It's time to turn an đź‘€AI towards 2024
Necessary Nuggets
Happy Wednesday, and Happy New Year! May all your New Years’ resolutions include reading our newsletter with a smile on your face every time it comes out. 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.
| Product Engineer |
Arc Boats: Electrify watercraft. Build the Tesla of boats. Arc’s aim is both sustainability and high performance.
| Test Engineer |
Forage: Create a unified API that helps low-income Americans buy online groceries. It’s Stripe, but for Electronic Benefits Transfer.
| Security Software Engineer |
Reach out with any questions! All 135 open job postings are listed here.
Hot off the Press♨️
LabStart: $100k in Climate Tech Funding!
APPLICATIONS ARE CLOSING EVERYONE. DON’T PANIC. In all seriousness, if you’re a budding entrepreneur passionate about climate, check out this program hosted by LabStart; applications are closing on January 9th.
From LabStart’s announcement: “The year-long fellowship program supports underrepresented founders in launching their own climate startup - built from cutting edge technologies licensed from U.S. National Labs and universities. LabStart has reimagined the lab-to-market commercialization process in a way that welcomes all entrepreneurs, accelerates climate innovation, and incentivizes technology transfer accessibility.”
Assembly Industries
The saying goes that “people make the place,” but where are the right people?
At Necessary Ventures, we know that talent is distributed across the globe, but opportunity is not. We're excited to share our preferred partnership with Assembly Industries, which provides access to management consulting level talent, vetted for strong critical thinking and communication skills, at an exclusive price of only $1,600/month. While originally only for our portfolio companies, we have seen strong enough results to share with you as well.
Companies are using Assembly across sales, marketing, project management, account management, customer success, operations, and finance. See talent here that you can hire today. Extending this preferred pricing is one way we're saying thank you for being a part of our community, just be sure to mention Necessary in your onboarding.
Market Stirrings đźš©
It might be ski season, but that doesn’t mean it’s always good to race downhill. According to Carta, 2-year graduation rates for startups are steeply declining. For the 2019 cohort of startups, 30% raised their Series A within 2 years. For the 2021 cohort, that number dropped to only 19%. The graphic below gives a breakdown by industry:
Good Reads đź“–
For the rushed reader …
Red Cell Partners announced a $91.2 million raise for pre-seed investments up to $5 million, focusing on healthtech and defensetech.
Experts still believe in the metaverse and predict we’ll soon see it integrate with the physical world through augmented reality and extended reality.
The NY Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law by using NY Times’ content to train generative AI models.
For the less rushed reader …
NEW YEAR, NEW MONEY: Here’s another reason to pop a champagne bottle. Red Cell Partners announced a $91.2 million raise for pre-seed investments up to $5 million, focusing on healthtech and defensetech. Like a kindergartner watching baby chicks at a farm, Red Cell wants its hands in the action. It seeks to incubate startups from initial ideas to fully operational companies, Savoy Life being one of its recent success stories. Red Cell is dialing in on one ambitious goal: have the companies it invests in emerge from stealth in less than two years with contracts in hand and revenue ready to roll in. Add that one to your New Year's resolutions.
METAVERSE GHOST OR GENESIS: Is 2024 the year we can finally time travel to 3050 with the tap of a button? That’s right – the metaverse is back, maybe. Experts still believe in the metaverse and predict we’ll soon see it integrate with the physical world through augmented reality and extended reality. Apple is expected to release its Vision Pro 1.0 as early as January, triggering another metaverse hype era. Generative AI stole the spotlight when the metaverse barely got its legs, but experts are steadfast in seeing metaverse applications make it mainstream and operate in symbiosis with generative AI. However, the tech is still not advanced enough, and it requires social buy-in. Sounds like the metaverse is another ex we’re not allowed to leave behind in 2023.
GEN-AI IN HANDCUFFS: The New York Times is trading its pen for a gavel. The newspaper is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law by using NY Times’ content to train generative AI models, including ChatGPT and Copilot. It’s bringing some east coast sass to the table, demanding mass destruction of all models and training data that includes their content. While the NY Times fights on behalf of independent journalism, generative AI models must learn by example, whether public or private domain – the potential damages in both directions are immense. When OpenAI and Microsoft executives do their Wordle today, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re greeted with a “USUCK.”
Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥
Notable pre-seed raises in …
fintech
LawFi - FEEnomenal Loans
The Problem: Legal clients often struggle to retain and pay lawyers.
The Tech: A mobile-first digital lending and payments platform that streamlines delivery of lawyer retainer agreements and legal invoices with new fee financing options.
Recently Raised: $1.5 million in funding through a strategic partnership with Capital Q Ventures.
Also Note: LawFi is the first startup to take on “Legal Fee Loans.”
artificial intelligence
Dapta - H(API) Businesses
The Problem: As SaaS increases in popularity, there’s more and more need for developing advanced APIs, which is tricky and time-consuming.
The Tech: A low-code, AI-assisted platform that enables businesses to build their own APIs.
Recently Raised: $1 million in funding led by Paramo Partners, Fen Ventures, Kuiper VC, Invariantes Fund, Latin Leap and 500 Startups.
Also Note: Dapta has achieved 1,500% growth in the past four months.
Outro🚪
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Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
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