Seattle Week in evaluation: Tax Day model
We’ll pay what we owe Uncle Sam and dangle our noses at the breadth and depth of tax evasion efforts by means of companies and the tremendous-rich printed within the Panama Papers. This week, we’re reviewing first-quarter challenge investments and filings indicating that Maveron is raising a new venture fund; a number of new funding rounds, including an incredible one for Portland, OR-based totally trip condominium firm Vacasa; new small print of Madrona challenge Labs’ latest spinout ReplyYes; a useful new carrier for finding topic-subject consultants on Twitter, Listpedia; suggested layoffs at Qumulo and Chef; a new lithium ion battery material startup, Group14 applied sciences; and a few enjoyable stuff from KEXP and the Iditarod path.
—challenge capital traders poured $ 246.7 million into Washington-based firms across 22 offers throughout the primary quarter. That’s down thirteen percent by means of dollars from the primary quarter of 2015, when there were 24 Washington deals, as measured with the aid of the MoneyTree record prepared through PricewaterhouseCoopers and the national challenge Capital affiliation (NVCA), in keeping with data from Thomson Reuters.
Nationally, VC companies invested $ 12.1 billion in 969 deals. The pattern was down most effective about eleven % from the primary quarter of 2015, however VCs tried to lower expectations for what’s beforehand. “I believe we’re in a form of multi-quarter ride back to the historic norm,” stated Neeraj Agrawal, a basic partner in Battery Ventures’ Boston office, in our story on the national numbers. “I in point of fact think the subsequent quarter would be the first data point in the new norm.”
—Vacasa, based totally in Portland, raised $ 35 million to enlarge its trip rentals record and management trade.
—even if investment volumes are trending down, challenge companies have had no bother elevating extra capital to plow into startups. The NVCA also pronounced this week on first-quarter venture fundraising, which reached levels now not considered in a decade. VCs raised $ 12 billion for fifty seven money all the way through the quarter, up fifty nine percent through buck price from the year-earlier period. The selection of money was down 17 %. The NVCA, citing Thomson Reuters knowledge, calls this the strongest three months for funding since the 2nd quarter of 2006.
—Maveron, the consumer-centered mission capital firm founded in 1998 with the aid of Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) founder Howard Schultz and funding banker Dan Levitan, is the latest Seattle-house project agency getting ready to capitalize on investor appetite for challenge. Maveron filed paperwork with the SEC indicating it is raising up to $ a hundred million for a sixth fund, in addition to three related funds. via 5 funds, Maveron, with offices in Seattle and San Francisco, has raised with reference to $ 1 billion and backed firms together with eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), drugstore.com, Potbelly (NASDAQ: PBPB), and zulily (NASDAQ: ZU). Geekwire first said the filings.
—Qumulo, the info storage tool firm, reportedly laid off staff on Tuesday. Geekwire, citing an unnamed source, experiences that 24 folks were let go. Qumulo, thru a PR agency, “declined to comment at the moment.”
Qumulo simply launched a version of its tool with two new key features and mentioned it’s now serving greater than 50 shoppers. all the way through an interview with Xconomy last week, Qumulo executives stated the corporate had doubled its personnel within the closing year to 160. requested whether the company would develop employment at a similar charge going ahead, marketing vp Brett Goodwin said, “We’re attending to the size we want to be. We’ll pressure our future growth in line with how the business grows over the path of 2016.”
Chef, another smartly-funded Seattle device firm, also disclosed a small number of job cuts as it mixed groups.
—ReplyYes, the spinout from Madrona mission Labs that Xconomy first suggested on remaining December, has opened its 2d provider, thinking about graphic novels, and raised $ 2.5 million in funding.
ReplyYes commenced with The Edit, which sends vinyl-document collectors a daily textual content message providing a custom-chosen album that they can purchase with the aid of merely replying “yes”. more than $ 1 million worth of data had been bought throughout the platform thus far, experiences Bloomberg.
the identical conversational commerce way is utilized in ReplyYes’ next channel, starting place certain, which specializes in picture novels.
—Listpedia, a brand new carrier built by serial Seattle tech entrepreneur Marcelo Calbucci, seems extremely useful for somebody discovering a brand new matter. The service lets you automatically build and share lists of social media money owed of people and firms interested by a given house. (Listpedia works with Twitter just for now, though Calbucci constructed the service during the last 9 months to simply add other networks in the future.)
It’s an try and remedy a problem Calbucci encounters often in constructing and advising startups: How do you speedy get up to speed on the important gamers in an industry new to you? The old approach is to look Google for articles like the highest 10 chief advertising officers you must follow on Twitter, after which manually construct an inventory or follow them in my view. however the article is based on one individual or organization’s opinions, and it’s possible static and soon out-of-date. And, in any case, building the record is a time-eating guide process.
Listpedia makes constructing lists straightforward. which you could add a few associated money owed in one go by means of pasting within the net address of a web page, from an industry conference, say, that lists audio system and their Twitter handles. easier nonetheless is subscribing to lists made by means of other folks. There are already hundreds of lists on issues from giant information to digital worlds. for those who’ve found an particularly neatly-curated checklist, you could prepare to be notified by way of Listpedia every time the creator of the list updates it with a new member. which you can also tip the creator to any individual you think will have to be on their listing.
If this sounds vaguely acquainted, it’s because Calbucci constructed one thing an identical referred to as TweepML, ahead of Twitter introduced its own record feature. Calbucci says few individuals use Twitter lists and there’s loads of room for development. “It’s a problem that hasn’t been solved,” he says.
—Lithium ion batteries are becoming extra popular in the whole thing from automobiles to boats to the electrical grid. This week, we said on a brand new Seattle firm with a novel nano-materials option to improving a key element in lithium ion batteries, the anode. the corporate is Group14 applied sciences. it’s spinning out of an existing company, EnerG2, which makes engineered carbon supplies utilized in other vitality storage gadgets. right here’s our story.
—On Friday, KEXP—Seattle’s musical treasure—is doing “6 degrees of Robyn Hitchcock.” the speculation is to play songs by way of artists which are by some means linked, all linking again to the primary music of the day: Hitchcock’s “Viva! Sea-Tac” (sample lyric: “They’ve acquired the most effective computers and low and smack”). good enough, what’s particularly cool about this “6 levels,” KEXP’s 1/3, is the information visualization the station is producing the use of Tableau Public, from Seattle-based Tableau instrument.
As you will find, it lets you apply the path the KEXP DJs blaze during the track, charting the connections again to Hitchcock, and finding out some great small print alongside the best way. Songs can also be sorted by way of artist, label, decade, and whether or no longer they’re native.
KEXP’s new residence at Seattle center (grand opening this weekend) options other progressive ways to interact with the tune. GeekWire’s Todd Bishop checked out “inside the music,” which permits individuals to remix song taking part in in a room by touching mesh netting; their actions are captured via Kinect sensors.
photograph by using Kyle Amstadter
—finally, I had a variety of enjoyable following my cousin as he raced in the 1,000-mile Fairbanks-to-Nome Iditarod trail Invitational. right here’s a narrative—with some amazing photography—in regards to the expertise that allowed me to just about watch the race because it unfolded over just about two weeks.
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