by Healthy.io

Blood in the markets, Coranalypse, and Medical selfies

A weekly brief ☕️ of the most interesting things we’ve seen in tech in Israel, Sweden, and beyond — 16th of March 2020 📅

It has been without a doubt a most unique and turbulent week(end). Following the global markets downturn, monetary injections (now totaling $2.1 trillion in a single week) by the FED, and radical measures against COVID-19 (aka Coronavirus) taking by many countries, it’s not hard to note the fragility of our economy. Nevertheless, for many companies, it was still business as usual, highlighting the strength of remote work or WFH (aka work from home). Below you can find the most interesting things we’ve seen in tech amidst these turbulent times.

🗞Noteworthy news

• The Age Of Medical Selfies (🇮🇱) — Healthy.io, a startup that leverages computer vision to turn smartphone cameras into diagnostics tools (e.g. chronic kidney disease kits; urinary tract infection kits), has been listed as a top 50 Fast Company 2020. This recognition puts them amongst some of the most innovative companies in the world such as Beyond Meat, Apple, Spotify and Tesla.
• The Fully Electric Boat (🇸🇪)— Having raised an initial €1.5Mn through crowdfunding platform FundedByMe, X shore, the fully electric boat, raises another €5M from Peter Dahlberg. The time for electric boats is finally here. The founder, Konrad Bergström, had the vision back in the ‘90s, and now, batteries are powerful enough to create the sustainable boats of the future.
• AI-Powered Chatbot (🇸🇪) — Mavenoid raises €7.1M in series A funding to ramp up its efforts to deliver a fully automated product support solution, combining machine learning and human knowledge to get products working again. The round was led by Mosaic Ventures alongside Creandum and Point Nine Capital.
• Keeping AI on Track (🇮🇱) — Superwise.ai, an Israeli AI lifecycle management startup, raised $4.5M in seed funding from Capri Ventures and F2 Capital. With this funding, it aims to further scale-up its platform and enable more data science teams to reduce workload while building AI models.
• Cyber For The Shift To Cloud (🇮🇱) — Perimeter 81, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv-based aimed at simplifying secure network access in the age of remote work and cloud networks, raised $4.5M in a Series A extension round led by Toba Capital.

🤓What we’ve been reading over the past week

• Done Deals ✍️ — Published in 2000 amidst the venture capital frenzy, Done Deals gives an inside account from the most legendary venture capitalists to this date. Founders of Benchmark, Sequoia, Accel, Kleiner Perkins, and many more tell their stories of how they got started in VC, what their investment philosophies are, and interesting deals they were part of. It is absolutely jam-packed with insights and a must-read for anyone with even the slightest of interests in venture capital.
• Sequoia’s Warning Letter ❗️ —”Coronavirus is the black swan of 2020.” Sequoia recently released a letter of warning to startups, urging them to question every aspect of their business in preparation for the tough times ahead. Get ready for arduous fundraising, severe downgrades in your sales forecasts, and layoffs. To end on a positive note, Sequoia highlights that Airbnb, Square, and Stripe were all founded in the midst of the financial crisis. “ Constraints focus the mind and provide fertile ground for creativity.”

😮 New Funds

• Early-Stage B2B Deep Tech(🇮🇱)— Cardumen Capital, a Spanish-Israeli Venture fund, says it has secured $60M in commitments for its first fund, capital that it plans to invest in seed-and early-stage B2B deep tech startups. The fund is being led by two former investors from Samsung Ventures: Gonzalo Martinez de Azagra (former Head of Samsung Ventures Israel) and Roy Gottlieb.

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