A fund has fears 😬

 

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 🚹

✹NEW FEATURED ROLE✹

Virtue VC: Exclusively focused on pre-seed and seed healthcare founders. Searching for a highly ambitious individual dedicated to the next generation of healthcare companies and ready to double-down on the sector.

| Partner/Principal |

Nevoya: First fully-electric trucking fleet in the United States, helping truckers trade gas-guzzling for environment-protecting. Get involved and tackle unsolved problems in the trucking industry.

| Founding Backend Engineer |

Necessary Ventures: If you love this newsletter, we think you might like investing in what the world needs too. We have full-time and part-time opportunities to think early stage and have an impact on solving founders’ problems.

| Investor |

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

| Product Engineer |


Reach out with any questions! All 159 open job postings are listed here.

Market Stirrings đŸš©

Here's what the week looked like in pre-seed:

Funding Information

$16.3M

Total Amount Raised

14

Total Funding Rounds

$1.2M

Average Dollars per Round

$3.9M-$5.8M

Estimated Valuation Range

Data aggregated from proprietary research and Crunchbase; valuation estimate based on 10-20% ownership stake.

Good Reads 📖

For the rushed reader 


  • A U.S. appeals court in Atlanta suspended Fearless Fund’s grant program for Black-women-owned businesses, ruling in favor of a lawsuit claiming that the program is discriminatory.

  • WeWork has a new bankruptcy plan that includes fewer locations, fresh capital, and $4 billion in debt wiped.

  • According to EY’s latest Beyond Borders report, biotech is poised for growth, as the pharma industry hunts for innovation to replace $300 billion worth of products losing exclusivity.

For the less rushed reader 


FUND FEARS: Fearless Fund is facing new fears with a major setback from a U.S. federal court ruling. A U.S. appeals court in Atlanta suspended Fearless Fund’s grant program for Black-women-owned businesses, ruling in favor of a lawsuit claiming that the program is discriminatory. The lawsuit was filed last year by the American Alliance for Equal Rights, a group led by Edward Blum, who also led the case ending affirmative action in college admissions. The National Venture Capital Association filed a brief defending the Fearless Fund’s grant program as an important step toward creating equal opportunity in the industry. A study by Deloitte and Venture Forward showed that in 2022 only 2% of investment professionals in venture were Black women. The final decision could have huge implications for philanthropists, non-profits, and any organization seeking to give to underrepresented businesses. There’s a lot of work to be done to court the court and make grant programs appeal to a broader, more conservative audience.

CALLING ALL HOME DWELLERS: Is there still a “we” that’s co-working? WeWork has a new bankruptcy plan that includes fewer locations, fresh capital, and $4 billion in debt wiped. WeWork’s fate is tied to the mass office exodus, in which workers have fought against working in the office full-time. Nearly 20 percent of office space in the U.S. is vacant – and even 4 years after the pandemic peak in 2020, no one is interested in cleaning the cobwebs. The hope is that WeWork’s post-bankruptcy model will rightsize the company and make it profitable once again. WeWork is gambling that work-from-homers are getting lonely enough to turn co-working spaces’ empty desks into dollars. “Rapunzel, rapunzel, put up your hair and go to the office already,” says an incoming ad from WeWork, probably. 

GROWING PHARMS: Biotech companies need more cash to buy-o more time and continue innovation in face of a patent cliff. According to EY’s latest Beyond Borders report, biotech is poised for growth, as the pharma industry hunts for innovation to replace $300 billion worth of products losing exclusivity. Financing is catching up, but accessing capital remains an issue for many biotech companies. EY estimates that almost a third of companies in the sector don’t have enough cash to sustain operations past one year. The good news is pharma has a record $1 trillion to deploy on new biotech innovation deals once the Federal Reserve lowers rates, which is a mid-term possibility. Add the pharma industry to the long list of people begging interest rates to drop.

Fire Up the Pre-SeedsđŸ”„

Notable pre-seed raises in 


Climatetech

  • Plural Energy - Blockchain bites of climate action

    • The Problem: The current environment makes fundraising challenging, especially for small-scale renewable projects. 

    • The Tech: A blockchain financial platform for the clean energy transition that allows investors direct access to renewable energy investments. 

    • Recently Raised: $2.33 million in funding led by Necessary Ventures and Compound.

    • Also Note: The first asset to go live for investment will be a portfolio of solar farms developed by Solaris.

FINtech

  • Light Frame - New tech for old industries

    • The Problem: Current tech for financial services companies is generations behind modern standards.

    • The Tech: A proprietary platform to deliver higher levels of autonomy, capability, intelligence, and ultimately innovation to Private Banks and Wealth Management firms. 

    • Recently Raised: $1.7 million in funding co-led by ATX Venture Partners and New Stack Ventures.

    • Also Note: The company was launched by the founding executives of Alpian, Switzerland's first digital private bank.

OutrođŸšȘ

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!


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San Francisco, California

Kaley UbellackerComment