Morning Report:Â A quick peek at two funding rounds from this week that caught our eye.
This morning, we are taking a quick look at two Series Bs that were announced this week. The two companies in question, Algolia and Scout RFP, are fun to discuss in unison. Each shows how flexible a Series B round of capital can be.
It’s common knowledge that what counts as Seed, or a Series A, or really any Series round has become skewed in the current tech cycle. The changes are simple to summarize: Series rounds are now larger than before, and what was previously a growth round can be squeezed into, say, a Series B.
On that point, we’ll start with , a startup that provides search capabilities to other firms. The company raised a staggering $53 million Series B. The round comes after the firm’s similarly outsized $18.3 million Series A that it locked down in May of 2015. Both rounds were led by Accel.
The timing of the capital is obvious. Algolia raised an oversized — by historical norms — Series A, so it raised its B a bit after the normal 18-month timing. And the company likely self-funded along the way. According to its PR (sigh), Algolia expanded “its annual recurring revenue (ARR) more than 100 [percent] each year[.]”
The company did not provide a timeframe for the claim or notes regarding what it counts as revenue inside of that recurring bucket. Still, complaints aside, greater than 100 percent yearly through a full Series A cycle (presumably, given the language) is more than alright.
Algolia, which has also raised from 500 Startups, Point Nine Capital, Anshu Sharma, and Index, has taken on just over $74 million to date. Hold those figures in your mind.
Turning to our second Series B, raised a more traditional $15.5 million Series B round of capital, led by Menlo Ventures. Matt Murphy will join the company’s board.
In contrast to Algolia, Scout RFP has raised an aggregate of $27.25 million according to its own notes. Crunchbase corroborates the figure. Looking backwards once again, Scout RFP, a firm focused on “cloud-based strategic eScourcing solutions,” according to its own verbiage, raised a $11.75 million over two prior rounds, each led by New Enterprise Associates.
All this sums to the following question: Are traditional venture round categorizations at all relevant anymore? The Scout RFP round is pretty reasonable. Is the more than $50 million Series B? Between the start of 2008 and 2010, just 35 Series B rounds were worth more than $50 million. Today, back the same 1095 day period, there were 234.
What a business cycle.
From the :
Addepar raises $140M to track wealthÂ
- , a software platform for wealth management, just got wealthier. The Silicon Valley-based company closed a $140 million Series D funding round led by Valor Equity Partners, 8VC, and hedge fund investor Harald McPike. The financing follows a period of sharp growth for Addepar, with the value of assets on its platform more than doubling in the past year-and-half to over $650 billion.
Essential dials up $300M
- , a startup run by Android creator Andy Rubin, has secured $300 million to bolster its position in the ultra-competitive consumer electronics space. The financing, which reportedly values the company at over $900 million, comes on the heels of Essential’s debut of a high-end smartphone and connected home device.
Recruiting startups lure more VC cash
- Investment into recruitment startups has risen sharply in the past few years, , led by companies using technology to simplify the task of finding and filling jobs. Many are turning to AI to automate and refine the recruiting process.
WeWork acquires Fieldlens
- has acquired Fieldlens, a provider of communication tools for construction teams, for an undisclosed sum. New York-based Fieldlens previously raised about $13 million in venture funding.
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