Hello and welcome to Last Week In Venture, a roundup of venture deals from the past week that you may have missed.
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The Crunchbase News team has covered some of the biggest new funds and funding rounds. This includes a $3.8 billion fund for Tiger Global, $1.85 billion for Bessemer Venture Partners and $1 billion for Thrive Capital, all while public markets took a serious tumble. Beyond these big funds, we looked at big rounds from Knotel, Prescient, Epic Games and Bytedance, among other stories.
Believe it or not, way more happened than even that. It’s easy to miss what companies outside the spotlight are contributing to the global startup ecosystem. But that doesn’t mean their stories aren’t worth sharing.
Let’s dive into the week that was in venture-land.
Jeepers Creepers What’s On Your Peepers?
While many folks will put on a pair of glasses this weekend to round out a Halloween costume, many more of us wear glasses everyday.
Here’s what’s going on in the specs space:
- Pair Eyewear is a New York-based company which designs and distributes children’s glasses with optional bright plastic top frames kids can switch out depending on their mood or outfit. Like its grown-up competitor Warby Parker, Pair Eyewear gives a pair of glasses to a child in need for each set sold. On Monday, the company announced that it raised $1 million in seed funding from Precursor Ventures, Outbound Ventures, Corigin Ventures, and Bolt Ventures.
- While not technically from this week, glasses lens replacement service Lensabl raised a round last week. And talk about a niche market to start with. “We are the preferred prescription provider of Snapchat Spectacles,” CEO Andrew Bilinsky told TechCrunch. Lensabl raised $3 million in a widely-syndicated venture round led by Rogue Venture Partners. Bilinsky said that Lensabl is “already talking to and partnering with a variety of brands” besides Snap.
The Global Scooter Invasion Continues
Like a leviathan, the tentacles of the lightweight electric vehicle industrial complex continue to encircle the globe.
Here’s the latest outbreaks of scooterpox:
- ?? The market moves quickly. Investors and reporters joke about companies announcing seed rounds one week and Series A rounds the following week. TIER Mobility, a German electric scooter service, actually did it though. On October 15th it announced €2 million in seed funding led by Speedinvest. A mere 8 days later, on October 23, the company announced it raised a €25 million Series A led by Northzone.
- ?? Beam, a Singaporean electric scooter service, raised $6.4 million in a seed round led by Sequoia Capital India. A number of U.S. and Chinese venture firms participated in the round. The company’s CEO, Alan Jiang, previously led APAC operations at bike-sharing giant ofo. And before that, he “played a key role in launching Uber across Asia, including China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam,” according to Yahoo Finance.
- ?? This time it’s Belgian bikes, not scooters. Brussels-based Cowboy is a new electric bike startup that built its own hardware and software from the ground up. It’s not a bike-share service; Cowboy makes electric-assisted, app-connected bikes and sells them directly to consumers. The company announced that Tiger Global Management led its Series A round, which lassoed €10 million for Cowboy.
And for those of you who made it to the end, a lagniappe: a spooky skeleton jumping over some hurdles. Have a safe and happy Halloween weekend. Not too much horsing around, you hear? ?
Image Credit: Last Week In Venture graphic created by JD Battles. Cover photo and thumbnail by Andrew Small on Unsplash.
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