📅 [11/23/20–11/29/20] DWDG Weekly Digest #9

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The Good AI Podcast

3 min readDec 1, 2020

👋🏽 Welcome to Doing Well by Doing Good, a newsletter and podcast series highlighting the companies aiming to be profitable with a purpose.Get the latest updates.

Happy post-Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas! If you’re like Garfield and stuffed your face and indulged in a rewarding Thanksgiving meal with family and friends, don’t forget to count your blessings.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have that. Thankfully, there are Doing Well by Doing Good companies working to fix some of these major inequalities in today’s world. Read on to enjoy the latest in DWDG news, funding and jobs from the shortened Thanksgiving week 😀

DWDG News

While the US celebrated Thanksgiving, the Canadian Future of Good nonprofit focused on social impact celebrated the Future of Good Summit Nov. 25th & 26th where global leaders in social impact from cleantech to health to nonprofits and many others shared their thoughts in various plenary and breakout sessions — tickets to access the recordings are still available on Eventbrite.

DWDG Fundings

Serenade, a 1.5-year-old, Bay Area-based startup that turns speech into software code, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding led by Amplify Partners and Neo. [ TechCrunch Report]

Doing Good: Serenade’s novel approach enables vulnerable minority populations unable to use standard approaches to coding, to access the value of building software through voice

Well Health, a 5.5-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based patient communications company, has raised $45 million in Series C funding. Lead Edge Capital led the round, joined by Martin Ventures, Jackson Square Ventures, Health Velocity Capital, Summation Health Ventures, Structure Capital, and Freestyle Capital. The company has now raised $75 million altogether. [ FierceBiotech Report]

Doing Good: Well Health’s focus on simple patient-healthcare provider communications increases access to high-quality healthcare for those unable to take time to visit a healthcare professional in person and without a healthcare professional in their network to text.

Mother Raw, a 4.5-year-old, Toronto, Ontario-based maker of plant-based dressings, marinades, dips, and condiments, has raised $6.1 million in Series A funding. Forage Capital Partners led the round, joined by Export Development Canada and Whitecap Venture Partners.

Doing Good: Mother Raw is taking on an industry by bringing down the carbon footprint of manufacturing dressings and condiments by making them completely plant-based.

CharityVest, a four-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based fintech startup that enables users to create their own tax-deductible charitable giving accounts, known as donor-advised funds, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding. Investor Tom Blaisdell, formerly of DCM Ventures, led the round, joined by Teamworthy Ventures, , Sovereign’s Capital, and Promus Ventures.

Doing Good: CharityVest’s platform inherently increases funding that goes toward social good causes. As their user-base grows, so too does the positive impact commensurately.

Unacademy, a nearly six-year-old, Bangalore, India-based online learning platform that focuses on K-12 online education, has raised fresh capital from Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group. Unacademy isn’t disclosing the size of the round — a TechCrunch source pegs it at between $75 million and $100 million — but it says the investment values the company at $2 billion. That’s up 25% from earlier this year, when it closed a separate round. Facebook and SoftBank are also investors in the company. [ TechCrunch Report].

Doing Good: Unacademy is focused on making high-quality education more accessible and affordable to the masses in India through their offerings as compared to traditional institutions bound by location and high prices.

Phood, a 5.5-year-old, New York-based platform that’s using waste tracking and analytics to cut food waste and help food businesses build more resilient food systems and supply chains, has raised $2 million in seed funding. New Stack Ventures and Story Ventures co-led the round. [ The Spoon Report]

Doing Good: Phood’s platform is a value service for food businesses and helps reduce overall food waste. As platform usage expands does the positive impact on reducing food waste.