Top Seed Companies: Bunny, Sushi Swap, Roboost, Vectara, Zenskar
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.
Bunny
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Next-gen content delivery network (CDN) enabled by edge storage and optimization services
Lead Investors:
Capital Genetics, Runa Capital
Total Raised:
$6M
Comparables:
Cloudflare, Akamai
My Thoughts:
Content in the digital world is constantly evolving, while our CDNs have stayed relatively antiquated. Looking at the insane traffic growth of Bunny, it looks like they are hitting a real nerve in the market with their next-gen approach.
Sushi Swap
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Defi exchange that lets users swap, earn, stack yields, lend and borrow their tokens
Lead Investors:
GoldenTree Asset Management
Total Raised:
$5.3M
Comparables:
Uniswap, Pancakeswap
My Thoughts:
From our understanding, this is the second-largest defi exchange in the market. I love seeing that they only now have raised/announced their first financing round, which speaks to the team being less occupied on raising the next flashy round but rather laser-focused on building product. Worth noting is that their main competitor Uniswap just announced their $165M Series all within the same week.
Roboost
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
AI-enabled home delivery solutions for brands to enable the most efficient and delightful home delivery experience for their customers
Lead Investors:
Page One Ventures
Total Raised:
Undisclosed
Comparables:
Undisclosed
My Thoughts:
It becomes a no-brainer for businesses that reach a certain penetration in a given geography to take the on-demand delivery experience, something that most consumers expect today, in-house. Roboost looks to have all the necessary features to let their clients seamlessly scale their delivery operations and looks to bet getting fantastic adoption.
Vectara
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
API-first neural search as a service engine to let developers provide the most seamless search experience in their products
Lead Investors:
Page One Ventures
Total Raised:
Undisclosed
Comparables:
Algolia, Elasticsearch
My Thoughts:
Seamless search is something every user expects in a product, but providing this is much easier said than done. Vectara looks to have built a streamlined solution for developers to integrate these consumer expectations into their products. Making the developer happy is what it will take to win in this market.
Zenskar
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Flexible billing solution for SaaS products
Lead Investors:
Bessemer Venture Partners
Total Raised:
$3.5M
Comparables:
Recurrly, Chargebee
My Thoughts:
The fairest pricing model is usually a deaccelerating usage-based pricing model, where the more a customer uses the product, the less they will pay per value unit. Implementing this is still incredibly difficult. We hear many of our portfolio companies struggling with this, so I am excited to watch Zenskar solve for this.
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.
