Top Seed Companies: Bitquery, EKOS.AI, OX, Heylogin, Checkmate
Our Investor Nicolas von Blottnitz shares the top-seeded companies to keep an eye on this week.
We see about 5,000 startups each week, and I want to give you a glimpse into how we at Headline think about trending tech companies and tracking new investment opportunities. In this post, I’m highlighting top tech companies that have announced or raised a seed round within the past week.
Bitquery
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
GraphQL APIs to stream the live data for more than 30 blockchains
Lead Investors:
dao5, Binance Labs
Total Raised:
$8.5M
Comparables:
The Graph, Etherscan
My Thoughts:
This is important infrastructure for the Web3 ecosystem at large. While barriers of entry might seem low, as anyone can simply collect this blockchain data, I believe that there will be a few providers in the market that become so large that any new blockchain will integrate with them/Bitquery. Looking at the EVA traffic, Bitquery is on its way to becoming one of those providers.
EKOS.AI
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
AI-enabled networking and conversations platform for virtual events
Lead Investors:
Undisclosed
Total Raised:
$1.6M
Comparables:
Brella
My Thoughts:
Virtual events are here to stay, but networking within these digital experienced is why going to live events is still the more valuable option for attendees. Ekos might just be able to solve this, which would significantly enhance the value of the already large virtual events market.
OX
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Devops platform to implement security visibility and traceability into the software development pipeline
Lead Investors:
Team8, Evolution Equity Partners, M12 — Microsoft’s Venture Fund
Total Raised:
$34M
Comparables:
SonarQube
My Thoughts:
I am going to be honest by saying that the exact magic of this product goes a little over my head. The thing that gets me excited here is the veteran founding team, impressive list of cyber security investors, and scale of the round.
Heylogin
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Passwordless password management solution that works exclusively through smartphone-enabled 2FA
Lead Investors:
Mozilla, IBResearch
Total Raised:
$2M
Comparables:
Magiclink
My Thoughts:
Don’t we all want to live in a password-free world?! HeyLogin looks to bring us a little closer to this dream.
Checkmate
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Chrome plug-in that does not only fish out all e-commerce discount codes to be found on the web but also goes through the user’s email inbox to see if any promotional emails have codes to be automagically applied at checkout
Lead Investors:
Fuel Capital
Total Raised:
$5M
Comparables:
Honey
My Thoughts:
This looks to be a notably better version of Honey, as the best discount codes usually come in via email. I wonder how long it will take for Honey to copy this if this reaches scale, though.
Hi, I am Nicolas von Blottnitz, an Associate at Headline’s SF office focusing on Consumer, Fintech, and SaaS businesses. Since joining in 2018, I have led our investments in Tabnine, Polygon, Flockjay, Solid, and Grin.
What is the EVA Growth Index?
The EVA Growth index is a composite of third-party data sources around a company’s website traffic. The vertical green lines in the charts represent a point in time where the company raised outside capital.
