Sprouts, Fake Meat For The Swiss, And Tech Support For Pets

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

As we enter Diwali, an Indian festival of lights, I’m missing the taste of my mom’s cooking (and honestly, even the itchy feel of traditional Indian attire). So when I learned about Riya Collective, or a startup that wants to be “Rent The Runway” for Indian clothes, I was ecstatic. It’s a departure from what I usually see covering tech, and a reminder that fresh perspectives exist everywhere.

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Anyways, as I defrost some Trader Joe’s butter paneer and hope for the best, let’s get into the news from the past week.

First, the good news: Zonehaven raised fresh capital to use data for wildfire management, and Winnie got $9 million for childcare relief. We also saw the Swiss’s Planted aim at fake meat and Austin’s Literati create a subscription book club for kids. Finally, we covered funding for mental healthcare and a startup looking to free everyone from mortgage woes.

Now, the bad news: Layoffs continued for WeWork and began for PAX Labs, reminding us that big companies may have flashy checks but remain vulnerable to failure like other startups. Also, WeWork’s controversial-but-once-darling ex-CEO Adam Neumann left his company in shambles, but still walked away with over a billion.

Wrapping up with some numbers, data shows that Silicon Valley’s funding share is shrinking as a percentage of a global whole. While that may feel a bit surprising, I’ll remind you that a Chicago-based company just filed its S-1, and there’s a soon to be Utah-based unicorn.

Until next week,

Natasha

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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