When it comes to being home for the holidays, it seems as though our favorite recipes encourage – scratch that – demand a spoonful of family tiffs, headbutts, and arguments, alongside a healthy portion of laughter and love.

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That’s why when I read Mary Ann’s story about the ups and downs of family-founded startups, it hit home (although I promise the Mascarenhas family is not secretly in stealth).

Check out her piece on how families come together to start innovative startups, from carpooling hacks to a direct-to-consumer plant shop.

Wholesomeness in mind, we wanted to kick off 2020 with a look at some lessons learned from the past. Sophia Kunthara walked us through the largest funding rounds from each year of the decade, noting how big rounds really have gotten over time. At one point, a nine-figure round was the biggest of the year. Now, as you can see from our reporting, it’s a weekly occurrence at the least.

Further, we also looked at both the Unicorns of 2019 and, by contrast, the startup sectors that had dips in funding this year. Plus, broil over this question posed by Joanna Glasner: what happened to all the consumer device startups?

As for funding news, it’s been a little slow but that’s soon to change, I’m sure. This past week, Brazil’s Loft, a digital real estate platform, raised $175 million, and Trifo, which makes a robot that both vacuums and protects through surveillance, raised $15 million. For the story behind the investment deals, check out our Seed Series (our latest edition includes an interview with Sapphire Partners). Plus, One Medical filed its S-1 on late Friday.

And that’s all I have for now. The past 365 days taught me that among all the big things that happened to me this past year, like a move across the country, a new job, and a new beat, it’s the small subtleties that weigh the heaviest.

Cheers to an even better 2020 right alongside all of you.

Best,
Natasha

P.S. Follow me () on Twitter.

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Boston is the city where I grew up journalistically. It’s where I learned the difference between a Seed investment and a Series A round (remember this for later), and where I landed my first real byline. For these reasons and , my return to Beantown was extra special () this week, and reminded me of two important things:

• Boston doesn’t want to be the next Silicon Valley. It just wants to be Boston, but known a little more within the venture and startup community as a hub for all things entrepreneurship
• ����’s��more than a home for biotech companies.

Those thoughts fell into stories, like a piece on one of the city’s most valuable startups starting a lending program, or a data pull on how Boston has historically progressed in funding female founders.

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Speaking of important progress for underrepresented founders, Austin created a new network to help women in tech connect and lift each other up. And a final note on diversity on inclusion, our very own will be moderating panels in Finland next week, .

Jumping to our bread and butter, we covered everything from a startup working to make homebuyers’ lives easier to reports that a SoftBank-funded food delivery company may be eyeing a supergiant round at a $12.6 billion valuation.

Further outside the Bay Area, Austin’s LawnStarter raised $10.5 million in green the mowing startup doesn’t want to get rid of. And New York’s Hive, a work productivity startup, raised $10.5 million to not be a Slack clone.

We also stumbled upon some news from Toronto-based 1Password earlier this week. The password manager startup raised $200 million in a Series A from Accel, in its first funding in 14 years. Remember above when I nodded to Boston as the city where I learned the difference between a seed and Series A rounds? Toronto, as I noted above, is giving me a run for my — understanding of — money.

That’s all I got for you all this week. Now, I’m on to spending some time in Philly with  and even greater people.

Cheers,
Natasha

I swore I would never start a newsletter with “this week at yoga.”

But, here we are. This week at yoga, the instructor told our class to “stop stealing happiness from yourselves.” While it’s really common to be cynical about tech or, a holiday where you dress up in silly costumes, it’s okay to let go of negativity in place for optimism. I promise.

On that note, let’s start with a look at startups doing important work in a sector of evergreen importance: the environment. I chatted with a bunch of startups using data to combat the growing concern of wildfires in California, and around the world.

While those startups are on the smaller side, we also talked unicorns this week. We covered three companies pass $1 billion dollars in valuation: Portland, Oregon-based travel startup Vacasa, Faire, a San Francisco-based online marketplace for retailers,�����Ի���Scopely, a mobile game publisher in Los Angeles.

After you snap up that big news, let me remind you that unicorns these days haven’t always soared once they enter the public market. For example, Beyond Meat and GrubHub, two public companies, saw their stocks tank this week. Read this ���辱�𳦱���to learn why.

Now some some fast funding hits. We wrote about Twiga Foods after it raised the largest round of the year in Nairobi, Kenya, and took a broader look at the continent. Also read our pieces on a startup trying to stop online advertisement hijackers raising $40 million, and Leafly, a cannabis website, raising debt funding.

Let’s end with a question we’ve been thinking about for months, along with everyone on Twitter: why is every startup becoming a bank?�������Ի������ٴǴǰ���a swing at the growing, lucrative transition of companies, even ones that don’t do banking, rolling out into financial services.

And that’s it for this week. We’ll be back on Monday with fresh takes, bring your fresh eyes!

Until next week,

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P.S. I put out a personal newsletter every Monday,  if you’re interested!

As we enter Diwali, an Indian festival of lights, I’m missing the taste of my mom’s cooking (and honestly, even the itchy feel of traditional Indian attire). So when I learned about , or , I was ecstatic. It’s a departure from what I usually see covering tech, and a reminder that fresh perspectives exist everywhere.

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Anyways, as I defrost some Trader Joe’s butter paneer and hope for the best, let’s get into the news from the past week.

�󾱰�����,��the good news: Zonehaven raised fresh capital to use data for wildfire management, and Winnie got $9 million for childcare relief. We also saw the Swiss’s Planted aim at fake meat and Austin’s Literati create a subscription book club for kids. Finally, we covered funding for mental healthcare and a startup looking to free everyone from mortgage woes.

Now, the bad news: Layoffs continued for WeWork�����Ի���began for PAX Labs, reminding us that big companies may have flashy checks but remain vulnerable to failure like other startups. Also, WeWork’s controversial-but-once-darling ex-CEO Adam Neumann left his company in shambles, but still walked away with over a billion.

Wrapping up with some numbers, data shows that Silicon Valley’s funding share is shrinking as a percentage of a global whole. While that may feel a bit surprising, I’ll remind you that a Chicago-based company just filed its S-1, and there’s a soon to be Utah-based unicorn.

Until next week,

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P.S. I put out a personal newsletter every Monday,  if you’re interested!

, in vacation mode, , so I’ll keep this one short, sassy, and sweet.

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This week ���󾱲����������ٱ����amazing immigrant founders, covered treadmills, and pulse checked upcoming IPOs, so let’s get right into it.

Starting with the big one, Peloton, an exercise equipment company which sells “happiness,” filed its S-1. Here’s a deep dive on the big numbers, and then skim this for talking points so you sound smart at your next networking event.

After that, keep reading along with our piece on how early-stage international transportation startups aren’t intimidated by Uber. And in an odd turn of events, a 7-year-old startup bought Lord & Taylor, a 193-year-old department store chain.

Moving to some nine-figure funding rounds, Enjoy raised $150 million�����Ի���ThoughtSpot got to unicorn status with its $248 million Series E. Smaller rounds include The Long Term Stock Exchange raising $50 million�����Ի���Ethos raising $60 million, completing its third raise in 14 months. More, as always, in Last Week In Venture.

We switched sides of the table with a few new international funds this week: to invest in homegrown startups, Latin America’s Kaszek Ventures closed two funds totaling $600 million, and Israel’s F2 Capital raised $75 million for its second fund.

Finally, jokes aside, for those of you that do have Monday off: I dare you to not be online all day. As I unpack in my second edition of the Loneliness In Tech series, using social media, at a certain point, makes us more lonely, not more connected.

We all stare at screens enough already, so take advantage of a couple face-to-face moments with friends and family instead.

Until next week,

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P.S. Follow our newest reporter, Sophia Kunthara (@SophiaKunthara)�����Ի���Crunchbase News on Twitter�����Ի���Facebook for daily updates.

It’s hard to say no, but we should all do it more. No one will stay mad at you for wanting a life outside of work.

That was a lesson Erin Bury, the CEO of Willful, told me this week while we chatted for Proust Goes Tech. The idea struck a chord with me, and I’m guessing might with many of you, too. Bury’s found success in creating a list of different ways to say no that she can use to get out of certain events. I find comfort in deleting the Twitter application. Often.

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With that bit of keep-yourself-sane advice out of the way, let’s get into some of the news that the team published this week, from tech’s trust gap to a plant-powered new venture capital fund.

Starting with some trends in startupland, Alex wrote about why companies are pursuing IPOs sooner rather than later just days after Cloudflare shared its plans to go public in September. I tackled how VCs offer more services than ever but miss an important focus, and Jason told us how despite global shifts, within the United States, venture capital dollars are mainly going to the same cities that they have forever.

Now let’s learn about the startups within these big ideas. DoorDash scooped up Square-owned Caviar for $410 million, showing its appetite for other food delivery services. WeWork snapped up yet another software company, making it worth our time to examine its acquisition strategy. Finally, Microsoft bought BlueTalon, its fourth known startup purchase of 2019.

Moving to startups that want to grow through funding, not acquisitions, Monday.com raised $150 million as its revenue more than doubled last year. Wish, an ecommerce startup, raised $300 million itself, and Clearbanc, a firm focused on investing in ecommerce startups while taking no equity, raised a $50 million Series B and a $250 million fund. Also, DataGrail raised some cash ahead of, and inspired by, the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Finally, to leave you with a quirky funding round (more in Last Week in Venture), I wrote about MyScoot which offers users to pay to attend parties and social gatherings in cities around India. Would you pay for friends?

For what it’s worth, no judgement here.

Until next time,