Post Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s Raises $112M More

Morning Report: Harry’s, a subscription razor company, has raised $112 million more, bringing its total funding amount to nearly a half-billion.

The New York Times reported that Harry’s has raised a $112 million round of capital that Crunchbase lists as its Series D. According to the same historical record, Harry’s has raised a staggering $474 million to-date.

Follow Crunchbase News on Twitter & Facebook

The capital event is not even Harry’s largest single-chunk infusion. Indeed, the firm raised a larger, $122.5 million round in 2014. However, given that 2014 was a fundamentals-free venture year, we can perhaps let that historical moment slide and not count the firm’s later, smaller rounds as negative signals.

Why And Who Would?

Before we get into why in the flying hell does Harry’s need a half billion in capital to build out its business, what explains investor demand for its shares?

That isn’t too hard a question to answer, as it turns out. All we have to do is recall the following headline from 2016:

That puts a nice historical precedent in the market for Harry’s, at least in terms of potential exit value. And Harry’s will look for a valuation at exit similar to what Dollar Shave Club commanded, if not more. When the firm raised its Series C, it was worth $750 million post-money. Even if the firm didn’t raise its share price during its latest funding event, its valuation rose by $112 million today. You can do the arithmetic.

So why external groups are willing to give Harry’s money perhaps isn’t too hard to parse. But what will the firm do with its new cash? Here we return to the Times’ latest:

Harry’s plans to announce as soon as this week that it has raised $112 million in a new round of financing, money that its leaders said would help the company develop brands beyond men’s grooming.

So an expansion outside of its vertical. Why the subscription company can’t self-fund an expansion outside of the male genre 5 years or so after its founding is perhaps a good example of just how we build companies today. Regardless, another mega round is in the books for Q1’2018.

 From The Crunchbase Daily:

Roche buys Flatiron Health for $1.9B

• Swiss pharma giant Roche will pay $1.9 billion to acquire remaining shares of Flatiron Health, a provider of oncology-specific electronic health record software and data analysis for cancer research. New York-based Flatiron previously raised over $300 million in venture funding from Roche, Google’s GV, and other backers.

Celularity raises $250M]

• Celularity, a biotechnology company developing therapies using stem cells from human placenta, has raised $250 million from invididual investors, United Therapeutics, Sorrento Therapeutics, and Celgene, which spun out the startup’s core technology. Co-founders are XPrize founder Peter Diamandis and Human Longevity co-founder Bob Hariri.

South Korea aims for startup gold

• For the next nine days, the eyes of the world will be on the snowy slopes of Pyeongchang. Meanwhile, a couple of hours away in Seoul, a burgeoning startup scene is seeing investments multiply, generating exits, and even creating a unicorn or two.

Better understand startup investment in Emerging Europe

• The East-West Digital News group has compiled a report looking at startup investing trends in what it calls “Emerging Europe,” using Crunchbase data in part. It provides an interesting look at a growing hub of innovation.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias