SaaSy Profitability, One Medical’s Pop And Layoffs Continue

Sometimes, startupland surprises me.

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Last week I wrote about the trend of crowd-sourced spreadsheets popping up amid layoffs at tech companies. And then, thanks to you wonderful readers, I learned about another trend: stigma-fighting communities finding silver linings in job cuts. Think a Slack dedicated to referrals, due diligence on companies and empathy. Read my story, it was a treat to report on and showed me some of the humanity happening behind the scenes. Best of luck to everyone on the job hunt.

Now let’s go into some SaaSy news: Mary Ann told us how the new cool in the startup world is increasingly less about valuations and more about profitability. And if you have the appetite for more musings on venture capital and startup trends, Gene pulled out some key takeaways from the 2019 Seed Series.

Even with SoftBank-backed belt tightenings happening across the Valley, the Japanese conglomerate isn’t quite yet spent. Mexico’s AlphaCredit landed $125 million in a SoftBank-led Series B. Other predictable funding news continued as Visa invested in another startup, this time as part of a larger $80 million round for a cross-border payments company.

Venture capitalists also cut checks for a wide variety of sectors, from a startup that wants to be the ‘Airbnb of storage’ to a telemedicine management company to a Texas-based restaurant tech startup. We snapshotted bigger trends with a piece on automaker startup funding and a look at how privacy and security companies raised almost $10 billion last year. Also don’t forget our nod to European unicorns from 2019.

We also had some positive IPO news to end a tough January, with One Medical’s stock surging on the first day of trading. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the word “pop” in a story.

With that, we’ll close out the month. Thanks all, as always, and feel free to send us tips on venture capital and startup trends at newsteam@crunchbase.com.

Happy February,
N

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Illustration: Dom Guzman