Company · Software
San Francisco
Every investor coverage indicates participated in a round Dropbox raised.
Companies Dropbox acquired or merged with, per published coverage. Buying a company is not investing in one: nothing here counts in the deals column.
| Name | Role | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Tony Ward | Head (former) | SmartCompany |
| Arash Ferdowsi | Founder | kucoin.com, newshub.medianet.com.au, theunderbite.co |
| Meg Whitman | Director | Startup Daily |
| Drew Houston | CEO | Startup Daily |
| Tim Brewer | functionly.com, Afterwork Ventures portfolio |
Stories naming Dropbox. Where several outlets covered the same round, they are bundled under whichever ran the fullest account.
San Francisco fleet-operations AI company Motive announced over $1.3 billion in growth funding from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund; the investor's managing director joined its board, and Motive withdrew its S-1 filing.
Also cryptobriefing.com
LaunchVic selected nine Victorian start-ups, including Preezie, for a mentoring bootcamp with executives from Atlassian, Uber, Dropbox, Seek and Canva.
Veterinary biotech Gamgee has raised a four million dollar seed round led by Founders Fund, launching from Y Combinator to develop personalised mRNA cancer vaccines for dogs.
Also newshub.medianet.com.au·Dealroom·thesaasnews.com·kucoin.com
WorkOS has closed a $100m Series C at a $2bn valuation — its first external backing in over four years — with founder Michael Grinich pointing the company at identity infrastructure for enterprise AI agents.
Atlassian is acquiring US developer-analytics firm DX for US$1 billion — its second purchase this month, following The Browser Company and earlier deals for Loom and AirTrack.
Also Forbes Australia
Agentio announces a $12m Series A with Benchmark leading and earlier backers Craft and AlleyCorp returning, taking the creator-advertising platform's total funding to $16.25m.
Square Peg led Lorikeet's US$5 million seed round for its AI customer-support automation platform, joined by Skip Capital and US angel investors, supporting the team's US expansion.
Also Square Peg Capital portfolio·Startup Daily·Startup Daily·SmartCompany·SmartCompany·Startup Daily
LaunchVic case study profiling Mindset Health, a maker of hypnotherapy apps, and founders Alex and Chris Naoumidis through Startmate, Y Combinator and the 30X30 program.
Perth's Plus Eight accelerator has picked six startups for its 2023 program, collectively backed with over $400,000 in seed funding, plus an Israel trip and a December Demo Night slot.
UNSW Founders profiles its alumnus HEO Robotics, a Sydney company that inspects satellites from orbit, recounting its founding, accelerator history, and founders' backgrounds.
New Zealand data startup Segna has received US$125,000 from Y Combinator before starting its accelerator program, taking total funds raised to NZ$880,000 with backing from three venture funds.
Book extract by the Equity Mates hosts urging investors to look beyond Australia, mentioning their podcast's December 2020 seed backing from Stake's founder for a reported six-figure sum in return for 8%.
Wellness streaming platform BodyMindLife reports post-launch growth, corporate outreach, mentoring program acceptance, team expansion, and fresh investment from existing pre-seed backers via the Wholesale platform.
Also Wholesale Investor
Profile of edutech startup Classnika, founded by Dr Ramtin Shams, offering subject-specific virtual classrooms for remote learning; the company was built with and backed by early-stage VC Antler.
FoundAt announces its selection for Plug and Play Japan's Summer/Fall 2021 Energy Batch 1 accelerator, giving it mentoring, corporate connections and a September demo day pitching opportunity.
AfterWork Ventures explains why it invested in Functionly, an organisational design tool, citing the founding team's track record, product-led growth, and the opportunity to replace spreadsheet-heavy HR processes.
Weekly roundup by Ignition Lane covering Vend's sale to Lightspeed, Roblox's listing, raises at Pipe, DataGrail, Mastt, Sonnant and Corvus, LaunchVic's new fund for women founders, and Scale Investors' new co-CEOs.
Also Startup Daily·LaunchVic
Roundup items: PayPal's buy-now-pay-later launch for Australia, bids for Jack Dorsey's tweet NFT, Dropbox buying DocSend, an eSports forecast, and OpenMarkets' $10 million pre-IPO raise.
Queensland industrial IoT startup GreaseBoss joined Y Combinator's accelerator remotely after winning a $100,000 state government grant, having earlier raised pre-seed backing, and plans a seed round.
Also Cut Through Venture
Weekly roundup reporting Salesforce's Slack acquisition, several ASX listings, multiple Australian startup raises, OneVentures' fund tranche close, and international deals including Facebook buying Kustomer.
Also Startup Daily·Startup Daily·Startup Daily·SmartCompany·Startup Daily·SmartCompany·SmartCompany·Startup Daily
Ignition Lane's weekly roundup reports MyDeal and Adore Beauty listing on the ASX, Rokt's US$80 million Series D, several trans-Tasman raises, Quibi shutting down, Westpac trimming its Zip stake, and local executive appointments.
Also Crunchbase News·Startup Daily·Startup Daily·Startup Daily·Startup Daily·ARN (ARNnet)
Perth org-design startup Functionly has received a $598,000 federal Accelerating Commercialisation grant, lifting its pre-seed funding to $1.4 million, as it develops its team-planning tool toward commercial launch.
An opinion column arguing entrepreneurs do their best work in downturns, retelling WhatsApp's founding after the GFC, its early backing and sale to Facebook, and predicting a wave of purpose-driven startups from COVID-19.
Video editing startup Clipchamp has raised a $13.2 million Series A led by Tola Capital, with TEN13 participating, as it expands into the US and grows its Brisbane team.
Also SmartCompany·Startup Daily·Startup Daily·Startup Daily·SmartCompany
UK education data integration startup Wonde raised $2.6 million led by Tempus Partners, with Transition Level Investments, Macdoch Ventures and Xponova joining, to support its Australian expansion.
Market research startup Qualie raised $1 million in seed funding from high-net-worth individuals including Simon McKeon, Michael Borsky, Mehrdad Baghai and Tony Ward, having won clients such as Google without marketing.
Also SmartCompany
Salesforce Ventures commits US$50 million to a new fund backing Australian startups, while Sydney investor Equity Venture Partners closes a $35 million second fund; KPMG data shows local venture investment grew in 2018.
Design software company InVision has bought Australian file-collaboration startup Trunk, whose team joins InVision while its product winds down; separately, Seek has bought graduate jobs platform GradConnection.