Stop being meta. Even Disney knows it's not cool anymore.

Necessary Nuggets

Happy Tech Tuesday! For those new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets. We deliver exciting updates from Necessary Ventures and some helpful tidbits on the tech world to you bimonthly. If you can’t get enough of the newsletters, don’t worry! You can access every edition on our blog.

JOBORTUNITIES 🚨

Taro: No fuss healthcare. Patients get help without the stress. Taro increases access to healthcare while reducing costs and physician burnout. 

| Product engineer |

Relief: Ward off the debt collectors. Relief built an app that negotiates people out of debt for free, giving people a shot at financial freedom. Time to shred your bills!

| Back-end engineer |

Particle Health: Big Data for better health. Particle centralizes healthcare data to provide informed care.

| Senior software engineer |

Reach out with any questions! All 197 open job postings are listed here.

GOOD READS 📖

Our favorite stories in…

Climatetech

  • If you ever think you’ve experienced a big failure, just remember SVB is going down in history for the biggest. Luckily, First Citizens BancShares is acquiring it. What was the grand prize? $72 billion in loans and $56 billion in deposits. 

  • Research and real life are the Romeo and Juliet of climate tech innovation. “Cradle to Commerce” is a new accelerator bridging the gap by connecting scientists at U.S. national labs with entrepreneurs and mentors.

  • Don’t be selfish; robots can hug trees too. One climate roboticist argues that climate change needs robotics to scale up existing solutions if we want to make it to net zero in time. Robots may be our last hope to overcome labor bottlenecks and collect enough data to influence regulatory changes. 

Edtech

  • Bot-written work is on the rise, but so is company pushback. When is it appropriate to seek out (AI)ssistance, and when isn’t it? Several big companies, like JPMorgan and Verizon, have blocked access to ChatGPT.

Fintech

  • The world’s largest crypto exchange is officially an outlaw. Binance and its cofounder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, are being sued by US commodity market regulators for “willful evasion of the law.” A rebel with or without a cause?

Healthtech

  • Would you be comforted by Big Brother watching over you during surgery? Hospitals are now using OR Black Box Systems to view and analyze performance. It’s a healthy mix of sensors and software to capture video, audio, and patient vitals.

  • Try taking an Instagram-worthy pic at the edge of this Series A cliff. Biotech is confronting a shortage of Series B funding. Startups that raised Series A rounds in 2021 are now struggling to raise and are running out of money.

Techbits

  • RIP Gordon Moore. This is your queue to study up on Moore’s law in honor of the legend.

  • The dynamic duo we should’ve seen coming: Microsoft and Nvidia are teaming up on an industrial metaverse network.

  • Will your startup successfully exit? PitchBook has a new AI-infused crystal ball. 

  • Twitter sprung a leak. 

Mini Dive on the Meta-dive 🏊

It’s safe to say that when Aladdin and Jasmine were singing about “A Whole New World,” they weren’t imagining the metaverse. Disney closed the chapter on its next-generation storytelling and consumer-experiences unit, saying goodbye to 50 employees on the team. This is one small wave in a larger layoff pool to reduce the company’s headcount by 7,000 over the next couple months. The metaverse is quickly becoming less of a virtual reality and more of a fading pipe dream. 

Disney isn’t the only company to ditch meta real estate. Last month, Microsoft laid off 100 employees from its metaverse industrial core, just four months after forming it. Tencent, Asia’s biggest internet company, disbanded its extended reality unit shortly after. Snap ditched its Web3 team last year amid layoffs. 

So why the mass emigration? Is there something all these tech giants know about the metaverse that we don’t? While that feels more conspiratorial than we’d like to indulge, it’s clear that interest in the metaverse is waning. With increasing layoffs rippling throughout the tech world, one potential reason for abandonment could be poor timing and tight balance sheets. It’s hard to build a virtual world when the physical world is burning. Other signs suggest generative AI may be the culprit. The explosive growth investors hoped to see in the metaverse is already present in generative AI. Some 120 companies are working on metaverse technologies, compared to 250+ for generative AI in a shorter timespan. For all the funding growth generative AI has experienced, the metaverse has seen about an equal decline. It’s a tough year to be a metageek. 

You’re about to jump out of a crashing plane, and you can only choose one technology as your parachute; the other goes down with the plane. What are you choosing: generative AI or the metaverse?

STARTUP, GLOWUP 🔥

Our favorite startup stories in…

Climatetech

  • Carbonable - Web 3 for net zero

    • The problem they’re solving: The lack of traceability in carbon trading

    • Recent raise: $1.2 million seed funding led by Ethereal Ventures

    • Business process: End-to-end carbon offsetting powered by the blockchain

    • Market: Carbon offsetting market is expected to reach $200 billion by 2025 

  • DexMat - Climate change’s new Gal-pal

    • The problem they’re solving: Carbon-intensive materials in heavy industry

    • Recent raise: $3 million seed funding led by Shell Ventures

    • The tech: GalvornTM, a high performance carbon material aiming to displace steel, copper, aluminum, and others

    • Its edge: Galvorn traps carbon during production. Long-term storage and a high-performance material – it’s a win-win.

    • Founder highlights: DexMat’s new CEO Bryan Guido Hassin was previously the CEO of Third Derivative.

  • Lun - Pump up climate solutions with heat pumps

    • The problem they’re solving: Oil and gas-fired boilers suck.

    • Recent raise: €10.3M seed funding

    • Business process: Uncomplicate the heat pump installation process with a full stack support operating system

    • Context: Startup was founded last March amid Europe’s energy crisis triggered by Russia invading Ukraine 

Healthtech

  • MVision AI - Cancer treatment on fast forward

    • Problem they’re solving: Treatment waiting times shouldn’t take weeks

    • Business process: Cloud-based software for radiotherapy treatment planning

    • Recent activity: €5.4 million in post-seed funding

    • Gaining Steam: Already used to treat over 100,000 patients in 14 different countries

    • Results: 44% of all breast cancer scans were planned in the same day, compared to 10% without the software

Fintech

  • Kredivo Holdings - Give credit to Southeast Asia

    • Problem they’re solving: Lack of credit services in Indonesia and Vietnam

    • Business process: Online and offline buy now, pay later, personal loans, credit cards and banking services

    • Recent raise: $207 million Series D funding led by Japanese bank Mizuho Bank 

    • Gaining Steam: According to its founder, the company’s valuation has increased by 4x to 5x in every valuation round

Edtech

  • Cometa - Give Mexican schools super powers

    • Problem they’re solving: Technological adoption in private schools in Mexico

    • Business process: A digital platform that streamlines collection and cash flow management

    • Recent raise: $5 million seed funding

    • Its edge: The company claims it has reduced delinquency in tuition payments to below 20%, compared to 34.3%

  • Paper - High intensity tutoring that isn’t just for the high class

    • Problem they’re solving: Tutoring is too expensive

    • Business process: A virtual chatbot tutor 

    • Recent raise: $390 million Series D funding from investors like Google and Softbank

    • Setbacks: This past week, New Mexico announced the termination of its $3 million contract with Paper

    • Context: Its most recent raise valued the company at $1.5 billion

Outro

Feel free to reply to this email with all questions, feedback, or comments. We’ll be iterating and curating the NVTC newsletter according to your interests. 

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Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

© 2023 Necessary Ventures

San Francisco, California

Kaley UbellackerComment