February 2020 Wrap 🗞
The Wrap is our monthly article covering the most relevant events and (pre-)seed deals across Sweden and Israel. We decided to create The Wrap series to enable anyone to get a comprehensive overview of the most interesting deals and events worth tracking.
Notable Events 💸
- Feb-3: superQuery (🇮🇱), an AI-powered integrated development environment for serverless big-data services, gets acquired by DoiT International for an undisclosed amount. DoiT aims to utilize superQuery’s strong technology stack and young team to build an even stronger portfolio of cloud productivity and cost optimization solutions.
- Feb-5: Flowbox (🇸🇪), a martech SaaS company offering a content marketing platform, raises €7.5M in Series A from Viking Venture Management.
- Feb-12: Convexum (🇮🇱), a counter-drone tech startup, gets acquired by NSO Group for a reported $60M in cash. NSO Group acquired Convexum in order to initiate its operations in the drone industry, given its current and anticipated growth in the upcoming years.
- Feb-13: Intuition Robotics (🇮🇱), a social companion technology provider, raises $36M in Series B from 10 investors including Aleph, Samsung Next, Toyota AI Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, etc.
- Feb-23: Terrain EDA (🇮🇱), a semiconductor startup, gets acquired by Synopsis for an undisclosed amount. The startup only had 8 employees and was backed by the legendary Israeli tech entrepreneur and investor Avigdor Willenz.
- Feb-25: Fabric (🇮🇱), a company that builds a supply-chain allowing retailers to offer sustainable delivery service to their online customers, raises $110M in Series B from 8 investors including Corner Ventures (lead investor) and Evolv Ventures — the corporate venture arm of Kraft Heinz.
Notable (Pre-)Seed Deals in February from Israel and Sweden 🔎
1. L1ght (🇮🇱) 👦 👧
Description: L1ght uses AI to detect and filter harmful content to protect children from “online toxicity.” It deploys algorithms to provide a full solution for social networks, communication apps, gaming platforms, and hosting providers to identify and eradicate cyberbullying, harmful content, hate speech, and predatory behavior. The company built technology that can detect and predict toxic content in online text, audio, videos, or images.
Founding Date: Q4 2018
Founders: Zohar Levkovit, Ron Porat,
Last Funding Type and Amount: Seed round, $15.000.000
Investors: Mangrove Capital Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners, Western Technology Investment
Comparables: Keepers (🇮🇱), Securly (🇺🇸), Custodio (🇪🇸)
Our Thoughts: The need for a broader solution is clearly reflected in the frightening number of victims of online bullying, molesting and harassment every year. Unlike existing solutions, which are oriented towards parental control, L1ght offers an end-to-end solution that can be easily integrated within the infrastructure of popular apps, games and social networks. This offers a more comprehensive solution to online toxicity. Given its existing success, making Whatsapp and Facebook safer, it will be interesting to see how L1ght further enables a safer online environment for kids.
Further reading: Crunchbase, Hackernoon Article
2. Wishbox (🇮🇱) ✈️
Description: Wishbox developed a platform that enables accommodation providers, such as short-term rentals, hostels, and hotels, to engage with guests and upsell experiences. Its platform offers features such as a guest communication system, white-label guest app, online check-in, review optimization and an e-commerce store with payment processing.
Founding Date: 2016
Founders: David Mezuman, Jeremy Atlan, Shai Bar
Last Funding Type and Amount: Seed round, $2.500.000
Investors: BNF Capital, ICONYC Labs
Comparables: Hostfully (🇺🇸)
Our Thoughts: With a 12.2% forecasted growth in short-term rental units in 2020 in the U.S., Wishbox is addressing a very large market (e.g. Airbnb, Guesty, Hostify, etc.) that is still rapidly growing. This can be seen in their own impressive growth, servicing over 500k check-ins and -outs in 10s of thousands of properties across +50 countries in 2019 alone. We believe that they are solving an attractive problem, putting the power back into an ever-growing number of hosts — offering them additional revenue sources without losing the trust of the guest.
Further reading: Crunchbase, Tech.eu
3. Zero Networks (🇮🇱) 🔐
Description: the first network security platform that automatically defines, enforces and adapts user- and machine-level network access policies to create a continuous airtight zero-trust network model, at scale.
Founding Date: 2019
Founders: Benny Lakunishok, Jossef Harush
Last Funding Type and Amount: Seed round, $4.650.000
Investors: F2 Capital, Pico Partners
Comparables: No direct competitor
Our Thoughts: Zero Networks’ approach to network access security is quite attractive to corporates seeking an effective solution without the need for massive change. Hence, Zero Networks is making a zero-trust security model at scale a reality using automation that defines, enforces and adapts user- and machine-level network policies. It addresses a massive market and a painful problem to solve.
4. We Are Voice (🇸🇪) 🎵
Description: We Are Voice offers a platform that serves as a digital meeting place for choirs and choir leaders. It aims to facilitate everyday life for choirs by offering a smarter way of communicating with each other, as well as taking part in choir arrangements and high-quality rehearsal files through an app that can be downloaded free of charge for smartphones and tablets.
Founding Date: 2017
Founders: Martin Rolinski, Fredrik Berglund, Simon Ljungman
Last Funding Type and Amount: Seed round, $1.000.000
Investors: Simon Josefsson, Mattias Danielsson, Provider Investment, Bonnier Ventures
Comparables: No direct competitor
Our Thoughts: We Are Voice is targeted mainly toward a niche market that is choir singers, and we are no choir experts… But the user reviews are great, stating that choir singers have not had a technological update in quite some time and that the app rejuvenates their engagement with each other while allowing for an easier way to rehearse their material.
Further reading: Crunchbase, Digital (in Swedish)
5. Klimato (🇸🇪) 🌍
Description: Klimato offers a web application that enables its customers to easily calculate and communicate the climate footprint of each dish that they offer. Hence, Klimato’s goal is to reduce CO2 by climate labeling meals for restaurants and encourage customers to choose climate-friendly options on the menu.
Founding Date: 2017
Founders: Anton Unger, Christoffer Connée, Henric Hansson, Philip Claesson
Last Funding Type and Amount: Seed round, $275.000
Investors: Anders Lindell, Maria Andark
Comparables: Normative (🇸🇪), Worldwatchers (🇩🇪)
Our Thoughts: Swedes are known for their awareness of climate issues, and there are many people actively making the small choices that, if made by everybody, would make a difference. Klimato is capitalizing on this trend; rewarding restaurants for their environmentally friendly dishes and allowing customers to feel good about their choices. General Electric, AstraZeneca, and Clarion Hotel are some of the firms Klimato has already signed up, showing good initial traction on a mission to enlighten customers.
Further reading: Crunchbase, Digital (in Swedish)
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