A face full of tech and top VC investing
Necessary Nuggets
Happy Wednesday! If you’re new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets, your one-stop pre-seed shop. We deliver updates from Necessary Ventures and helpful tidbits on our little corner of the world. Every edition is also on our blog.
Jobortunities 🚨
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Reach out with any questions! All 163 open job postings are listed here.
Market Stirrings 🚩
Here's what the week looked like in pre-seed:
$47M
Total Amount Raised
25
Total Funding Rounds
$1.9M
Average Dollars per Round
$6M-$9M
Estimated Valuation Range
Data aggregated from proprietary research and Crunchbase; valuation estimate based on 10-20% ownership stake.
Early-stage valuations level up
Pre-seed and seed stage deals are still showing valuation prowess. According to PitchBook valuations remained heightened in Q1, with the median pre-seed deal value hitting nearly $1 million and the median seed deal value hitting its highest level to date at about $3.5 million. The key takeaway: investor appetite for early-stage startups is strong despite uncertainties across the market.
Good Reads 📖
For the rushed reader …
Andressen Horowitz established a new 12-month-long fellowship called the American Dynamism Engineering Fellows Program, aiming to connect top engineers with the venture investing world.
New payment technology already popular in some U.S. restaurant chains and across Asia allows you to pay for your meal by scanning your face.
Google is shaking up its trusty search engine by adding AI-generated answers to queries, and soon, those answers will include ads.
For the less rushed reader …
FINDING FELLOWS: Venture to guess which firm announced a shiny new program for engineers? Andressen Horowitz established a new 12-month-long fellowship called the American Dynamism Engineering Fellows Program, aiming to connect top engineers with the venture investing world. Three selected fellows will participate in a "crash course," working alongside venture capital pros to evaluate potential investments and engage with portfolio companies. Andreessen Horowitz is betting the crash in crash course stands for revival, not a fatal collision. At the end of the program, fellows could join the firm or a portico or even start their own company -- what the partners expressed is a win-win scenario. The idea is to attract less finance bros to the space and bring in more technologists. For the engineers out there tired of staring at Creo models and MATLAB scripts, it could be time to trade investing time for investing dollars.
FACE THE FUTURE: Great news: your face matters even more than you think. New payment technology already popular in some U.S. restaurant chains and across Asia allows you to pay for your meal by scanning your face. Biometric tech is on the rise as consumers have become familiar with features like Apple's Face ID and Amazon's pay-by-palm in stores. Series B company PopID is leading the charge for biometric expansion with its seamless facial ID technology, enabling users to sign up with just one selfie. Users can then access a one-tap, on-screen feature to pay and link to loyalty programs simultaneously. PopID is currently partnered with automated fast food restaurant CaliExpress in Pasadena, fast food chain Steak 'N Shake in the Midwest, and, as of last month, JPMorgan -- a sign that pay-by-face tech, already mature in Asia, might be making waves in the US. The consumer case ties to the growing importance of loyalty programs, which otherwise involve a clunky QR code process that tends to dissuade consumers from engaging. We all know Facebook and face palm, and now we have the exciting, new face pay.
AD A SPECIAL TOUCH: The line grows thinner everyday between searching for answers and searching for ads -- or maybe not searching for ads but rather accidentally finding them. Google is shaking up its trusty search engine by adding AI-generated answers to queries, and soon, those answers will include ads. It's unclear how quickly ads will be integrated, but Google plans to maintain its dominance in search advertising (and all the revenue that comes with it) by having search and shopping ads appear in AI summaries. Recent advances in generative AI threaten Google's ad business, which typically accounts for around 60% of parent company Alphabet's revenue. Although Google is better supported in recent days by its cloud and hardware business, keeping Googlers' focus on Google and away from new applications like ChatGPT remains a challenge. Google also plans to up the ante by introducing programs that help with "complex purchase decisions," like finding storage options for a set of furniture based on photos, for example. Regardless of all the new AI founders on the block, it's hard to imagine Google disappearing anytime soon, even with google other options.
Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥
Notable pre-seed raises in …
Climatetech
Hydrosonics - Cracking the H code
The Problem: Hydrogen is long sought after to boost the green transition, but no real solutions exist.
The Tech: Hydrogen electrolyzer tech that promises to cut costs in half, increase efficiency, and fully integrate with renewable energy.
Recently Raised: $525k in funding led by Roadrunner Venture Studios and a $350k award of non-dilutive funding from the New Mexico Economic Development Department (EDD).
Also Note: The startup has already proven the tech in the lab and will now scale up the demonstration.
fintech
Haven - Accounting with an amicable touch
The Problem: Traditional accounting firms can take weeks to get a hold of and add you to their schedule.
The Tech: A unique accounting platform prioritizing customer service and automation for repetitive tasks, aimed at startups and small- to mid-sized businesses.
Recently Raised: Undisclosed amount in funding including contributions from prominent investors, such as Anthony Pompliano, Charlie Feng, Hari Raghavan, Eric Bahn, and more than 40 others.
Also Note: The startup achieved profitability within 1 year of business with more than $1 million in revenue.
Outro🚪
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