Tag: venture

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Why aren’t female founders getting a bigger piece of the pie? Theories abound

Less than 2% of venture capital funding went to all-female founding teams in 2021, marking a five-year low, new data from Pitchbook shows. All-female founding teams did receive 83% more funding in 2021 in absolute dollars compared to the year prior, but that’s likely because US startups overall raked in a record amount of cash last year.

Still, the rising tide did not lift all boats. The share of funding all-female founding teams earned was down for the second year in a row, according to Pitchbook.

So how is it that despite the recent boom in startup funding, the venture capital industry is actually becoming an even tougher place for women to raise money?

Venture investor Del Johnson hosted a Twitter Spaces conversation last week that fostered discussion about whether and why all-female founding teams appear uniquely disadvantaged in the fundraising process —  despite that the number of women in venture capital has increased in recent years.

One theory shared by Johnson is that “male power brokers [are] more likely to select or fund the women VCs who share their own patriarchal biases, and keep out the many women who don’t share those views,” he told TechCrunch in a written message. In short, women VCs are just as inclined to favor male founders as their male peers.

Serial entrepreneur Gentry Lane, who was part of the discussion and spoke with TechCrunch afterward, similarly believes that the venture industry is inherently biased against women. How else explain that while top VCs have been more accessible than ever because of Zoom and online interactions, the share of funding going to all-female founders is dropping and not rising? It’s “systemic misogyny,” says Lane, who is the CEO and founder of venture-backed national security software company ANOVA Intelligence.

Yet there were other theories surfaced in the Twitter Spaces conversation. VCs are more comfortable hosting events dedicated to helping underrepresented founders than actually funding them, suggested some of the participants. Instead of writing checks, investors engage in so-called virtue signaling, observed these frustrated entrepreneurs.

Lane also suggested that VCs’s enduring focus on presentations and pitch decks rather than “normal, human conversation” continues to negatively impact underrepresented founders, who typically have less experience in the former categories.

Investment stage could also play a role, discussion participants noted, as much of the increase in venture funding overall in 2021 was driven by later-stage rounds, which tend to be dominated by male founders.

While speculation abounds, there was a silver lining in that Pitchbook report. To wit, the Pitchbook data shows that VC-backed companies with at least one female founder captured over 25% of last year’s total venture deals by count, representing 17.6% of overall deal value. Founding teams with both men and women accounted for the vast majority of those deals.

Shriya Nevatia of accelerator program On Deck cited the Pitchbook data as a reason for optimism, pointing out the recent increase in the percentage of deals with at least one female founder in a tweet yesterday. Wrote Nevatia: “This is sooo much closer to 50% — up from 11.8% in 2008 — that’s quite fast!!”

She then tweeted: “We ARE making progress, keep it up yall.”

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VC Joe Lonsdale’s tweets about ‘woke’ tech diversity spark investor pushback

Last week, in response to someone who tweeted that VCs were racist, venture capitalist and entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale attributed disparities in venture capital investing to “average black culture.”

“A real view: average black culture needs to step it up and stop having as many kids born out of wedlock (statistical indicator of underperformance) / who don’t value education or spend as much time on homework,” wrote Lonsdale in the now-deleted series of tweets.

The opining of Lonsdale, who co-founded Palantir and runs the early-stage venture firm 8VC, prompted swift criticism from a number of tech investors, many of whom called on Lonsdale’s advisors and limited partners — which include the likes of Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Box CEO Aaron Levie and actor Leonardo DiCaprio — to speak out against the entrepreneur’s actions.

In one tweet with a screenshot of Londsale’s tweets, Bessemer partner Elliott Robinson wrote, “[I]t’s not VCs like [Joe Lonsdale] that hold the tech ecosystem and society back. It’s the hundreds of LPs, co-Investors, Founders, and decision makers that remain silent because: they do not care, they are scared [or] they agree. I feel bad for him/them to live like that. Its sad.”

Stealth-mode general partner Lolita Taub, who formerly invested via Backstage Capital and the Community Fund, told anyone who agrees with Londsale’s “racist commentary” to unfollow her.

Lightship Capital GP Brian Brackeen meanwhile said in a tweet that “any LP of his is complicit” and that “there is no shame in being him in SF. The culture there is to accept people like him. Diversity in tech can’t improve until we diversify the geography.”

Lonsdale responded to a request for further context, saying to TechCrunch via e-mail that he was “jumping on a flight” but that “somebody edited a screenshot and took a tweet totally out of context in order to cause outrage.” He further added that “the people attacking me have political motivations. You will note they are almost entirely on the far left and prefer divisive attacks vs working towards positive solutions together.”

He insists that context surrounding the statements was lost from his original thread.

“I commented how past racism likely caused issues with some cultures today that we need to discuss and address, and given how terrible some of the things these communities experienced in the past were – red lining, Jim Crow, and so many terrible past issues – it isn’t necessarily fair to blame 100% of problems today on racism.”

Lonsdale also added that he has “invested millions of dollars in black founders and in relevant philanthropic causes and proudly work with a lot of advisors from these communities and we continue to do more to reach out to talent from these backgrounds and to partner. As i have stated, it’s not only dumb to discriminate, but if anything if somebody comes from a tough background and still manages to succeed – that means they are likely to be resilient, which means they are an even better founder to back. I am eager to continue to back talented black founders.”

When asked about the Black founders that Lonsdale has invested in, a spokesperson for Lonsdale responded saying it “doesn’t seem appropriate to list names and force [anyone] to answer questions” given how Lonsdale’s “notes were taken out of context.”

Lonsdale has a highly successful business track record, but a record, too, of troubled personal dealings. In addition to Palantir and 8VC, Lonsdale has co-founded a line of companies, including Addepar, OpenGov, Affinity, Epirus, Esper, Swiftscale Bio, Resilience Bio, Hearth and LIT, which recently received a $50 million investment from Tiger Global.

He has been the main character in a number of controversies, including a breakup with earlier investing partners and a high-profile lawsuit filed by a former Stanford student that was later dropped.

More recently, he called “any man in an important position who takes 6 months of leave for a newborn…a loser.”

Lonsdale — whose venture firm has been successful in its fundraising efforts despite public controversy — has been attempting to clarify his earlier position since taking it last Friday. Later that same day, for example, he tweeted: “Worth clarifying: you can be against divisive and ‘woke’ nonsense, and I am. But we should still appreciate the positive parts of our culture and wisdom of the 21st century – that it’s important to be aware of past racism, kind, inclusive, and against actual racism of all sorts.”

“I don’t necessarily expect TC to give me a fair hearing – a sensational article attacking and making [people] think somebody is racist and getting angry is what you are taught to do in journalism these days – but I hope you’ll consider representing this view fairly,” Lonsdale said in an e-mailed statement to TechCrunch.

In a competitive and cash-rich fundraising market, Lonsdale’s controversial comments could attract negative attention to his venture firm and make founders less inclined to accept his money. Indeed, Block Party founder Tracy Chou claimed on Twitter that even before making his latest comments, Lonsdale had spoken to her Y Combinator batch and she described his comments on stage as “terribly distasteful.”

“It sucks that even after everything he’s trotted out by the establishment as an exemplar and to give advice,” she tweeted.

In the meantime, Lonsdale may find it harder to partner with the venture industry’s small but growing number of Black investors. Fund manager Del Johnson and Spencer Tyson, an associate at Revere VC, are among many investors who took to Twitter to dissect Lonsdale’s comments in the aftermath, and their frustration was plain. Tyson tweeted: “What you, and many others, fail to realize is that there is a difference between ‘woke’ culture and BLACK culture,” he said. “We’re not your rich liberal friends you argue with at dinner parties… You attacked BLACK culture.”

For now, Lonsdale is continuing in his efforts to recontextualize his earlier statements. “The data suggests that there are structural issues (likely caused by past racism) holding people back and causing disparity, not racism by VCs,” Lonsdale tweeted in a separate response.

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Have we reached peak founder-friendliness?

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This is our Wednesday episode when we niche down to a single topic, looking to expand our understanding of one particular technology trend or another. Today? We discussed if the era of founder-led companies is coming to a close, and if we have reached the peak of founder friendliness.

The decision to abdicate the CEO role by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey got us onto the topic. You can read our first take on the matter here, or listen to us geek out about it on an earlier Twitter Spaces.

But Natasha and Alex decided that they didn’t want to walk alone, so we got Floodgate’s Iris Choi back on the show, along with recently venture-backed Fractional founder Stella Han to help us dig through the issue.

  • Choi doesn’t see a rapid change in the current market dynamic that has led to increased founder influence, and therefore control. Even more, she noted that as the public markets are willing to accept founder-friendly mechanics like dual-class shares, there’s even less incentive to shake up the current dynamic.
  • Han, meanwhile, spoke to the evolution of a founder’s role over the lifetime of her company – as well as how she tries to build in decentralized authority (as the central source of authority)
  • We end with the importance of being explicit about different roles, and how they are subject to change as a company hits different scale milestones.

Equity is back on Friday with our news roundup. Chat soon!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. 

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Republic acquires crowdfunding media agency Arora Project in ‘multimillion-dollar deal’

Off the heels of a $150 million Series B fundraise, New York-based investing platform Republic has acquired Arora Project, an equity crowdfunding media agency that helps startups create and launch campaigns. Krishan Arora, CEO and Founder at Arora Project, declined to tip TechCrunch the total transaction amount, but said that it was a “large, multi-million dollar deal.”

Republic, which is now five years old, is perhaps best known for facilitating crowdfunding campaigns for startups and small businesses under Reg CF, a rule that allows non-accredited investors to participate in private funding rounds. The startup’s reputation grew when the SEC recently raised the cap for how much money can be raised through a Reg CF, from $1.07 million to $5 million per year, ushering in a new wave of startups that can raise meaningful money from their communities.

Arora Project is built off of the same tailwinds. The Miami-based startup is a digital media agency, paired with an angel syndicate, that helps companies build campaigns to eventually post on crowdfunding platforms like WeFunder, StartEngine or Republic. It has helped founders raise more than $100 million in capital since being founded in 2016.

“We’re sort of the management consultants of the space,” said Arora. “Founders come to us, we put them on the right platform, create all the content, run the acquisition of the data analytics, and get them the money they need so they can focus on running the business instead of the fundraise.” The acquisition now means that Arora will be in an exclusive partnership with Republic

Arora Project will first bring marketing chops to the retail, equity crowdfunding investment side of Republic’s business. Down the road, Arora will integrate into Republic’s other sub companies, which include a private capital division, blockchain incubator and fund, and eventually, a compliance-focused marketplace for digital securities.

Last week, Indiegogo announced that it will begin more closely screening crowdfunding campaigns on its platform. While Republic focuses more on equity crowdfunding campaigns versus Indiegogo’s specialty of rewards-based and donation-based crowdfunding, the news triggered questions on the future of moderation within the broader crowdfunding world. Arora Project boasts that it has a “rigorous vetting process” and accepts less than 10% of applications that it receives every month. Republic Chief of staff Kyle McCormick said that the marketplace is “an entirely different beast”than Indiegogo.

“Even though we may share users with platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, we’re going after a different part of that user’s wallet — their investable assets on which they hope to make a return. Not checking for fraud (at a bare minimum) would be deeply negligent,” McCormick then said. He admitted that there are still challenges with this model: “How do we deliver quality in a scalable way? How do we support venture-backed companies without mirroring gender and race biases in venture capital? All things we think about everyday.”

Founder Arora says that quality assurance is certainly one of his goals, in addition to driving overall deal volume and total investment volume on the platform.

Republic has always been a more curated platform due to its focus, but Arora Project and future acquisitions could help it find better ways to answer some of these questions – either by introducing a new cohort of investors to its platform, or by helping more startups launch campaigns that balance transparency with ambition.

All things in moderation, including moderation

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Hum Capital thinks the future of funding is a return to old school Wall Street

Hum Capital CEO Blair Silverberg thinks that the future of fundraising requires a return to old school Wall Street – sans the fraud.

Back in the day, he explained, people would go to Wall Street and request funding for different projects, such as a rail line from New Jersey to St. Louis or a new store. A banker would chat through all the financing options, analyze different tradeoffs, and eventually help business owners pick the best capital option for their goals.

“It was very, ‘let’s think about the problem we’re trying to solve, and then let’s make the financing fit,’” Silverberg said. “Today, we do the opposite.” Even with ample capital in the market, startup check-writing is still a game dictated by warm intros, cold pitches, and oftentimes, sheer luck that the founder bugged the right person in the right way at the right time.

Silverberg said the current climate forces founders and investors to do a “crazy adversarial dance” when it comes to partnerships, which feels “backwards.” He wants his startup, Hum Capital, to bring optionality back into the mix.

“The dream scenario is that any company in the world uses Hum to articulate what they’re trying to do with their mission, and then gets all the relevant forms of financing just sitting right there waiting for them to pick the one that makes the most sense,” he said. No term-sheets for term-sheets sake, but instead, Hum Capital can be a clear way to visualize and compare different financing options for a company’s goal.

The nod to nostalgia has helped the startup land fresh capitalization for the future. Hum Capital announced today that it has raised $9 million in a Series A round led by Steve Jurvetson’s Future Ventures. Jurveston was an early investor in SpaceX, Tesla and Memphis Meats, which Silverberg thinks symbolizes that “[Hum Capital is] an equally world changing company.”

At this stage, Hum Capital’s product is easy to explain: it uses artificial intelligence and data to connect businesses to the some available funders on the platform. The startup connects with a capital-hungry startup, ingests financial data from over 100 SaaS systems including Quickbooks, Netsuite and Google Analytics, and then translates them to the some 250 institutional investors on its platform.

It’s a navigation engine for startups that aren’t sure whether they should go for venture debt, traditional VC, revenue-share financing options, or others. The average deal size is $6.4 million, but Hum can help founders access checks up to $50 million for their businesses.

Image Credits: Hum

Hum is free for startups and investors to use for data-sharing purposes and eventual connections. The startup makes money by charging a 2% marketplace fee on capital raised whenever a deal is closed through its platform.

Founders could theoretically use Hum to meet investors and then close the deal offline to avoid the 2% fee. Silverberg said that most users to-date don’t do this because they want to be repeat customers during future fundraises.

Hum’s biggest challenge is that it isn’t human. In venture, especially at the earliest stages, most check-writing comes down to an investor believing in a person’s ambition (and maybe their pitch deck). Hum leans heavily on data as a determinant of success, and while numbers don’t lie, it could mean early ideas with big ambition are left without options.

Silverberg argued that Hum isn’t meant to replace chemistry, but can work to make sure that the business makes financial sense for an investor. Meetings still matter, but with Hum, he thinks a founder and investor can spend the 30 minute meeting talking about mission and vision, and skip other basics of the business.

Fair rebuttal aside, Hum could be limited in the sorts of startups that it funds long-term. It doesn’t need to find ways to fit into traditional VC – since most businesses aren’t venture-bacable, but it will need to find a way to make sure high-quality investors consistently use the platform for deal flow. Today, much of the investment on the platform is classified as venture debt.

Early adoption suggests some early trends. Companies from 46 states have uploaded data to its Intelligent Capital Market (ICM) platform, and nearly half of all companies on the platform come outside of California and New York.

To date, the platform has helped facilitate more than $400 million in capital transactions across 150 fee agreements. The majority of that money moved between March and now, with customers including SecurityScorecard, Evolv AI and Flaviar.

Hum Capital’s raise is announced in a time where traditional financing feels challenged: Carta just raised money off of a valuation it set for itself, Brex launched a $150 million venture debt business, and Clearco, an alternative to VC, raised money from VCs at an over a $2 billion valuation.

“[Resource allocation] as important as making the world multiplanetary, or global problems like climate change,” Silverberg said. “…We’re at the book sales stage of Amazon.”

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Early investors in Dispo to donate any profits from the photo-sharing app

After Spark Capital announced it would ‘sever all ties’ with Dispo following allegations around co-creator and famous YouTuber David Dobrik, two of the app’s earliest investors have similarly backed away from the company. Seven Seven Six and Unshackled followed suit this morning, releasing subsequent statements that they plan to donate any profits from investments to organizations working with survivors of sexual assault.

Spark Capital decides to “sever all ties” with David Dobrik’s Dispo app weeks after leading deal

Seven Seven Six, an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian, released a statement on Monday morning saying that the allegations against Dobrik are “extremely troubling” and are “directly at odds” with the firm’s core values.

“We have made the decision to donate any profits from our investment in Dispo to an organization working with survivors of sexual assault. We have believed in Dispo’s mission since the beginning and will continue to support the hardworking team bringing it to life,” according to the firm’s statement. Ohanian has retweeted the statement from his personal account but has offered no separate statement.

The firm’s language suggests that it will still support Dispo, unlike Spark, which has left its board position at the company.

Unshackled Ventures similarly tells TechCrunch that the firm will donate any profits from the investment in Dispo to organizations focused on survivors of sexual assault. The firm pointed to Maitri, an organization that supports women survivors, as one place it plans to donate to.

“We are a female majority team that does not take this lightly. We are in full support of their decision to part ways with David,” per the statement. The firm did not say whether or not it would continue supporting Dispo as a company beyond Dobrik.

It is unclear how Spark Capital, which similarly is in the process of making sure it doesn’t profit from Dispo, will be handling its financial stake as well. Spark was unable to be reached for clarification.

The company was last valued at $200 million with Spark Capital-led $20 million Series A financing just weeks ago. Dispo released a statement last night stating that Dobrik has stepped down from the board of Dispo and leave the company. It is unclear if Dobrik still has a financial stake in the company through ownership and if he plans to divest.

 

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New program wants to be the Y Combinator for emerging fund managers

Rolling funds, the rise of solo capitalists, crowd syndicates, and team-based seed funds all scream one thing in unison: venture capital is growing and getting unbundled at the same time.

While the asset class remains largely exclusive and skewed white and male, innovation does have the potential to usher in a new, far more inclusive generation of investors. The question is how to ensure that these newer investors survive and thrive and are able to scale their operations in much the way that their predecessors in the industry have.

Oper8r hopes to fill in the gap between what it takes to be an occasional investor and become a full-time VC who is backed by institutional dollars. The program, which just completed its debut cohort, describes itself as Y Combinator for funds and emerging fund managers. The goal is to teach investors who want to build an institutional fund about the rules and oh-so-many regulations of the game.

Oper8r was started by Winter Mead, who worked as an institutional investor for years at Sapphire Ventures and Hall Capital Partners, and Welly Sculley, who operated at venture capital-backed fintech companies Ripple and Boku. The friends saw that there was no organization focused on next-gen fund managers. Instead of raising capital to create a program, the friends started a program, free of charge, to train investors.

“For VCs, barriers to entries were going down. Starting a VC fund was becoming easier. But it wasn’t easier to know various parts of building and scaling a VC firm,” Mead tells TechCrunch.

The program spans 10 weeks with 6 to 10 hours of instructional material per day. Oper8r’s curriculum covers the nuts and bolts of how to put together a scalable fund, but Mead says that they stay away from teaching investors how to invest since that information is already accessible. For example, VC University is a joint initiative between Berkeley Law, NVCA, and Venture Forward to teach venture finance.

“There’s a lot to firm building that isn’t just investing,” he said. “Having that knowledge can save you a lot of time, save you a lot of cost, save you a lot of headaches.”

Oper8r views its core benefit for aspiring fund managers as demystifying the world of limited partners.

“VCs come in here and think of the LP world as a monolith,” he said.” Oper8r helps VCs segment out the LP market, understand the difference between a family office and university, and understand “who will actually invest into a fund 1 or fund 2.”

To help navigate the LP world, Oper8r gives participants access to over 50 institutional investors, such as Hamilton College, Northern Trust, Legacy Ventures, and Investure, who will speak on their investment appetite and cadence. It doesn’t hurt that those same partners benefit from access to funds they find especially noble.

“[Limited partners] want to invest into these next generation of VCs, but they’re just having a hard time really understanding this market right now,” Mead said.

Unlike Y Combinator, Oper8r does not currently take a stake in the funds that participate in its program. However, Mead tells me that he and his co-founder are planning to capitalize the program and build an investment platform atop of Oper8r. In the future, they will function as LPs in graduated funds.

Oper8r’s first cohort was launched in June 2020. Out of 125 applications, only 18 VC fund teams were chosen. In terms of diversity, 11 of those teams were from underrepresented backgrounds including 6 women-led general partner teams and 5 black and person of color-led teams. Half of the teams also included immigrants.

Its first cohort included operator angels, investors who recently spun out of big firms, founders, and rolling fund managers, all looking to take a more institutional approach to investing.

Heather Harnett, the founder of NYC startup studio Human Ventures, was looking for a way to take advantage of the access she was getting from the platform she built. She turned to Oper8r to learn procedural and operational consistencies on how to create a fund, while also cross-referencing with other managers in the batch.

“What First Round Capital did to standardize the early financing rounds for startups and build community among founders, Oper8r is doing for emerging fund managers,” she said.

Oper8r isn’t entirely without competitors. Plexo Capital, which is both a venture firm and an outfit that backs other venture funds, is also spinning up a program to help educate young investors on the mechanics of back-office administration an other pieces of the venture fund puzzle.

Of course, an even bigger potential rival is AngelList, which takes care of the hassle, rules, and regulations that can up an up-and-coming fund manager and that charges a fee in return.

Mead doesn’t view Oper8r’s methodology as competitive with AngelList, saying that “there’s room for more than one organization that supports a merchant just because of the size of [venture capital] right now.” The firm is also focused on teaching new investors how to manage their businesses themselves. It’s a top-down versus ground-up approach.

Mead further adds that while AngelList’s rolling fund product has grown accessibility, some limited partners still only invest in venture capitalists who’ve raised capital from institutions previously. Thus, new fund managers might be comfortable raising a $10 million micro-fund via a rolling method, but when it comes time to get a $150 million early-stage investment vehicle with institutional LPs, it might not be as easy.

Ultimately, Oper8r and AngelList could co-exist as they both strive for similar goals: increase representation within venture capital, even if it’s through nontraditional routes.

“Most institutions see only one way to make money in VC, which is invest in the top brand-name VC firms,” Mead said. “We are trying to change that perception.”

As COVID-19 era drags on, VCs look beyond Zoom calls for due diligence and sourcing

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After IPOs and acquisitions, a look at Utah’s biggest venture rounds of 2019

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

This morning we’re dialing into some late-stage venture activity in Utah. Why? Because Utah has become a hotbed of startup activity, yielding both IPOs and huge acquisitions. And as Utah isn’t a media hub in the way that San Francisco and New York City are, it’s often a bit undercovered.

So what better place to cast our eye?

Today we’re going to look at the seven largest venture rounds in the state that have been recorded by Crunchbase in 2019 (no post-IPO action, no grants, no secondaries, no debt, no private equity). We’ll quickly explain each company, look at its investor list, and then ask ourselves how soon we think the company might go public.

Ready?

Countdown

Exploring our seven largest rounds, let’s start from the smallest of the cohort and proceed up in dollar-scale (full list here).

HZO’s $40 million Series D

Based in Draper, Utah, HZO’s tech coats electronics with tiny particles so that the elements can’t wreck them. The startup does more than just coat phones, working with industrial equipment, automotive tech, and IoT tooling.

It’s a business that has attracted well over $100 million in capital to date, according to Crunchbase. That sum includes a $20 million Series B led by Iron Gate Capital, a smaller, $15 million Series C led by Iron Gate Capital, and HZO’s latest $40 million investment led by, you guessed it, Iron Gate Capital. Horizons Ventures has also put money into the company, while Cathay Bank lent it $30 million.

Using our patented gut-check-o-meter, we aren’t expecting an S-1 from HZO soon.

Public investors loved SaaS stocks in 2019, and startups should be thankful

Nav’s $45 million Series C

Another Draper, Utah, company raising large sums this year, Nav is a credit information marketplace for smaller companies. Investigating this morning, Nav feels a bit like Credit Karma, but for SMBs looking at taking on additional credit.

The model has attracted lots of external funding, including a 2015-era Series A from Kleiner that tipped the scales at $8.4 million. Nav’s 2017 Series B weighed in at $37.7 million. And, most recently, it picked up a $44.9 million Series C that was co-led by Experian Ventures, Goldman, and Point72 Ventures.

What’s our IPO guess? Given that it raised a Series C this year, we’d expect at least another round — maybe two — before we see SEC filings of interest from Nav.

Weave’s $70 million Series D

Weave’s Series D is notable in that it valued the company within spitting distance of unicorn status. Indeed, the $70 million round brought its valuation up to $0.97 billion according to Crunchbase.