fundraising

Austin-based Ironspring Ventures raised $100M to invest in the industrial revolution

Hardware /

When Ironspring Ventures launched in 2020 to back startups in industrial sectors like construction and manufacturing, it was one of very few early-stage venture firms paying attention to those capital-intensive sectors. Now, the firm is doubling down. The Austin, Texas-based firm raised $100 million for its second fund to focus on industrial startups. This is […]

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In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch

Venture /

When Bowery Capital general partner Loren Straub started talking to a startup from the latest Y Combinator accelerator batch a few months ago, she thought it was strange that the company didn’t have a lead investor for the round it was raising. Even stranger, the founders didn’t seem to be looking for one. She thought

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Contour Venture Partners, an early investor in Datadog and Movable Ink, has raised $42M for its fifth fund

Venture /

Longtime New York-based seed investor, Contour Venture Partners, is making progress on its latest flagship fund. The firm closed on $42 million, raised from 64 backers, for Contour Venture Partners Fund V, according to an SEC filing from May 17. The firm is targeting $90 million for its fifth flagship fund and started fundraising in

Contour Venture Partners, an early investor in Datadog and Movable Ink, has raised $42M for its fifth fund Read More »

Berlin-based trawa raises €10M to use AI to make buying renewable energy easier for SMEs

Climate /

The brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 took businesses that depended on oil and gas energy by surprise. Suddenly, renewable energy became crucial to survival. But how best to buy it? That was the germination of the idea behind trawa, a Berlin-based renewable energy supplier that recently raised €10 million in a seed

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Fairgen ‘boosts’ survey results using synthetic data and AI-generated responses

Venture /

Surveys have been used to gain insights on populations, products and public opinion since time immemorial. And while methodologies might have changed through the millennia, one thing has remained constant: The need for people, lots of people. But what if you can’t find enough people to build a big enough sample group to generate meaningful

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Investors won’t give you the real reason they are passing on your startup

Fundraising /

“When an investor passes on you, they will not tell you the real reason,” said Tom Blomfield, group partner at Y Combinator. “At seed stage, frankly, no one knows what’s going to fucking happen. The future is so uncertain. All they’re judging is the perceived quality of the founder. When they pass, what they’re thinking

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The ‘valley of death’ for climate lies between early-stage funding and scaling up

Climate /

Jonathan Strimling faced a dilemma. His company had spent nine years working on chemical processes that could turn old cardboard boxes into high-quality building insulation. The good news was the team had finally cracked it: CleanFiber’s technology pumped out insulation — really good insulation. It had fewer contaminants and produced less dust than other cellulose

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Windfall Bio is seeing strong demand for its methane-eating microbe startup

Climate /

When Josh Silverman started shopping around the idea for his methane-eating microbe startup, Windfall Bio, eight years ago, the market just wasn’t ready. Nobody cared about methane, he said. Companies were instead focused on lowering their carbon emissions. But a few years later, the market is starting to come around. Menlo Park–based Windfall Bio raised

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