Who got funded? 💎
From Seed to Series B
Welcome back to Top Startups! Despite the hiring freeze in Big Tech, there are many startups with lean teams that are still actively hiring.
Here are my favorites this week. Any catch your eye, let me know and I can intro you 👋
Tome | Productivity | 💸 $32M Series A from Greylock & Coatue | 35 employees
What they do: Building a storytelling tool for work
What I like: Too many hours are spent perfecting decks using old-school tools; Tome is building a new format to help people tell effective stories in minutes not hours, making even complex ideas easy to share; strong early team from Instagram, Messenger, Airbnb, Pinterest; already used by customers like Snap, Flexport and Superhuman
Pogo | Consumer Data | 💸 $15M Seed from 20VC, Founders of Honey & Carta | 25 employees
What they do: Helping everyday consumers earn and save by unlocking power of their data
What I like: Very fast growth — used by hundreds of thousands of families to save millions of dollars so far; engagement on par with Snapchat & Twitter; 4.9 stars across 31K(!) reviews; more details in TechCrunch feature
Middesk | SaaS | 💸 $57M Series B from Sequoia, Accel, YC | 80 employees
What they do: Automating business verification and underwriting to help B2B companies onboard customers faster and more reliably
What I like: Hits the sweet spot of: 1) hard problem for companies to solve in-house; 2) clear ROI by helping companies grow faster; trusted by strong roster of customers from Shopify to Plaid and Rippling; valuable mission of leveling the playing field for new businesses to get capital and tooling
📌 One more thing….
I’ve helped people negotiate an extra $2M and counting. Today, I’m launching the Startup Negotiation Playbook — works even without competing offers. NGL, this is probably the highest-ROI thing I’ve ever put out.
Get early-bird spots before price goes up 🔥
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Thanks for tuning in,
-Linda