Various and Sundry

Alright. In no particular order, here are some very interesting things from this week that I could not write whole posts about:

  • Denver-based Range Ventures has put together a $23 million fund. Why do we care? It’s focused on Denver. I did not know that the Denver scene was mature enough to warrant its own firm. I suppose I am behind on this one.
  • Brazilian software company Intelipost raised $32 million this week, led by Riverwood Capital. E-commerce and logistics are hot in 2020, and Intelipost does both. This is one to keep an eye on.
  • Chicago’s CarDr raised $5 million in what it calls “launch and seed funding” from Red Fort Capital. The startup uses AI to help its team execute car diagnostics — hence, calling itself Car Doctor. According to the company, it sells to consumers, dealers, and banks alike. And the startup has earmarked about 75% of its new capital for engineering expenses, which implies that it has lots more to build in the future (a good thing, mind.) On the economics front, the company told The Exchange that it has good margins, but that they work out to be slightly lower than some SaaS companies due to the cost of AI computing time. We’ve written about that!
  • API-security focused Salt Security raised $30 million this week. I am a dork for all things API, so to see the API-security space raise this much in a single round caught my attention. Sequoia led the Series B. Salt raised a $20 million Series A in June. (The trend of two rounds in 2020 continues!)
  • A startup named Beyond Identity raised $75 million this week. I am at a loss regarding what “passwordless” identity means, but I hope it works, as I constantly need to update my Okta password, which makes me sad.
  • Ada Ventures closed a $50 million fund. The European group intends “to invest in diverse founders tacking societal problems.” Hard to not be into that mission.

Now it’s time to put on some heavy metal, play Civ 6, and not think about news for a bit.

Hugs —

Alex