Top Seed Companies: Contlo, SaaSWorks, Nilus, Infinity AI, Artifact
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.
Contlo
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Shopify integration for omnichannel consumer engagements across email, WhatsApp, sms, web, or mobile push
Lead Investors:
Better Capital, Kae Capital
Total Raised:
$4.2M
Comparables:
Omnisend
My Thoughts:
This is a saturated market, but looking at Contlo’s web traffic growth, they look to be breaking out.
SaaSWorks
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Single source of revenue, customer, and product usage truth for sales and customer success teams to make more data-driven decisions
Lead Investors:
Vestigo Ventures, Conversion Ventures LLC
Total Raised:
$11M
Comparables:
N/A
My Thoughts:
We at Headline love leveraging raw end-user engagement data to get a sense of where will the true retention of customers come in, especially in cases where a business only sells annual contracts and has less fluid transaction retention data. It only makes sense that customer-facing teams leverage this type of data as well to get a sense of true customer loyalty/upsell potential.
Nilus
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Unified financial hub that combines all transaction data from all providers, backend systems, and ERP into a single source of financial truth
Lead Investors:
Bessemer Venture Partners
Total Raised:
$8.6M
Comparables:
IXOPay, BlackLine
My Thoughts:
For both accounting and analytical purposes, it is crucial to have all your revenue data clean in a single database. Our standard data request at Headline includes the historical revenue transactions per customer, and given the number of companies we run who do not have this readily available, tells me that there is a major market opportunity for Nilus.
Infinity AI
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Cross-functional synthetic training data provider
Lead Investors:
Matrix Partners
Total Raised:
$5M
Comparables:
Cogito, Anolytics AI, Super Annotate
My Thoughts:
Data is the new gold. This statement has become a lot more vivid for me with the launch of the recent generative AI models. The way to differentiate your AI product in this world of advanced AI is not to have the better model but to have the most relevant data to train/operate the best available model on the market for your use case.
Artifact
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Professional on-demand podcasting experience to let anyone share their life story and ideas in the spoke word format
Lead Investors:
Y Combinator, GV
Total Raised:
$5.1M
Comparables:
N/A
My Thoughts:
I’d imagine most of us can relate to thinking about what we would share with the world if we were on a podcast. The way there are professional photographers, there might be a world where professional podcasters capture your conversational ideas, especially if social audio reaches the mainstream.
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.
