AlleyWatch

04/26/2022

The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 4/26/2022 - AlleyWatch

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 4/26/2022 featuring funding details for Mad Realities and much more.

04/26/2022

TomTex Raises $1.7M to Make Leather Alternatives Using Shellfish and Mushroom Waste - AlleyWatch

While leather is considered to be ethical since the source of hides is from animals already in the food chain, the leather production process is both chemical and water-intensive, and the byproducts of tanneries have significant environmental ramifications. While vegan leather is being touted as a more sustainable alternative, vegan alternatives use plastic compounds that are petrochemical-based and dependent on fossil fuels. TomTex, a Brooklyn-based biomaterials startup, has developed a leather alternative that’s both ethical and truly sustainable. The company uses a proprietary process that extracts a biopolymer, chitin, from the shells of discarded seafood and mushrooms and then combines this with coffee grind waste to develop a near-leatherlike textile that can be customized to customer requirements. The resulting materials are all durable, 100% biodegradable, plastic-free, and do not require tanning or chemical-intensive dying. TomTex, founded in 2020, is refining its formulations and process, scaling its production capacity, with plans to launch an MVP mid-year with its first commercial products available in September. AlleyWatch caught up with TomTex CEO and Founder Uyen Tran to learn more about the business, the company's strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much, much more...

TomTex, cofounded by Uyen Tran, is a plastic-free biobased material company that has created a sustainable alternative to leather from either shell seafood waste or mushrooms waste.

04/25/2022

The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 4/25/2022 - AlleyWatch

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 4/25/2022 featuring funding details for TheGuarantors, Vaunt, and much more.

04/25/2022

TheGuarantors Raises $50M to Streamline the Apartment Rental Process by Taking Guarantees and Security Deposits out of the Equation - AlleyWatch

The median monthly rent for an apartment in Manhattan has jumped to $3700; most property managers and owners have a 40x annual income requirement, meaning that prospective tenants would need to be earning at least $148K a year with a significant credit history. This makes securing an apartment unattainable for many even though they are otherwise qualified, especially for ex-pats, students, recent grads, and entrepreneurs. TheGuarantors is an insurtech solution where the company serves as a co-signer, guaranteeing payment to landlords for a nominal fee. The company also offers a security deposit product where renters do not have to keep thousands locked away in an escrow account. In an extremely tight housing market, TheGuarantors serves the needs of both renters by giving them more options that they qualify for and property managers by reducing risk through guaranteed payments. The company has provided over $1.5B in total coverage since inception, streamlining the lease process by 22 days for a property, and coverage is available in 49 states, available for properties from property managers and developers like Brookfield, Equity Residential, Tishman Speyer, Rockrose, and Silverstein Properties. Despite turbulence in the market from COVID, TheGuarantors was able to triple revenue in 2021.AlleyWatch caught up with TheGuarantors CEO and Cofounder Julien Bonneville to learn more about the business, the company's strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $76.7M, and much, much more...

TheGuarantors, cofounded by Julien Bonneville, is making apartment rentals more accessible through its lease guarantee and security deposit replacement products.

04/25/2022

#NYCtech Week in Review: 4/17/22 - 4/23/22 - AlleyWatch

11 new deals and $211M+ invested into NYC startups for the week. NYC Tech News for the week ending 4/23 featuring news for Transpose, Spruce, AlgiKnit, and much, much more.

04/24/2022

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The Weekly Notable Startup Funding Report takes us on a trip across various ecosystems in the US, highlighting some of the notable funding activity in the various markets that we track. The notable startup funding rounds for the week ending 4/23/22 featuring funding details for Flipside Crypto, Mutiny, Dassana, and twenty other rounds representing $1.72B in new funding that you need to know about.

04/22/2022

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Forrester coined the term “zero party data” in 2018 to describe data that a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand and we are really starting to see what that truly means years later. For e-commerce companies, this data can serve a number of purposes including driving personalization, marketing attribution, and building customer profiles. EnquireLabs is a martech platform that enables brands to seamlessly build a programmable stack of post-purchase questions that can be easily integrated into a brand's existing stack. While consumer feedback surveys have been around for a while, they are static, stagnant, and typically onerous for consumers to fill out, leading to dismal completion rates. EnquireLabs’ technology integration is contextual at the very moment a customer is most willing to share insights, providing a quick and easy way to generate nearly unlimited types of feedback for things like the checkout experience, how they discovered the brand, or even insights specific to the product they purchased. This rich data can be analyzed in the platform’s own dashboard or be sent via integrations with popular services across the brand’s stack for services like Google Analytics, Alloy, Shopify Flow, and Recharge. EnquireLabs’ has over 2000 customers that are using the company’s programmable question integration for a growing variety of use cases. Response rate has been 3x over the industry average as compared to traditional survey technology, yielding an impressive 50%+ response rate. As society’s dependency on e-commerce increases and there are more options for consumers, brands are placing an emphasis on building deeper relationships with their customers and EnquireLabs' technology solutions enable merchants to develop, optimize, nurture, and monetize these relationships at scale without relying on third-party data.

AlleyWatch caught up with EnquireLabs CEO and Cofounder Matt Bahr to learn more about the business, the company's strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $5M, and much, much more...

04/22/2022

When Founders No Longer Have Any Upside - AlleyWatch

"I thought I was doing the right thing by raising more and more money, but now I'm stuck with so little equity that my upside is super limited. On top of that, the probability that we'll ever reach the exit we need to (in my lifetime) to make this worthwhile is a long shot. What are my options here?"

I thought I was doing the right thing by raising more and more money, but now I'm stuck with so little equity that my upside is super limited. On top of that, the probability that we'll ever reach the exit we need to (in my lifetime) to make this worthwhile is a long shot. What are my options here?

04/21/2022

The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 4/21/2022 - AlleyWatch

4 new deals including one that you will not read about anywhere else, representing $75M in new capital...

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 4/21/2022 featuring funding details for Levels, Spruce, and much more.

04/21/2022

Warp Raises $17M to Modernize the Coding Terminal - AlleyWatch

Your memories of the earliest computers probably involve the image of a large box with a keyboard and a tiny screen that's full of text with a flashing cursor. This interface is usually a part of a shell that provides the command line or terminal that’s used to tell a computer what to do. While computing has evolved to intuitive graphical user interfaces that do not require knowledge of coding, the terminal is still the conduit that developers and software engineers use to create applications. Despite advancements in nearly every aspect of computers, this terminal hasn’t really changed over the last 40+ years. Warp is on a mission to change that with its redesigned terminal experience that seamlessly incorporates AI and Cloud to address today’s modern computing environment. Replacing the existing terminal that requires seemingly unlimited knowledge of commands without any guided assistance, Warp has built a full-text editor with embedded search functionality as well as the ability to type what you are looking to do and the embedded AI will provide suggested commands to complete the task. The company also integrates other features that are similar to the functionality found in modern code editors directly into the terminal. By streamlining the development environment and by making workflows shareable, the platform is driving productivity increases for developers. Under the hood, Warp is a fully-native, GPU-accelerated, Rust-based terminal that’s currently in public beta for Mac developers and currently free. AlleyWatch caught up with Warp CEO Zach Lloyd to learn more about the business, the company's strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more...

Warp, cofounded by Zach Lloyd, is a Rust-based coding terminal designed to make teams productive at coding and application development.

04/20/2022

The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 4/20/2022 - AlleyWatch

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 4/20/2022 featuring funding details for Hedge, AlgiKnit, and much more

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 4/20/2022 featuring funding details for Hedge, AlgiKnit, and much more.

04/20/2022

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Millennials are Gen Z are strongly committed to social causes and to driving their spending to companies that reflect their values; 40% of millennials have started a relationship with a company based on the social impact they have. Combined, the spending for millennials and Gen Z exceeds $2.65T. It’s become critical for brands and retailers to align with these preferences in order to capture share within this burgeoning segment. Beam Impact is a platform that allows consumers to direct a portion of their online spending to high-impact not-for-profits for free. This is done in one of two ways: the Beam app, which offers a curated list of belief-driven brands, or through Beam’s checkout solution that provides brands with the infrastructure to donate a portion of the sale to a non-profit of the consumer’s choice. In order to maintain engagement and transparency, Beam provides real-time tracking of the impact a customer’s spending has had. Analytics show that the use of the platform drives a 15% lift in AOV, 11% improvement in conversion, and 30% increase in repeat orders on a quarterly basis. Beam, founded in 2017, works with 100 brands including Ministry of Supply, Knickey, Rainbow, The Grey Dog, and Frankie while supporting 500+ non-profits. AlleyWatch caught up with Beam Impact Cofounder and CEO Viveka Hulyalkar to learn more about the business, the company's strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more...

04/19/2022

The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 4/19/2022 - AlleyWatch

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 4/19/2022 featuring funding details for FundGuard, Air Company, and much more.

04/19/2022

Air Company Raises $30M for its Technology that Decarbonizes the Planet While Also Creating Alcohol-Based Consumer Goods - AlleyWatch

Air Company, cofounded by Gregory Constantine, is a carbon technology startup that takes captures carbon and converts it into alcohol for use in consumer products.

04/19/2022

Q1 2022: 13 Largest Global Startup Funding Rounds - AlleyWatch

Everything you need to need to know about the largest global startup funding rounds of Q4 2021; broken down by industry, stage, investors, and more…

04/18/2022

The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 4/18/2022 - AlleyWatch

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 4/18/2022 featuring funding details for MD.ai and much more.

04/18/2022

#NYCtech Week in Review: 4/10/22 - 4/16/22 - AlleyWatch

15 new deals and $196M+ invested into NYC startups for the week. NYC Tech News for the week ending 4/16 featuring news for Daimon Labs, Branch, Opus, and much, much more.

04/17/2022

The Weekly Notable Startup Funding Report: 4/18/22 - AlleyWatch

The notable startup funding rounds for the week ending 4/16/22 featuring funding details for Raptor Maps, NODAR, Tive, and twenty-one other rounds representing $3.01B in new funding that you need to know about.

04/16/2022

The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 4/15/2022 - AlleyWatch

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 4/15/2022 featuring funding details for Blanket and much more.

04/15/2022

January Raises $10M for its Debt Collection Service That Handles The Needs of Both Creditors and Borrowers - AlleyWatch

The debt collection industry was estimated to be in excess of $13.4B in 2021 with over 7,000 collection agencies. With such fragmentation in the industry, practices by collectors vary widely and the industry generates more fraud complaints to the FTC than any other industry. When dealing with such a sensitive area, managing the needs of both the consumer and lender is critical and has implications beyond the relationship between the two. For example, a lender’s ability to recoup loans directly impacts the rates its sets for all customers. January, formerly known as Debtsy, is a tech-enabled debt collection agency. The company focuses on all past due and written-off debt. January has positioned itself to offer a data-driven approach to creditors to help them determine the best course of action to handle their debt portfolios – whether it is to rely on internal collections, outsource to their party agencies, or even sell the debt, handling the process for each action with transparency and compliance in mind. When working with consumers, the company takes a compassionate approach to debt collection versus aggressive predatory tactics by establishing realistic and tailored payment plans. This approach has led the company to be 120x more effective than traditional collection agencies while serving as the leading recovery source for 90% of its clients. AlleyWatch caught up with January CEO and Founder Jake Cahan to learn more about the business, the company's strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more..

January, founded by Jake Cahan, is a tech-enabled debt collection agency that handles the needs of creditors and borrows with compassion while delivering success.