Welcome to Afore Mentioned
Afore Mentioned is a monthly newsletter about the goings on at Afore Capital, a Pre-Seed stage venture fund based in San Francisco
Afore Mentioned is a monthly newsletter about the goings on at Afore Capital, a Pre-Seed stage venture fund based in San Francisco. Afore invests in companies at the very early stage, typically “too early” for most funds. We invest in about 15 companies a year — leading rounds for startups that raise under $1M to get moving.
Since late 2016, we have invested in 20 companies. Most people don’t hear about these companies until they raise a Series A, so we wanted to shine a light on some of them via this newsletter. Let us know what you think and forward to friends and colleagues who might be interested too.
Thanks for reading,
Gaurav Jain and Anamitra Banerji
Company Spotlight: Overtime
Overtime is building the sports network of the future. Their product has caught fire with high school sports enthusiasts and young people, broadly known as Generation Z, who demand greater control over their content. These fans use Overtime to create and remix sports media in unique and engaging ways. The content is then distributed everywhere digital natives live — Instagram, YouTube, and even TV.
Overtime combines a breakthrough product with a unique distribution strategy to challenge the status quo of traditional media platforms. The company is just over one year old… about the same age as Afore Capital :)
Jeff Jordan from Andreessen Horowitz recently led Overtime’s $9.5M Series A.
Portfolio in Focus
We have a growing roster of portfolio companies. In each newsletter, we’ll spend some time sharing more about what these teams are cooking up.
Boxbot is a sidewalk-based robot focused on parcel delivery, cofounded by engineers from Uber and Tesla. With the growth of ecommerce, steep costs for last mile of deliveries, and increased package theft, Boxbot is a perfect use case for autonomous robots.
We believe that sidewalk robots will be one of the first mainstream applications of autonomy. In fact, several cities have already approved this technology, including Walnut Creek. Read more here.
Bulletin is WeWork for retail space. This startup builds premium retail spaces and leases space to brands for a monthly membership fee. Bulletin’s co-retailing model is disrupting traditional retail by selling space for as low as $300/month and allowing online brands to access physical retail stores flexibly and affordably for the first time. Brands apply on Bulletin’s platform and get their products in stores in less than 5 days.
Even as pundits predict the total demise of retail, we believe offline retail is here to stay. In today’s world, traditional retailers are forced to buy inventory upfront and are never compensated for providing live experience and exposure to brands and products in their stores. Bulletin’s model fixes this. Instead of buying inventory upfront, brands are charged a monthly membership fee and take all inventory on consignment. By skipping ownership of inventory, Bulletin can be extremely reactive to their customers needs and doesn’t get stuck with products that don’t perform.
Learn more about Bulletin with their profile in The New York Times.
BetterUp offers personalized coaching to employees at companies like LinkedIn, Salesforce, Deloitte, Capital One, and even Johnson & Johnson. Employees meet virtually with expert coaches to work on skills related to collaboration, stress management, and goal-setting. Traditionally “counseling” and executive coaching have been siloed with separate providers. BetterUp’s approach is to combine these services into one outstanding coach and have the employer pay for it.
Recently the company held its inaugural Shift conference — a two-day event that brought together leaders from Deloitte, Fidelity, McKinsey, Netflix, VISA, and many more to discuss the importance of developing imagination, meaning and purpose in the modern workplace. With today’s office in the midst of transition, BetterUp is demonstrating the path forward as a category leader with the Shift conference.
In Other News…
Word of Overtime’s Series A has spread far and wide as they reimagine the future of sports entertainment.
Read more in Variety and TechCrunch.
Petal, the simple no-fee credit card, recently announced their $13M Series A led by Valar Ventures.
Pre-Seed investing has risen in prominence in recent months, yet conversations around the topic often come with preconceived notions about these companies and investors. Afore Capital breaks down the top 5 misconceptions here.
BenchSci made waves with their recent survey touting how AI will transform Pharma and BioTech. Learn more in these two Forbes articles, AI in Drug Discoveryand Lab of the Future.
Join the conversation and follow the Afore Capital journey. On Twitter @AforeVC, and subscribe to our newsletter here.
Afore Capital’s portfolio companies are hiring. Apply at AngelList now.
