We’ve already looked at how Coatue has slowed and has had a rough year. One large firm not yet examined, however, has been . Because it has been so quiet recently, it is perhaps easy to overlook.

Dragoneer, which counts companies such as , and among its previous investments, significantly ramped up its investing pace in 2021. That year, the San Francisco-based firm took part in 80 different announced fundraisings, with those rounds totaling a whopping $28 billion, according to Crunchbase .��

Important to note, however: The amount any investor—including Dragoneer—invests as a specific stake in a round is not usually divulged.

Some of the large rounds Dragoneer took part in last year included:

• Co-leading ’s $520 million Series H in January.
• Taking part in ’ $1 billion Series G in February and $1.67 billion Series H in August.
• Co-leading ’s $596.2 million Series G in November.
• Taking part in ’s $1.3 billion Series D, also in November.

This year has presented a very different story. The firm has dramatically pulled back as the venture market has continued to slow every month. Through nearly three quarters of this year, Dragoneer has made only 21 deals, with those rounds totaling just more than $4.1 billion, according to Crunchbase data.��

The firm has not taken part in an announced deal thus far in the third quarter.

That does not mean the firm has pulled out of deals, or even big deals. In January it led ’s $235 million Series F, as well as ’s $300 million Series F in May. It also participated in ’s $1 billion raise in January.

Unicorn hunting

However, Dragoneer is on pace to add the fewest number of unicorns to its portfolio since 2020, according to Crunchbase data. Last year, the firm was one of the top investors in bringing aboard $1 billion-plus companies when it added 35 to its portfolio. This year, that number stands at only eight, the same number it added in 2019.

The slowing pace—and price—of deals is not surprising considering the softening venture market witnessed through the course of this year, with many saying it really started in late 2021. Dragoneer’s numbers would seem to bear that out, as the total value of deals in Q1—which likely closed in Q4 of last year—was substantially down from any quarter in 2021.

Many firms—especially large growth equity firms that must find a balance between their private and public market investments—have significantly pulled back in the venture market this year as inflation, interest rates and geopolitical issues have roiled the economy.

Large, late-stage growth rounds have been most dramatically affected in the market—a spot where Dragoneer thrives—as investors seem unwilling to pay for high valuations.

Whether that will change and valuations will come down, or investors will re-open their wallets remains a question we may not have answers to until next year.

Dragoneer did not respond to requests for comment.

Methodology

The total dollar amount of rounds the firm participated in reflects the total investment in those rounds, not the particular firm’s stake in those rounds—which is normally not released. All numbers relating to deals and deal size are from Crunchbase data.

Further reading:

• Bessemer Venture Partners Slows From 2021 Pace
• SoftBank’s Vision Fund Deals Show Slowing Pace, Smaller Rounds
• Coatue’s Funding Numbers Take Significant Dip in First Half Of Year
• Accel’s Deal Size Shrinks As Venture Market Pullback Continues

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Existing backers , and , also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s since its early-2017 inception to $130 million. This round comes just nine months (to the day) since SpotOn raised $40 million in co-led by Dragoneer and Franklin Templeton.

San Francisco-based SpotOn is taking on the likes of Square in the payments space. But says it “goes way beyond” traditional payment processing and point-of-sale (POS) software. Its platform also gives SMBs the ability to run their businesses “from building a brand to taking payments and everything in-between.” It incorporates tools that include things such as custom website development, scheduling software, marketing, appointment scheduling, review management, analytics and digital loyalty.

To put it simply, according to SpotOn President , SpotOn aims to give SMBs the ability to accept payments “coupled with meaningful, integrated software to meet their specific needs and operate more efficiently.”

“Unlike other offerings, we build our own product offerings and have straight-forward pricing coupled with face-to-face service,” Horsley added.

Growth

The company says its new funding follows a year in which it saw revenue increase “by over 150 percent.” Also, SpotOn doubled its employee count to 850 over the past year. So far in 2020, it’s added over 5,000 clients with a focus on the food and beverage industry. Horsley said the company expects to add 30,000 clients this year. Currently, SpotOn has “tens of thousands of clients,” and is more than doubling year over year, he added.

For 01 Advisors managing partner and co-founder (and former Twitter CEO) , SpotOn is a rare company that can build both “great” products and “great” sales teams.

The company plans to use its new capital to invest in product development with an emphasis on targeting specific verticals. It’s especially focused on its restaurant solution, having recently tripled the development team working on improving upon that product.

SpotOn is currently “aggressively hiring.” Besides its San Francisco headquarters, the company has “expanding” product, technology and operations teams in Chicago, Detroit and Denver, as well as newly opened offices in Mexico City, Mexico, and Krakow, Poland.

It’s been a busy week for 01 Advisors. The firm also put money into New York City-based , which provides enterprise-grade IT services to SMBs and has just raised a $14.5 million Series B round.

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New investors and 1 co-led the round, which comes along with a new partnership with Salesforce.

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman said in an interview with Crunchbase News that the company wasn’t looking to raise money, as it is “well-capitalized” and hasn’t really dipped into the last round it raised. But with the new partnership with Salesforce, it needed to find a way to bring its new partner to the cap table.

“We would not have raised a round if it hadn’t been for the partnership,” Slootman said.

He wouldn’t give details about what the partnership entails (they’ll share more information during its conference in June), but said the vast majority of Snowflake customers are also Salesforce customers, and the startup has been getting requests to work with Salesforce for years.

“At a high level, the partnership is about allowing Salesforce data to very easily, seamlessly, frictionlessly be shared on the Snowflake platform,” he said.

There won’t be any real operational changes with the new funding, Slootman said, but some of the equity will be converted to cash. The company finished its 2019 fiscal year with 174 percent year-over-year revenue growth.

For sure, $479 million is a huge sum to raise, and an impressive valuation–about triple what it was last valued (about $3.9 billion). It also makes Snowflake even more special and rare than a regular old unicorn, as it’s now reached decacorn status.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Snowflake has been steadily increasing its funding amounts until this point. So, in the spirit of nostalgia, let’s take a look back at its funding history.

The Money

Snowflake raised just under $1 million ($900,000 to be exact) in a 2012 seed round, before securing its $5 million Series A led by Sutter Hill Ventures in August 2012. Its Series B came a little over two years later in October 2014, with $26 million in a round led by Redpoint. You can see its funding history below in a neat chart made by our own Jason D. Rowley.

The company netted $79 million in a Series C round led by Altimeter Capital in June 2015, before it started raising supergiant rounds (we define those as rounds of $100 million or larger).

Snowflake raised a $105 million led by in September 2017, with a post-money valuation of about $500 million, according to Crunchbase. It reached unicorn status around the time of its $263 million in January 2018. According to Crunchbase, the company had a pre-money valuation of $1.2 billion at the time.

The rounds have only continued to get bigger with Snowflake’s last round being a $450 million led by in October 2018.

So what’s next for Snowflake? Slootman said an IPO would be next, but the company is in no hurry. The earliest Snowflake could go public would be July, but that doesn’t mean they will then.

“We’re very focused on the content itself, which means the data, and driving high-value data assets onto the platform, which is what we view Salesforce to be,” Slootman said. “That data is very valuable, not all data is created equal.”

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