NVTC Newsletter No. 10
Happy Wednesday everyone. For those new here, welcome to the NVTC weekly newsletter. Here you’ll find recent updates from the tech world, insightful articles related to startups and highlights from NV portfolio companies.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURES ⚡
📅 UPCOMING EVENT – Necessary Ventures is hosting a happy hour at District San Francisco this Friday 11/11 from 4-7pm. Click here for the GCal invite.
⭐ A Medical Masterpiece – A fully connected API for healthcare professionals.
⭐ NiFTy – Digital creators and royalty on a brand new Instagram marketplace.
⭐ Winter Is Coming – Big tech companies are freezing.
📈 Crypto Is Getting Cryptic – If you haven’t read up on what happened to FTX this week, you should.
SAVE TIME FOR HAPPY HOUR
I hope you smiled when you read that title, because what’s happier than happy hour? Necessary Ventures is sponsoring a happy hour next Thursday, November 11th from 4-7pm at District San Francisco. There will be food, drinks, and great company, including Neil Devani, founder and managing partner of Necessary Ventures, and other members of the NV team. You can RSVP using Google Calendar.
GET TO KNOW A CTO 🤝
In last week’s newsletter, we gave you all the opportunity to ask questions to Victor Fimbres, CTO and Co-Founder at Forage. Forage is a YCombinator-backed company focusing on building a unified API to help low-income Americans buy online groceries. Watch out for those responses in the NVTC LinkedIn group, which will cover a deep dive into Victor’s background and the inside scoop at Forage.
NV Portfolio Highlight 🎢
Particle Health is creating a fully connected medical data experience. Many people are familiar with the experience of visiting a new primary care doctor and the headache that ensues immediately after you’re asked to provide your previous medical history. Particle envisions a world where none of that stress exists, from smaller healthcare systems through to larger organizations like pharmacies and hospitals.
Particle’s comprehensive API provides healthcare professionals with more streamlined access to key pieces of information, leading to more clinically relevant decision-making. It currently combines data from over 270 million patients and standardizes it, ensuring its usability at scale. The API delivers a 90 percent success rate in retrieving a patient’s records, presenting an average of 105 records per patient, per search.
The company aims to drastically improve lives through access to vital medical data. In July, Particle Health secured a $25 million Series B round to further evolve the capabilities of its platform, which already represents the most adaptable, easy-to-use solution for healthcare organizations seeking to safely exchange patient data. Check out this site to explore opportunities at Particle.
GOOD READS 📖
Soon, you’ll be able to use a digital collectibles toolkit on Instagram to create NFTS and sell them within Instagram or off the platform. This is a capability already offered on many NFT marketplaces, so it’s a natural transition for Meta. It already allows users in over 100 different countries to showcase their NFTs, functionality which will be further enhanced in the coming months.
Kaley’s Comment: This announcement came among several other new means for creators to make money using Instagram. However, it doesn’t seem like NFTs will be a great source of income any time soon. One recent debate surrounding NFTs is that of royalties, in which fewer and fewer marketplaces are honoring artist royalties built into NFTs. As of now, creators will be able to choose their royalty percentage on Instagram, but it’s uncertain how long that will last.
Even if you’re someone who doesn’t keep up with crypto, this is something worth reading. This past week, one of the largest exchanges for digital currencies nearly collapsed before being thrown a life preserver by major rival Binance. FTX, once valued at $32 billion, was crippled by a mass outflow of its customers amidst news of its shaky financial foundation, which may have been kickstarted by Binance. The company narrowly avoided what many began to compare to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, assuming Binance’s offer actually closes.
Kaley’s Comment: There’s more on this from the Twitter tech sphere below.
Google pulled the plug on Hangouts, another milestone in its messy messaging history. Although Google was one of the first companies to launch a messaging platform, starting with Google Talk nearly 17 years ago, it still has yet to develop a competitive offering. Google Hangouts will be succeeded by Google Chat, which is Google’s attempt at creating a competitor to Slack.
Kaley’s Comment: One Reddit thread’s comment section had an interesting take on Google’s demise in the messaging world. A Redditor explained, “[It’s] because their org structure & performance review mechanisms aren't well suited for a coherent product strategy. People get promotions for releasing new products, not so much for maintaining and steadily supporting existing ones.” That comment was written 4 years ago, but given the fate of Hangouts, it’s hard to note any progress.
Halloween might be over, but that doesn’t mean spooky season is. Amazon, Lyft, Stripe, and other big tech companies have all announced freezes or cuts affecting their workforce. Soaring inflation and rising interest rates are rippling through the tech world and bringing recruitment to a halt, a surefire sign that the recession is coming (if not already here).
STARTUP SNIPPETS 🔮
ButcherBox: meat delivery subscription service that makes high-quality, humanely raised protein accessible to all
Traction: $600 million in revenue without any external investment
Emerge Career: tech-forward job training for incarcerated folks
The raise: $3.2 million in seed funding
Vesto: treasury management startup that helps other startups protect their runway
The raise: $2.8 million in seed funding
Traction: official public launch last Wednesday
Verkor: French battery startup building an EV battery megafactory
The raise: $250 million in financing for its Verkor Innovation Center (VIC)
Jetti Resources LLC: copper extraction technology firm
The raise: $100 million in Series D funding
TWITTER HIGHLIGHT 📈
As with all major current events, Twitter entered a rapid fire of thoughts and opinions surrounding the FTX/Binance affair. Miles Deutscher, a crypto investor and analyst, released a series of tweets breaking down the events which might have led to FTX’s demise, focusing on founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s leadership over the past few months.
Some key points in the story:
We now know Binance has fully acquired FTX. Eric Newcomer, former technology officer at Bloomberg, provided the following interesting context:
What do you think this means for crypto? Did Binance’s acquisition of FTX effectively neutralize any adverse consequences of this situation for the crypto world?
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.
Join us on the NVTC LinkedIn group if you haven’t. Thanks for reading!