April 17, 2024

Watchlist

Hi there, 

The response to yesterday’s newsletter has been 100% in favor of MKBHD. Nobody thought his review of Humane was unfair.

There were several comments back to the effect of “I’m sick of tech people whining about being treated unfairly.” 

And there you have it.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

What if you could use data to identify high-momentum early-stage startups?

Well, you can.

We ran a search on CB Insights with the below filters and identified 89 early-stage companies that have real momentum.

These startups have: 

• <50 headcount
• Positive headcount growth in the last 6 months
• <$25M in funding
• Raised from leading VCs like a16z and Index Ventures
• Mosaic scores (a measure of company health and potential) in the top 10%
• Commercial Maturity level of 3 (deploying) or 4 (scaling), i.e., they’re “out of the lab”

Here are 10 of the 89:

1. Web3Auth (Cybersecurity) - Singapore
2. Civitai (AI content) - US
3. Upstash (Data platform) - US
4. LlamaIndex (AI data platform) - US
5. Packfleet (Delivery) - UK
6. Shepherd (Insurance) - US
7. Apron (Payments) - UK
8. Socket (Cybersecurity) - US
9. Kaedim (3D modeling) - UK
10. Vizcom (Design) - US

CB Insights customers can run scouting reports on these 10 and filter the full list of 80+ companies & update the criteria here. 

All in

Yesterday, Andreessen Horowitz announced it raised $7.2B to invest in tech startups, with a focus on AI.

Care to venture a guess at who a16z will bet on with this fresh capital?

We have some guesses right here.

Most wanted

Google has announced 200+ acquisitions over the years.

Of the companies it has acquired, can you figure out which one was the most expensive ($12.5B)?

1. Waze
2. Motorola Mobility
3. YouTube
4. Mandiant
5. Nest

Find the answer in this infographic visualizing Google’s 10 biggest acquisitions.

Pill talk 

Improving medication access and delivery have become crucial priorities for the pharma industry.

From full-service virtual pharmacies to tech-enabled pharmacy benefit managers, we look at 93 companies making this possible in this market map.

Checkup

Digital health funding rose by 48% QoQ in Q1’24.

Other industries — and venture more broadly — saw less funding momentum:

• Venture: +11% QoQ
• Fintech: -16% 
• Retail Tech: +17%

Our analysts will dive into digital health’s rebound live on April 30 — register here to save your spot.

Industry Standard

CNBC. Dardan Pula (@Dardanp90) and Jake Callahan (@Jakeup86) cover tech poaching and mention CB Insights data.

Modern Healthcare. Brock E.W. Turner (@BrockEWTurner) explores what’s next for Teladoc and quotes CB Insights lead analyst Alexander Lennox-Miller.

CNN. Brian O'Connell, Paul Curcio, and David Tony discuss startup investing and cite CB Insights research.

I love you. 

Anand 

@asanwal 

P.S. Our research team is hiring. Check out the open positions here.

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