Top Seed Companies: Durable, Upollo, Post, Produce8, Range
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.
Durable
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
AI-powered website builder, traffic/demand generator, and payments engine to let anyone create and scale their online business within minutes
Lead Investors:
Altman Capital, Torch Capital, South Park Commons, Soma Capital, Lorimer Ventures, Dash Fund, Night Capital, Infinity Ventures
Total Raised:
$12.5M
Comparables:
Squarespace
My Thoughts:
All the key tools, getting operators to value in as quickly as any other solution out there — one to watch in an already established category
Upollo
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Analytics solution that provides real-time insights into when and how customers are getting repeat trials and sharing their accounts to convert them into paying users
Lead Investors:
Index Ventures
Total Raised:
$2.8M
Comparables:
Datadog
My Thoughts:
This seems like one of those software solutions that pays for itself, especially as building this in-house will take high-paid engineering hours and domain expertise that are not easy to hire.
Post.
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
News and discussion platform for independent writers
Lead Investors:
Andreessen Horowitz
Total Raised:
Undisclosed
Comparables:
Twitter meets Substack
My Thoughts:
With the digital news landscape in turmoil at the moment, this is a timely idea created by a veteran founder who, prior to Post, was the CEO of Wayz and a VP of Product at Google for over seven years.
Produce8
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Software platform for remote teams that provides insights into the status of tasks/projects to ensure seamless handoffs and collaboration
Lead Investors:
Top Down
Total Raised:
$4.5M
Comparables:
Linear App, Slack, Monday
My Thoughts:
I see the opportunity here to go away from the user needing to give updates actively to the software automagically providing these to the rest of the teams as projects/collaborations move along, as the existing solutions have yet to really touch on this.
Range
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Trucking trailers that have electric engines, batteries, and transmission installed to turn any truck into a hybrid
Lead Investors:
R7 Partners, Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley, UP Partners
Total Raised:
$8M
Comparables:
Tesla, Rivian
My Thoughts:
This is usually not within the scope of the sectors I usually cover, but it really sticks out to me how frictionless Range is making it for trucking operations to incorporate electrification into their fleets while not needing to replace their existing hardware.
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.
