Top Seed Companies: Recall.ai, Intch, ExaCare, Poly, Flipstik
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.
Recall
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Universal API for developers to build software into any video conferring software
Lead Investors:
Bungalow Capital Management, Starling Ventures, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, SV Tech Ventures, Cathexis Ventures, Rebel Fund
Total Raised:
$2.7M
Comparables:
Plaid, Twilio
Our Thoughts:
Zoom alone hosts 3.3 trillion minutes of conferences each year. Recall makes these and all other video conferencing session minutes easily accessible to developers.
Intch
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
A professional social network that enables individuals to get in touch with founders and C-level executives in exchange for social coins
Lead Investors:
AltaIR Capital
Total Raised:
$1.2M
Comparables:
LinkedIn
Our Thoughts:
This network running off of a social currency is a concept that was predicted by dystopians for many years; that Black Mirror episode comes to mind. We do see a world where people are willing to buy themselves or get paid for their networking capacity. This is almost like LinkedIn without beating around the bush, and the monetary incentive for people to connect — pretty compelling to us.
ExaCare
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Vertical software solution for assisted living communities
Lead Investors:
Foundation Capital
Total Raised:
$6.5M
Comparables:
ECP123, AlayaCare
Our Thoughts:
One can only imagine how antiquated the software stack is for the assisted living industry. With the US 85-and-older population projected to double from 7M today to over 14M by 2040, this is a high-growth market.
Poly
EVA Growth Index:
No external sources showing growth
Product:
Generative AI for customizable, high-resolution, commercially-licensed 3D textures with physical-based rendering maps
Lead Investors:
NextView Ventures, AI Grant, Felicis Ventures, Y Combinator, Bloomberg Beta, Figma
Total Raised:
$4M
Comparables:
Blender, 3ds Max
Our Thoughts:
Would this even be a VC newsletter in 2023 with a generative AI company in here?! We like the verticalized commercial focus of Poly, as it should enable strong monetization opportunities for the software. Given the fast-progressing landscape of generative AI companies, we have been looking for an integrated process (making it difficult to replace) or data moat in these types of products. We wonder what direction Poly will go here.
Flipstik
EVA Growth Index:
Product:
Smartphone kickstand and adhesive powered by NASA research’s synthetic setae adhesive
Lead Investors:
Maxine Clark
Total Raised:
$1.3M
Comparables:
Otterbox, Casetify
Our Thoughts:
We can’t believe we’re including a non-digital phone accessory product here, but this is actually pretty cool. I just ordered one because I want to see how well it works.
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.
