Venture Studio Winners - Jan. 2023
Venture Studio Winners - Jan. 2023
January was another positive month for venture studio startups. Union Square Ventures led two different studio startup fundings
Welcome to Venture Studio Index - data and research on the venture studio industry. The free, public database of venture studios and their startups is here. Our list of every venture studio CEO role is here. If you aren’t subscribed, join the hundreds of studio executives, EIRs and future founders reading each week:
Key takeaways
Headcount across venture studio startups grew 1% in January vs 0% in December
The fastest growing startups were in healthcare, cybersecurity, real estate and vertical talent
New additions this month: Harbour Health (8VC), Pearl Health (AlleyCorp), Journey Clinical (Beckley Waves), Baselane (Diagram Ventures), Alltrna (Flagship Pioneering), Splitero (Gemeni Ventures), tvScientific (Idealab), Xembly (Madrona Venture Labs)
Layoffs continued to increase in January, with even more startups shedding employees
Startups with the largest layoffs were in ecommerce, telehealth, martech, fintech and biotech
Startup fundraising remained strong, though no monster rounds
Union Square Ventures invested in startups from two different venture studios
Other leads in January include Norwest Venture Partners, AXA Venture Partners, Caffeinated Capital and Fiat Ventures
Only one acquisition in January, terms were not disclosed
The fastest growing studio startups
Studio startup summary metrics
Studio startup funding
Antai startup Wallapop, a Spain based circular marketplace, raised $88mm at an $832mm valuation. The inside round was led by Naver, the Korean internet company, and Korelya Capital (Techcrunch)
Atomic startup Butter Payments, which helps eliminate accidental churns due to payment issues, raised $22mm. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners (press release)
Juxtapose startup Dayforward, a digital life insurance company, raised $25mm. The round was led by AXA Venture Partners (Fintech Global)
HVF startup Pathpoint, a digital insurance wholesale brokerage for carriers, raised $12.5mm. The round was led by Caffienated Capital (Coverager)
Gemeni Ventures startup Splitero, a tech enabled home equity partner, raised $11.7m. The round was led by Fiat Ventures (Pitchbook)
Aegis Ventures startup Hume AI, which provides an AI toolkit to understand human expression, raised $10mm. The round was led by Union Square Ventures (USV)
Beckley Waves startup Journey Clinical, which provides ketamine assisted psychotherapy via teleheath, raised $8.5mm. The round was led by Union Square Ventures (USV)
PSL startup SingleFile, a compliance filing startup, raised $2.1mm on an inside round (Crunchbase)
Studio startup exits
Kamet Ventures startup Anorak, a UK based personalized insurance advisor, was acquired by Clark. Terms were not disclosed (press release)
Rocket Internet startup Global Savings Group, a Munich based commerce content platform, was acquired by Pepper.com in December. Terms were not disclosed (AETOSwire)
Venture studios with highest hitrate (exits + growers)
Methodology and data limitations
Startup and studio data comes from our database of venture studios and their startups. See data methodology and limitations for more background.
In this analysis we use employee counts as a proxy for traction, but this is an imperfect metric. Some startups accelerate hiring ahead of revenue and other startups may be growing revenue quickly but have not accelerated their hiring. More recently, it’s common for even high performing startups to limit hiring or reduce headcount to prepare for future macro conditions.
Not all funding or acquisitions are announced, and those cases will be undercounted in the summary metrics above.
The table of fastest growing startups includes U.S. based startups launched since 2020. In the ventures studio table, We measure startups / year or startup velocity by taking the number of startups launched since 2017 and dividing by 5. This figure undercounts studios who do not disclose all their startups.
Reader question
Are you interested in a similar analysis for the broader VC startup ecosystem? What specifically would be useful?
Please reply to this email if you have any thoughts.