A Decade Of Deals, RIP Consumer Device Startups, And Spiffy, Spying Robots

Welcome to the Crunchbase News Weekend Update. An email form of this post went out Saturday morning. Happy reading!

When it comes to being home for the holidays, it seems as though our favorite recipes encourage – scratch that – demand a spoonful of family tiffs, headbutts, and arguments, alongside a healthy portion of laughter and love.

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That’s why when I read Mary Ann’s story about the ups and downs of family-founded startups, it hit home (although I promise the Mascarenhas family is not secretly in stealth).

Check out her piece on how families come together to start innovative startups, from carpooling hacks to a direct-to-consumer plant shop.

Wholesomeness in mind, we wanted to kick off 2020 with a look at some lessons learned from the past. Sophia Kunthara walked us through the largest funding rounds from each year of the decade, noting how big rounds really have gotten over time. At one point, a nine-figure round was the biggest of the year. Now, as you can see from our reporting, it’s a weekly occurrence at the least.

Further, we also looked at both the Unicorns of 2019 and, by contrast, the startup sectors that had dips in funding this year. Plus, broil over this question posed by Joanna Glasner: what happened to all the consumer device startups?

As for funding news, it’s been a little slow but that’s soon to change, I’m sure. This past week, Brazil’s Loft, a digital real estate platform, raised $175 million, and Trifo, which makes a robot that both vacuums and protects through surveillance, raised $15 million. For the story behind the investment deals, check out our Seed Series (our latest edition includes an interview with Sapphire Partners). Plus, One Medical filed its S-1 on late Friday.

And that’s all I have for now. The past 365 days taught me that among all the big things that happened to me this past year, like a move across the country, a new job, and a new beat, it’s the small subtleties that weigh the heaviest.

Cheers to an even better 2020 right alongside all of you.

Best,
Natasha

P.S. Follow me (@nmasc_) on Twitter.

Illustration: Dom Guzman