糖心视频

Welcome to Last Week In Venture, a weekly roundup of funding rounds raised by interesting companies that you may have missed.

Follow Crunchbase News on

There have been plenty of distractions, including emerging drama between Google and the U.S. president (while alternative search engines raised money), , a huge for Uber, an ambitious public valuation target for a Chinese electric car company, and鈥攐n a more somber note鈥攎emorial services for and .

During all that, investors continued to funnel staggering amounts of capital into startups. It’s easy to overlook what companies outside the unicorn spotlight are contributing to startup ecosystems around the world. But that doesn’t mean their stories aren’t worth sharing.

Let’s take a look!

Seed Spotlight: (Summer) Travel

In summer鈥檚 waning days, it鈥檚 time to fit in that last trip. Whether you鈥檙e into the beach, the mountains, or exploring new cities, a crop of recently seed-funded travel startups would no doubt love to help you set your travel plans.

• After going through the , raised led by . , , and (‘s impact investing fund) also invested. A rather stealthy outfit based in London, the company is “building a platform from scratch that will completely redefine the nature of travel experiences booked on web or mobile,” founder Steve Dormin .
• (which the company stylizes with a lowercase “k”) raised 43.7 million in its . Investors in its include , , and , among . According to the company’s Crunchbase profile, “kimkim connects travelers with a team of local experts in order to help customers book their trip” with the help of its chat and collaboration interface.
• , a channel management tool for vacation rental owners, led by . Syncbnb is one of the many .
• And for all you over-packers, there’s . Paravel designs and manufactures luggage and packing cubes that collapse flat for storage, or for packing an extra suitcase in your suitcase. The company picked up $3.2 million in seed funding on Thursday from and , among .

Other Rounds From Interesting Companies

In this weekly roundup, we also like to share a selection of funding rounds that may have flown under the radar.

Let鈥檚 see what鈥檚 on deck.

• raised round led by . Loot Crate is a direct-to-consumer subscription box company catering to fans of certain books, movies, video games, and other media properties. It’s not the only company in the pop culture fandom business to raise recently. Appropriately enough, raised $106 million for its platform, Fandom, back in June.
• makes a smart helicopter that might just help realize the flying car future only a few of us really want. According to a statement, “SkyRyse has built a first-of-its-kind advanced pilot assistance system (APAS) that combines Artificial Intelligence, a flight perception suite, and decision-making algorithms.” The company came out of stealth this weekto announce it’s led by Venrock, which had participation from Eclipse, , , , , and .
• , an Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity firm, is working on an interesting problem: defense against disinformation targeting highly-visible brands. According to its website, the company “provides brands with access to the social media threat detection technology and resources they need to identify disinformation attacks online, and proactively provide brand manipulation protection.” This isn’t fake news: this week, New Knowledge raised led by .

For those who made it to the end, a lagniappe: check out a gif of . It鈥檚 Labor Day Weekend, everyone. No need to be crabby! ?

Last Week In Venture graphic created by . Cover and thumbnail by on Unsplash.