What happened to the blue birdie?

Necessary Nuggets

Happy Tech Tuesday! If you’re new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets. We deliver exciting updates from Necessary Ventures and some helpful tidbits on the tech world to you bimonthly. Every edition is also on our blog. 

Jobortunities 🚨

Taro: Taro increases access to healthcare while reducing costs and physician burnout via direct primary care based health insurance. 

✨NEW✨ For new/recent grads (1-3 years out): Taro has a generalist opening that’ll help launch a new market. The role will be broad including travel to different markets, helping doctors get onboarded, helping run events to get in front of patients, coordinating marketing campaigns, and even working directly with patients.

| Go-to-Market Operations Role |

Arc Boats: Electrify watercraft. Build the Tesla of boats. Arc’s aim is both sustainability and high performance. 

| Manufacturing Engineer |

Forage: Create a unified API that helps low-income Americans buy online groceries. It’s Stripe, but for Electronic Benefits Transfer.

| Full Stack Software Engineer |


Reach out with any questions! All 122 open job postings are listed here.

Good Reads 📖

For the rushed reader …

  • Solar and wind are expected to grow rapidly under current regulation, but transmission capacity can’t keep up. 

  • AWS plans to eliminate this chore with its newly announced AWS HealthScribe, a program that will use AI to generate notes for electronic health record systems.

  • GoodRx, an online pharmacy and telehealth platform, is building a one-stop shop where people can enter their medications and check all things prescription-related.

  • As generative AI is crossing a natural bridge into other sectors like edtech and healthtech, skepticism continues in fintech.

  • Elon Musk is pressing onward with his branding overhaul journey for Twitter, now called X with a shiny new logo to suit.

  • Meta is revamping Horizon Worlds, its free virtual reality social network where people can create avatars, interact with other users, and play games.

  • According to a leak, LinkedIn is developing a new AI tool to take away some of the monotonous pain of searching and applying for jobs.

For the less rushed reader …

Electricity can’t be kept in a box, but it’s safe to say booming green tech is creating quite the Pandora’s grid. Solar and wind are expected to grow rapidly under current regulation, but transmission capacity can’t keep up. Princeton University researchers found that in order to meet renewable energy growth projections, transmission capacity additions need to accelerate by 50% from recent levels. It gets worse: if transmission tech doesn’t hurry up, we could forfeit half the emissions reductions that could be achieved. Can it get there in time? This overview seems skeptical.

Is it just me or does the term paperwork feel the same as “pager” or “velociraptor”? Regardless of how old paperwork systems feel, doctors today spend hours filling out transcripts and summaries of patient visits. AWS plans to eliminate this chore with its newly announced AWS HealthScribe, a program that will use AI to generate notes for electronic health record systems. Automation has the potential to save doctors an extra two hours of administrative work for every hour they spend with a patient. Sounds like AWS HealthScribe may soon be in line for an employee of the year award at every hospital in the country.

I wonder if Mike Posner would be excited to find out the pill he took in Ibiza could be kept in a digital medicine cabinet. GoodRx, an online pharmacy and telehealth platform, is building a one-stop shop where people can enter their medications and check all things prescription-related. People can compare prices, get reminders on refills, and even earn rewards for taking their meds on time. GoodRx has encountered two major challenges: 1) drug shortages and 2) HIPAA protections. Regardless, staying healthy can be hard, and GoodRx might be onto something.

Financial services companies may be the most stingy when it comes to sharing data, so what does that mean for incorporating AI? As generative AI is crossing a natural bridge into other sectors like edtech and healthtech, skepticism continues in fintech. Companies want to see better data security, accuracy, and transparency before leaning into AI. FinTech organizations can’t afford to adopt the tech now, and worry about security and AI hallucination concerns later. However, this stall could cost companies their innovative edge as they fall behind. For example, AI has the potential to unlock unprecedented gains for investments, and companies that take advantage will reap the benefits while others lag. The race is on.

  • It’s with deep sadness that I share some tragic news: the Twitter birdy is dead. Elon Musk is pressing onward with his branding overhaul journey for Twitter, now called X with a shiny new logo to suit. As of Saturday, there’s even an X sign on top of company headquarters. Business analysts are worried about Musk’s vision to undo years of Twitter’s branding, and the company is already struggling to retain advertisers.

  • Remember back in the day when VR was the cool new toy and the metaverse was a digital hop and a skip away? Well, Meta isn’t ready to give up. Meta is revamping Horizon Worlds, its free virtual reality social network where people can create avatars, interact with other users, and play games. How do they plan to reboot? Meta formed an in-house studio called Ouro Interactive that will focus on making first-party VR games.

  • I hope you’re not applying to jobs in this economy, but if you are, there might be something soon that can help. According to a leak, LinkedIn is developing a new AI tool to take away some of the monotonous pain of searching and applying for jobs. The “LinkedIn” coach will support the entire application process by teaching you new skills and helping you network.

StartUp, GlowUp 🔥

Notable startup updates in …

Climatetech

  • Dioxycle - Precious chemicals from thin air

    • The Problem: You may not be familiar with ethylene, but it’s used widely to produce textiles and plastics … and emits 800 million tons of carbon per year.

    • The Tech: Electrolysis-based carbon capture that extracts ethylene from carbon emissions

    • Recently Raised: $17 million in Series A funding co-led by Lowercarbon Capital and Breakthrough Energy Ventures Europe

    • Also Note: The company will use the money to create its first industrial prototype.

  • Materials Nexus - Discovery that doesn’t get your hands dirty

    • The Problem: Materials research can be a long, tedious process.

    • The Tech: AI models that accelerate discovery times and bring net-zero tech materials to market faster

    • Recently Raised: £2 million in seed funding led by Ada Ventures

    • Also Note: The money will be used to scale the company’s commercial and scientific operations.

Healthtech

  • Wangie - Swipe right on your therapist

    • The Problem: Mental health problems are growing, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. People need solutions to talk with someone quickly.

    • The Tech: 24/7 mental health support that bridges clinical therapy and peer support

    • Recently Raised: An undisclosed pre-seed round led by angel investors Raj Kulasingam and Marc Cohen

    • Also Note: The current platform doesn’t provide therapy but rather matches clients and therapists. Clients have control over when and how many therapists they talk to.

FINTECH

  • Trustmi - Payday without mayday 

    • The Problem: Manual payment validation is time-consuming and prone to errors.

    • The Tech: An integrated payments platform that crowdsources data from vendors and businesses to build a “trust network”

    • Recently Raised: $17 million in Series A funding led by Cyberstarts

    • Also Note: Cofounders Shai Gabay and Eli Ben Nun first worked together at Cynet, a cybersecurity startup.

EDTECH

  • Preply - More student/teacher relationships

    • The Problem: Learning new languages with a tutor is more effective than self-learning, but tutors may be hard to come by.

    • The Tech: A language learning platform that connects people with tutors

    • Recently Raised: $70 million in additional Series C funding led by Horizon Capital

    • Also Note: Preply stacks itself in direct competition with Duolingo, a fierce competitor with shares that have more than doubled in price this year.

TECHBITS

  • Akooda - Less meetings, less worries

    • The Problem: Meeting to figure out what employees are doing is inefficient.

    • The Tech: AI that learns an internal software stack and the inner workings of companies

    • Recently Raised: $11 million in seed funding led by NFX

    • Also Note: Akooda claims to be the “world’s first operations intelligence platform.”

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. 

Some last matters of business: 

  • If you’re a technologist (engineer or product manager / designer with a technical background) join us on the NVTC LinkedIn group if you haven’t. We’d love to have you! 

  • Sign up here if you’re interested in co-investing with Necessary.

If you’re a startup founder, we’d love to help where we can! Brex provides full-stack finance solutions for startups. Sign up via Necessary and get bonus points.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

© 2023 Necessary Ventures

San Francisco, California

Kaley UbellackerComment