Bessemer Venture Partners has joined the crypto craze with BessemerDAO, a group for discussing trends in the crypto industry. It has also carved out $250M of its latest $2.5B fund to funnel into crypto investments. More: - BessemerDAO will eventually manage investment vehicles for backing early-stage crypto startups. At this time, however, it lacks any capital and differs from standard DAOs in that it is not decentralized.
- Partner Ethan Kurzweil told The Information that the firm’s goal is to understand the inner workings of the crypto community before deploying its capital. The firm’s strategy should serve to prevent it from trying to force a traditional VC mindset on a sector that operates differently.
- Kurzweil will lead Bessmer’s crypto division alongside partners Charles Birnbaum, Talia Goldberg, and Jeremy Levine.
- It is notable that the firm decided not to follow in other firms’ footsteps to raise a separate vehicle for crypto.
Reminder: - Crypto VC firm Electric Capital announced a $1B fund last week.
- Andreessen Horowitz is reportedly raising the largest-ever crypto VC fund at $4.5B.
- Sequoia Capital reported in February that it is raising up to $600M for a crypto-focused fund, its first-ever industry-specific vehicle.
The wider lens: - Over 4,000 DAOs currently manage a total of $7.9B in their treasuries, according to data provider DeepDAO.
- That figure is up from $1B a year ago but down from $13.2B since November, due largely to stock market losses impacting the value of tokens.
- Last year, crypto startups raised more than $30B in VC funding, a 300% jump YoY, according to financial data firm PitchBook.
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 Only 30% of female founders pay themselves a salary before they have successfully raised a seed round. The figure comes from a new study by publishers by the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, Wells Fargo Foundation, Penn State, and the Fair Play Workplace. The results are based on interviews with 152 female founders. More: - Of all responders, white female founders were most likely to pay themselves (68.2%), while Black women only paid themselves 34.8% of the time.
- American Indian or Alaskan female founders paid themselves least frequently, only 25% of the time.
- In total, 45% of the female entrepreneurs were paying themselves.
- The majority of women surveyed didn’t start paying themselves until their businesses were five years old.
- The interviewees reported access to financial capital as the biggest challenge facing them, ahead of COVID-19 and slow business/lost sales.
- Only 24% of respondents reported having a great deal of access to capital, while a further 13% reported having adequate access.
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Norwegian smart energy provider Tibber raised a $100M Series C round from Summa Equity, Europe’s largest impact fund. The round brought Tibber’s total raised to date to $181.5B in equity and debt capital. Balderton Captial, Eight Roads Ventures, and Schibsted Ventures also participated. More: - Tibber offers consumers a reliable source of renewable energy in addition to various smart home devices to keep track of their consumption.
- The company is already operating in Norway, Sweden, and Germany, and is targeting the Netherlands as its next expansion.
- Its user count jumped in 2021 from approximately 120,000 to over 400,000.
- By offering consumers a way to track their energy usage, Tibber claims to be moving beyond previous business models for energy providers, which encourage greater consumption for greater profit.
- Summa Equity entered the European investing scene with a massive $2.5B (€2.3B) fund in January and quickly moved to acquire Belgian financial crime fighter Intix.
- It has the express goal of supporting startups that operate in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
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Crunchbase reports that U.S. Series B funding rounds reached an average size of $45M in 2021, up nearly 50% compared to the year before. The round marks a transitional period for startups and thus functions as a bellwether for shifts in the startup ecosystem at large. The dynamics around the stage lead the analysts to four conclusions: - The first and most obvious conclusion is the amount of money sloshing about: $55.9B was invested across 1,242 rounds in 2021, up by over 100% YoY from the $25.4B invested across 835 rounds in 2020.
- 2022 seems to have maintained the pace, with $9.24B invested so far across 190 rounds.
- While Bay Area-headquartered companies attracted about 40% of all Series B funding, the top 10 rounds by size included companies hailing from Reno, Salt Lake City, Austin, Boulder, and Los Angeles.
- New York and Boston companies together pulled in about 16% of capital.
- Despite the rush on fintech companies in 2021, none of the top Series B fundings this year went to fintechs.
- Instead, investors seem to be focusing on biotech, NTFs, and energy.
- While U.S. fundings overall slowed down in the wake of the war in Ukraine, Series B fundings kept pace.
- In the two weeks following Feb. 23, U.S. companies announced $1.4B in Series B investments, on par with the $1.48B deployed in the prior two weeks.
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Adtech/Martech - Topsort (San Francisco, Calif.), auction-based advertising infrastructure startup: $8M Seed from Pear Ventures, Quiet Capital, FJLabs, Micky Malka, Lydia Jett, Akhil Paul, et al.
Aerospace - Slingshot (Austin, Texas), platform to help space operators to better manage and protect their assets: $25M A led by Draper Associates, ATX Venture Partners, participation from Edison Partners, Embedded Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Lockheed Martin Ventures, et al.
AI/ML - LifeScore (London, U.K.), AI music technology: $14.4M A led by Octopus Ventures, participation from Warner Music Group, IDEO, 4 Good Ventures.
Biotech/Health - Gravie (Minneapolis, Minn.), employer-sponsored health benefits solutions: $75M E led by Georgian, participation from FirstMark Capital, AXA Venture Partners, Split Rock Partners, et al.
- Maxwell Biosciences (Austin, Texas), preclinical stage drug platform: $10.8M Seed led by DecentraNet, participation from Star Lake Bioventures, Joseph Ventures, Keiretsu Forum, et al.
ClimateTech - Clean Crop Technologies (Holyoke, Mass.), decarbonization platform for food production and storage: $6M A from ReGen Ventures, Trailhead Capital, MassMutual Catalyst Fund.
Data/Analytics - CaliberMind (Denver, Colo.), B2B data platform for revenue analytics: $8M A led by IAG Capital Partners, Lavrock Ventures, participation from Eric Matlick, Denver Angels.
Enterprise - Society Brands (Canton, Ohio), Amazon aggregator: $204M Debt/Equity led by i80 Group.
- 100ms (India), live video conferencing infrastructure startup: $20M A led by Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation, participation from Matrix Partners India, LocalGlobe, Accel, Strive.vc.
- SafeBase (Saint Petersburg, Fla.), certification/trust platform to accelerate sales processes: $18M A led by New Enterprise Associates, participation from Y Combinator, Comcast Ventures.
- Silq (San Jose, Calif.), platform to help brands digitize their production processes: $17.6M led by F-Prime Capital, Flexport Ventures, participation from Eight Roads Ventures India, et al.
Fintech - Lendable (London, U.K.), AI-powered consumer finance platform: $274.4M from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, et al. The company was valued at $4.6B.
- Stilt (San Francisco, Calif.), financial platform for immigrants: $14M A led by Link Ventures, participation from Petrushka Investments, Hillsven Capital, et al. The company also raised $100M in debt.
- In3 (Amsterdam, Netherlands), BNPL platform: $11.1M A led by Finch Capital.
- Yuno (Colombia), payments platform for LatAm: $10M Seed from Andreessen Horowitz, et al.
- CoFi (Salt Lake City, Utah), construction financing platform: $7M Seed from Blackhorn Ventures, Metaprop, Tenacity.
- Chipper (Austin, Texas), provider of an app for paying off student loans: $5.6M Seed from Freestyle Capital, Slauson & Co., Propel Venture.
Gaming RegTech - Silent Eight (Singapore), AI-enhanced economic sanctions enforcement and financial crime prevention solutions: $40M B led by TYH Ventures, participation from HSBC Ventures, OTB Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, SC Ventures, et al.
Robotics - Diamond Age (Phoenix, Ariz.), robotics-based home construction automation: $50M A led by Prime Movers Lab, participation from Alpaca VC, Dolby Family Ventures, Timber Grove Ventures, et al.
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Quick Hits - The Path to AI Maturity provides insights from the C-suite on current levels of AI investment, priorities by stage of AI maturity, and more.*
- Wesley Chan, founder of Google Analytics and Google Voice, has partnered with Morgan Stanley tech banker Pegah Ebrahimi to launch a $350M early-stage VC firm.
- VC firm Seven Seven Six is writing $500,000 checks for a new cohort of micro funds, targeting GPs with less experience in tech investing but with operational background or domain expertise.
- S3 Ventures closed its seventh fund at $250M for Series A-B rounds for business technology, digital experiences, and healthcare technology companies.
- Curated, a new $30M fund devoted to buying and holding NFT artwork, clinched support from Silicon Valley luminaries including Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Andrew Chen, Arianna Simpson, Jon Lai, Alexis Ohanian, Justin Kan, Electric Capital’s Avichal Garg, and Curtis Spencer.
- Didi has reportedly delayed its Hong Kong IPO due to regulators’ demands that the company overhaul its cybersecurity infrastructure. Its apps will remain inaccessible on app stores.
- Niantic, the maker of Pokémon Go, acquired 8th Wall, a company that helps developers make web-based augmented reality apps, for an undisclosed sum. The deal is reportedly Niantic’s eighth and largest to date.
- Are you leaving revenue from payments processing on the table? Find out in our guide to payments for software companies.*
*This is a sponsored post.
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 |  | Inside VC's writer/curator Stephen currently lives in Berlin and is pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy. He otherwise spends his time trying his hand at recipes from India and Southeast Asia, escaping it all at the kickboxing gym, and offending aural sensibilities with his band. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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