu?” he said, adding that it starts with quality and culture.

One of the struggles with cell-based meat, Tetrick said, is the massive capital lift to get a product to market. He claims it takes over a billion dollars to bring a cell-based product to market. Tetrick thinks high cost is enough of a barrier to stop companies from trying to opt for the cell-based meat approach (and might be a reason why we see more plant-based companies in the first place). In the future, he imagines the profits from the Egg will fuel the cell-based meat alternative, from a financial perspective.

At least for now, Tetrick has been able to convince investors to bet big. The startup, which is not yet profitable, has raised over $200 million in known venture capital from investors like , and ’s.

“Plants are good for some things and cells are good for some things,” Tetrick told Crunchbase News. “And that’s what we do.”

He added: “I’m not a botanist, I was not fixed on any approach; a plant is the best approach [as is a] cell for a number of different reasons.”

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The company now has raised $430 million in known venture capital funding to date, .

led the latest round, with participation from , , , and more. The cash will be used to meet customer demand, .

Tomer Weingarten, Almog Cohen and Ehud Shamir founded the Mountain View startup in 2013 to tackle cybersecurity woes through automation. The idea, and differentiator, of SentinelOne is that the company uses artificial intelligence to fight endpoint attacks on security in real time.

Let’s pause here and unpack what endpoint means. In the cybersecurity context, endpoint security “refers to a methodology of protecting the corporate network when accessed via remote devices such as laptops or other wireless and mobile devices. Each device with a remote connecting to the network creates a potential entry point for security threats,” according to . Think of SentinelOne as a wave of protection that covers all the external ways you log into your company: whether it’s your company laptop or phone, or personal laptop or phone. Each is a separate endpoint, and from a security angle, a separate way to hack into sensitive information.

When we last caught up with co-founder and CEO Weingarten, he explained the upside of trusting automation.

“It allows [companies] to really, in some cases, automate away the tier-one analyst role and really focus on high-level investigation,” Weingarten said back in June.

In terms of growth statistics, the company did not share net or adjusted revenue, but said it has more than 3,500 customers to date.

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Chroma Labs was founded in 2018 by ex- and employees Alex Li, John Barnett and Joshua Harris to help social media gurus create aesthetic and interactive stories. For those of you who don’t know what stories are, think of them as posts that generally expire after being posted for 24 hours (of course, exceptions exist).�� , Chroma Labs helps users create templates and filters, as well as “powerful text tools.” Some phrase it as a competitor to Unfold, which I wrote about before and was acquired by Squarespace in October 2019.

Chroma Labs, in its website post, claims millions have used the company to create stories. , the business is shutting down, “effectively immediately.”

Interestingly enough, Twitter doesn’t (yet) have the feature for users to post stories, which is precisely what Chroma Labs is focused on. . It tells us that there might be a pretty innovative product update in the future. Until that is clarified, let’s look at what we have so far.

Kayvon Beykpour, a product lead at Twitter and the co-founder of , tweeted that the team will “join our product, design, and eng teams working to give people more creative ways to express themselves on Twitter.”

And finally, in it also pointed to key objectives “increasing development velocity and trust” and “increasing healthy public conversation.” With today’s investment, it seems like Twitter’s trying to tackle both in one go.

In an email to Crunchbase News, a Twitter spokesperson pointed to the company’s broader hiring goals: “We are approaching hiring in many different ways given our global hiring targets this year: acquisitions, recruiting, acquihire and team hires.

“We’re continuing to acquire talent to bolster our talent, leadership and expertise in order to better serve the public conversation.”

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Yusupov nodded to how Friday was “a very hard day” as the company ran out of cash and couldn’t afford severance for the 25 employees it consequentially laid off. The founder also claimed “there was a potential acquisition of the company which fell through abruptly.” The failed acquisition led him to shut down the company –thus not letting any winners claim the cash they were promised.

Then over the weekend, the founder spent time finding a new buyer to “do right by everyone.” Although the deal hasn’t closed yet, Yusupov said they “have found a new home for HQ, with a company that wants to keep it running. All employees, contractors and players are top priority. Severance will be paid and you will be able to cash out.” He said HQ will have changes to account for “expenses” and it will be “less buggy.”

Now let’s pause to understand a few things here. This isn’t a classic tale of a startup struggling with expenses pivoting into a new operation with a new owner. HQ Trivia, per its CEO, is publicly flip-flopping and promising that users will get their money back.

What’s most notable here, to me, is that after a failed acquisition, the founder has announced a comeback to the world promising a new buyer. The deal hasn’t closed yet.

To me, this is a note on Silicon Valley culture and founder relationships with social media reputations. It’s made the life of a startup all the more transparent, as founders can jump to the nearest platform to set the record straight, share news fast and, yes, even correct reporters. The platforms also let in a lot of flag waving and potentially empty promises. We don’t know which side HQ Trivia will end up on, yet the startup has already had its share of controversy and turbulence.

A while ago, TechCrunch to overthrow Yusupov due to mismanagement. It failed. The co-founder died. The company fired the famed, and jazzy, host. When the company died, many people on Twitter didn’t even know it still existed.

Yusupov ended with asking users to reply with advice for “Chapter 2 of HQ.”

“That’s it for now. More to come.”

Beyond the cringe capitalism of Valentine’s Day, the holiday isn’t all bad news. Tell the people who you love that you love them. Or, if you’re like me, use the holiday as an excuse to rent a table for your entire friend group at a nice restaurant and give servers a little reprise from the swoony couples around them.

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Now that I gave some unsolicited tips, let’s get into the money. This week, that starts with mindfulness. Headspace, a meditation app,��raised $93 million on a Series C to push its global expansion. If you’re confused by its momentum, don’t be: the startup was founded a decade ago.

Speaking of companies that are, at least in some ways, hot:��Snowflake raised $479 million, bringing it to a $12.4 billion valuation. We also covered funding news from SoundCloud, which received a��$75 million investment from SiriusXM, and Astranis, a satellite startup,��landing $90 million. Plus, TOP, a plant-based period product startup��raised $1.6 million in seed funding.

While this news is great for companies looking to grow, this year so far has reminded us that venture capital money isn’t a sure fire way to stay afloat.����reports that Kateeva, which raised $126 million in funding,��laid off 144 people, including executives. Also,��SoftBank-backed Brandless shut down.

Deeper into the trends,�����ܲԱ貹��������the distribution of Series A deal sizes across the United States. Outside our home base,����tracked Brazil’s startup scene, and��how one proptech company managed to break ground.

Finally (and bittersweetly, I might add) this will be my last newsletter for Crunchbase News. This update will be taken on by the fantastic team. Thank you all for following along for the past 44 issues, from a move across the country to anecdotes from the field. If you want to stay in touch,��.

Thank you all, always,
Natasha

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Founded by entrepreneurs and , a duo of cousins who are also mothers, the startup today announced it closed its seed round of $900,000, adding to an early investment of $700,000. It has raised a total of $1.6 million to date.

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While TOP describes itself as a “social impact” startup, its lead investor in today’s financing announcement is a for-profit fund spun out of : . Per the press release, the firm led the round in support of Sullivan who is an alumnus of UMass Amherst. Angel investors also participated in the round, however TOP declined to disclose details.

In its announcement, TOP said it plans to use the seed capital to expand its presence in grocery stores and retail locations nationwide. It also plans to work with and its own e-commerce platform. It was refreshing to hear TOP mention product presence as a priority, especially with what feels like a flurry of direct-to-consumer (DTC) offerings everywhere.

When I asked TOP for more information, co-founder Sullivan nodded to growth in the company’s DTC channel, so that explains the focus on distributing into retail in 2020.

Let’s get into how TOP plans to differentiate the other store staple brands for tampons and pads.

TOP estimates that almost “20 billion pads and tampons end up in landfills each year and can take centuries to biodegrade.” Sullivan and her team want to change that by offering plant-based tampons.

The company sources its organic cotton from Turkey, India and Tanzania. Meanwhile, its factory in Barcelona sources power from running water, and TOP claims that everyone “from the farmer to the factory worker is paid a fair wage.” The applicator is plant-based, it claims. TOP also said all products have a seal made of cotton (not plastic) and organic certification from ICEA, the Ethical and Environmental Certification Institute.

TOP’s products are also solid in biodegradable boxes.

The company charges $7 to $8.50 per box for 16 tampons, or 20 pads. From a price-point perspective, traditional tampon brands like Tampax sell for around $7, and, a venture-backed startup that has , sells a box of tampons for around $10.

It’s noteworthy that Lola wants to destigmatize period products, but has other lines as well around sexual health and menstrual cramps. Like TOP, Lola started with tampons as a flagship offering and has since attracted investors like and .

Unlike Lola, however, TOP points to its focus on a younger demographic as a key differentiator.

“A key part of our purpose is giving back, with a focus on middle and high school students,” Sullivan told Crunchbase News. “When we heard one in five girls in the U.S. have missed school because they didn’t have access to period products, we decided to do something about it.” She added that the company is partnering with schools and nonprofits to make access easier.

TOP declined to share specific metrics around growth or volume of products sold thus far, beyond “ high triple-digit growth in our business.”

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Case in point: Music creation platform has received a $75 million investment from audio company two years after it was notoriously just “.”��

SoundCloud is a platform for individual audio creators to upload content, attracting the attention of average listeners like you and me, lesser-known artists and celebrities such as The Weeknd, Kehlani, and Lil Yachty (even before they got famous).��

The company is a home for independent, unsigned artists, and like many social media platforms it creates the opportunity for one-time nobodies the possibility of going viral and making it big.

SoundCloud was founded in 2007 and claims it has over 200 million tracks from 25 million creators heard in 190 countries. The startup has over $500 million in funding to date, ��

Sirius XM’s investment in the company will be used to work on “product development and enhance the services that fuel its global community of creators and listeners,” .��

SoundCloud’s CEO Kerri Trainor also claims that, “three consecutive years of strong financial performance directly reflect the success of our creator-led growth strategy.”��

SoundCloud’s growth is notable. According to the company, it has a $200 million revenue run-rate based on the financials of fourth-quarter 2019. For those that don’t know, run-rate is a metric that helps forecast the year-end revenue by multiplying the performance of one quarter. That said, it is often employed by younger companies, and SoundCloud is over 13 years old at this point.

To unpack how this company went from almost closing to its recent news, a look as today’s investor is telling. According to the company, an ad and sales partnership with Sirius XM subsidiary �� made the platforms the “largest digital audio advertising marketplace.”

“The agreement enables advertisers and brands to purchase SoundCloud’s U.S. ad inventory directly through Pandora, leveraging the company’s direct sales capabilities, targeting data, and audio programmatic platform,” per the release. The combined audience is more than 100 million unique active listeners, a spokesperson for the company told Crunchbase News this morning. For context–streaming platform has 271 million monthly active unique users according to its latest earnings report.

Beyond partnerships, there’s definitely other factors at play that propelled the company past its layoffs and shutdowns–including support and public rallying from Chance The Rapper, .

But it was likely from and in 2017 that helped SoundCloud stay afloat. It also led Alexander Ljung, the founder and chairman of the company, to step down as CEO. This kicked off a companywide restructuring.��

Per Ljung, the 2017 investment promised a musical future.

“This financing means SoundCloud remains strong & independent. As I said, SoundCloud is here to stay,” at the time.

Today’s minority investment will allow two board seats for Sirius XM.��

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So when Galston picked himself back up and finally closed the $17 million fund, he promised that a core tenet of the venture capital firm would be to offer a series of subsidies for every entrepreneur in the portfolio to take care of their mental health.

The subsidies can be applied to a range of services, “as long as it’s something focused on forced introspection and personal growth [or an] outlet where entrepreneurs can really be transparent about the struggles they’re going through,” Galston told Crunchbase News.

Galston’s Starting Line is part of a small, but growing, cohort of venture capital firms that explicitly offer mental health services for their portfolios. As programs roll out across the country, some investors are finding different ways to support the holistic health of founders, from subsidies to in-house therapists.

In 2018, , a partner at , launched the firm’s 1 percent program. The premise was simple: Felicis Ventures will commit 1 percent on top of every first check it writes in non-dilutive capital for “founder development services.”

“Money talks, I think, and it’s one thing to say yes we support you, etc. It’s another thing to say, we are committing money out of our own budget and giving you the choice of how to invest in yourself as a founder,” she said in an interview with Crunchbase News.

Since starting the program, Maggio’s had a “growing but nascent resource database’ saying it’s all about ‘breaking down the barriers,” she said.

And while the program was inspired by two years of surveying founders, , Maggio said she continues to learn new lessons, as the firm is on its sixth fund. Maggio declined to share statistics around usage of the capital committed to mental health. She did say, “we can very confidently say that it is driving impact.”

One founder spun up a circle of colleagues for a mini-founder support group with a trained facilitator. Another used the funds for a therapist. Others have hired life coaches.

Life coach is the exact kind of job that Sarah Gaines, an entrepreneur and Yogi, is betting could be her next full-time gig.

In December 2019, ended The Y Society, , and pivoted to being a life coach for entrepreneurs as a side gig. She charges a flat rate of $5,000 for her programs, a high value, she said, so her “clients know they’re making an investment in themselves.”

“I want to help mission-based entrepreneurs find more joy, more time and more clarity so they can show up for themselves,” Gaines told Crunchbase News.

Gaines is not professionally trained, and said that her clients, often early-stage founders, have used her services along with traditional therapy services. Think of her as a personal trainer, but for founders.

As for whether or not Gaines thinks people like her or other mindfulness professionals will ever be part of a suite of services across more VC firms?

“For VCs it’s such a fast paced, ‘you need to get shit done’ environment and that is the opposite of meditation and mindfulness,” Gaines said. “It’s going to be a VC-by-VC basis, and needs someone in the company who is really passionate about it becoming a benefit.”

In some ways, San Francisco-based has found a way to fit mindfulness into this get-it-done mentality. This support includes an in-house therapist, a promise of confidentiality and a healthy dose of trust.

, a licensed and trained therapist, moved to the Bay Area eight years ago and started a private practice. He soon learned that his clientele, which included founders and “folks who worked with VC firms” needed services valuable for high-stress, high-pressure positions. Then, , the founder and general partner of Builders VC, which we’ve written about before, approached LaLonde asking if he wanted to be a “more consistent resource” for the firm.

LaLonde agreed to be an in-house resource, with one non-negotiable in place: anonymity for founders who talked to him–especially from Kim. That’s just in case the founders feared they were being checked up on by the investor that cut a check into their company.

“It meant that founders could meet with me on a weekly basis for a year, and Jim would not know anything about it,” LaLonde said. The anonymity made a difference.

“I have a license built on confidentiality and anonymity, and that allows them to have a little more trust for me on the front end,” he said.

LaLonde noted how there’s a shortage of trained professionals helping founders.

“As far as I know, if there are other folks like me you can count them on one hand,” he said. Demand for his services reflects that. And since consistency in therapy is an important tenet, his use rate is high.

Finally, he pointed to a lesson he’s learned since working with Builders VC: Despite the general trend of awareness around mental health and mindfulness, younger entrepreneurs are more likely to use his services than older ones.

And that brings us back to where we started, with Galston. Sometimes, Starting Line’s Galston has learned, just providing and paying for the services isn’t enough.

Since kickstarting the subsidy program with Starting Line, Galston said he’s struggled to get portfolio companies to take advantage of the opportunity.

“In spite of offering people free therapy, it’s really really really hard to get anybody to actually close the loop on it and attend, and attend with any sort of regularity … and I wish 100 percent of our entrepreneurs were utilizing our subsidies,” he said.

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Her software startup, , is currently part of the winter batch at and has just raised $600,000 in venture capital from a crop of investors.

Notable investors in TrueNorth include Y Combinator, CEO Jack Altman, CEO Parker Conrad and CSO Peter Fishman. Liquid2, Joe Montana’s fund, and others also invested.

While we usually don’t cover rounds of this size, an uptick in funding for the logistics and freight space made us more keen to look at what it takes for a new startup to enter the market, especially when billion-dollar companies like take much of the spotlight.

TrueNorth

Stedge was adopted as a child by a family of truckers, and that upbringing led her to have personal insight into the weaknesses of the industry.

Her grandparents were truckers in the 1980s–and “40 years later, little has changed,” from a technology perspective she told Crunchbase News. She pointed to her cousin, Tom, who is a trucker.

“He still operates primarily on phone calls and mail,” she said. “Most financial tools in the industry are clunky at best, predatory at worst.”

TrueNorth, founded by Stedge and , offers software that puts “independent truckers under one roof.” While the company doesn’t lease trucks, it helps truckers have a platform to manage insurance, fuel and maintenance. Think of it as an operating system, but for trucks. It also helps truckers with route optimization, dispatch and load coordination, and automated tracking.

The entrepreneur considers average trucking agencies like as her competitors.

Currently, truckers have to choose between working in a large fleet like JB Hunt with little independence, or give up revenue by being a solo operation. TrueNorth claims it offers large-fleet resources, like those listed above, with a lower take rate than traditional companies because its back-office is powered by software.

“We cut down the busywork to 10 percent of what it traditionally is, so that our employees can focus on the relationship side of trucking,” she wrote in a blog post.

The TrueNorth founders previously spent time at where they worked on autonomous trucking technology. So this isn’t their first road trip.

“Autonomy is really far away, at least a decade or two,” she said. “And it’s not going to displace truckers any time soon.”

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According to the company, the annual number of operating clinical trial sites–often research stations or hospitals–per million people is 250 times higher in the United States versus low-income countries. Plus, wealthier patients are almost twice as likely to be referred versus non-wealthy patients.

To address the gap, Inato says it’s unlocking previously unengaged research sites and connecting them to patients available for clinical trials. And by partnering with pharmaceutical companies, Inato says it can help treatment get into the hands of more patients and eventually to the general public.

Inato is bringing concentration of clinical trial access away from the richest and the biggest, and claiming it is keeping the merit of clinical trials at the forefront. In the simplest terms, Inato is freeing up research sites and connecting patients available for clinical trials. The company estimates “there are thousands of sites around the world that are fully capable of recruiting patients but are currently not taking part in the research process,” according to , co-founder and CEO.

Double-clicking into a common strategy employed by startups like , and , Inato is unlocking previously existing land for commercial use. And Obvious Ventures admits it, too: “There is a long history of manual, inefficient marketplaces being streamlined by technology – clinical trials is next, and may be the most important category of them all,” , managing director at the firm, said in a release.

The company claims more than 3,500 doctors across 75 countries have used it to offer treatment to patients. As for competitors, Davarpanah said the biggest one is “the status quo.”

“Ultimately, we all benefit sooner from innovative therapies,” Davarpanah told Crunchbase News. “The status quo is CROs and pharma companies going back to the same sites despite poor performance.”

With the new funding, he said, Inato will expand its network of clinicians, and currently exists in 80 countries so far. Also, while the company is based in France, its recently opened New York office will focus on its U.S. presence.

In order to make money, Inato sells services to pharmaceutical manufacturers who not-so-surprisingly want to get their products tested.

Finally, Inato added it is “very close to being profitable, which is quite rare for a company at our stage.”

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