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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.

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