Startups going silent into that good night
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✨
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.
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 124 open job postings are listed here.
Market Stirrings 🚩
Here's what the week looked like in pre-seed:
$4.7M
Total Amount Raised
3
Total Funding Rounds
$1.6M
Average Dollars per Round
$5.2M-$15.7M
Estimated Valuation Range
Data aggregated from proprietary research and Crunchbase; valuation estimate based on 10-20% ownership stake.
CROSSING PATHS
Q2 2024 showed an increase in value for crossover deals, which involves significant participation from investors who usually buy into publicly traded companies or IPOs. Deal value more than doubled from Q1 to Q2 2024.
Good Reads 📖
For the rushed reader …
MIT successfully designed a tiny zinc-air battery with enough energy to power a robotic arm.
Biological privacy laws may be coming in response to technologies embedded in the human mind, with Colorado being the first state to make a policy change.
According to Forbes, data suggests venture capital may be in a silent recession equivalent to that of 2008.
For the less rushed reader …
SMALL BUT MIGHTY: “Honey, I shrunk the robots!” MIT successfully designed a tiny zinc-air battery with enough energy to power a robotic arm. Researchers believe that the battery, 0.1 millimeters long and 0.002 millimeters thick, could enable a range of autonomous robot functions, such as drug delivery in the body and locating leaks in gas pipelines. The battery captures oxygen from the air to oxidize zinc and create a current. The study was led by Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, whose current efforts are to build a robot around an energy source; in one case, the end goal is to inject tiny robots made of biocompatible materials into the human body. For all the big brain energy that went into the project, the tiny outcome is a pleasant surprise.
PRIVATE PARTS: Hold off on building the aluminum foil hats for now; mind readers might not be let in. Biological privacy laws may be coming in response to technologies embedded in the human mind, with Colorado being the first state to make a policy change. Captured brain data is being bought and sold by wearable tech companies with limited protections in place. Research by The NeuroRights Foundation found that in a pool of thirty wearable tech companies capturing brainwaves, twenty-nine provided no meaningful limitations to data access. Colorado changed key language in its existing “Colorado Consumer Protection Act” and expanded “sensitive data” to “biological data,” which includes biological, genetic, biochemical, physiological, and neural properties. For those who don’t mind the data breach, it sounds like you might soon be able to think your way into dollars.
SILENT BUT DEADLY?: Startups are dwindling down. According to Forbes, data suggests venture capital may be in a silent recession equivalent to that of 2008. More than half of the startups having raised more than $1 million and founded from 2017 to 2023 went out of business last year. Additionally, the amount of startup closures was greater in the first quarter of 2024 than each quarter in 2023. The rapid rise of interest rates has taken VC and startups by surprise, and it’s evident that startups unable to tighten budgets fast enough are struggling. An interesting part of the current environment is a sort of VC musical chairs: numerous big investor switches to new firms have become common in recent months, signaling additional stress in the industry. The VC playground is putting the recess in recession.
Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥
Check out details on the pre-seed raises from the past week:
healthtech
Dr. Pecker Inc. - Clinics with high AI-Q.
Dr. Pecker Inc. raised $1 million at a $20 million pre-money valuation. Dr. Pecker Inc. is using human-computer interaction (HCI) technologies, i.e., wearable cameras with seamless data integration, to create smart clinics.
fintech
Rx Save Card - Prescribed savings.
Rx Save Card raised $1.7 million from Distributed Ventures. Rx Save Card is creating a solution that “fixes” prescription costs by helping employees find the best-priced option and helping employers alleviate out-of-pocket payments.
artificial intelligence
nunu.ai - AI wants to play.
nunu.ai raised $2 million from A16Z GAMES Speedrun, Boost VC, and Y Combinator. nunu.ai is building AI-powered agents that test and play games to assist with the game development process.
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!
© 2024 Necessary Ventures
San Francisco, California