Who got funded? 💎
Unpacking $70M in funding
Welcome back to Top Startups! Despite the hiring freeze across Big Tech, there are many startups with lean teams that are still actively hiring.
Before we dive in, I just exposed the five most expensive mistakes I’ve made, including who’s getting a bad deal at startups.
Now back to our regular programming. Any of these catch your eye, let me know and I can intro you 👋:
nate | E-Commerce | 💸 $38M Series A from Coatue, Forerunner | 150 employees
What they do: The world’s only universal shopping app. nate is a social shopping and payments startup, with offices in New York and London.
What I like: Fast user growth — doubling every 6 weeks(!); consumers can purchase from over 2M stores in the US through one interface; experienced founder with 10+ years of e-commerce background; tackling promising problems from social shopping and gifting to creator monetization
Iron Fish | Crypto | 💸 $28M Series A from Sequoia, A16Z | 10 employees
What they do: Building the universal privacy layer for crypto, like SSL for blockchains
What I like: Iron Fish is fixing two critical issues with crypto: usability (some sites are straight-up tribute to the early 90s) and privacy (blockchains today are default public, even though its core users are privacy-oriented); strong early team from Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Uber and more
Skio | SaaS | 💸 $3.7M Seed from YC | 20 employees
What they do: Help brands on Shopify sell subscriptions without ripping their hair out
What I like: Already surpassed $1.5M ARR and growing fast; massive market projected to reach $470B worldwide by 2025; sweet spot for joining because it’s unlocked product-market-fit but still early enough for huge equity upside; strong early team from Facebook, Shopify, Figma
Some more goodies: referrals to top startups 🤝, 1600+ compensation data 💰 and a negotiation service that guarantees higher comp ✅
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Thanks,
-Linda