Startup headcounts are down; Insightful is up
Mar 19, 2025
Kaley Ubellacker
Market Stirrings 🚩
Here's what the week looked like in pre-seed:
$10.2M
8
Data aggregated from proprietary research and Crunchbase; valuation estimate based on 10-20% ownership stake.
What's happening at Necessary Ventures:
Insightful Instruments, stealth portfolio company in the ophthalmic device space, closed an up round.
Recently on Money Moves, Danielle Strachman, cofounder of the 1517 Fund and key player in building the Thiel Fellowship program, revealed her game-changing approach to investing in dropouts, students, and sci-fi science.
HEADING IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION
Startups are tightening their belts, scaling back early-stage headcounts, and embracing the mantra of "building more with less." In the early-stage arena, fintech, consumer tech, and SaaS are leading the charge in lower headcounts. Notably, SaaS has experienced the most significant drop in headcount across all startup stages. This trend mirrors a broader industry shift towards efficiency and high performance.
Good Reads 📖
For the rushed reader …
GSR Ventures launched a new U.S. arm called Informed Ventures, backed by a $200 million fund focused on early-stage healthtech.
Google-backed FireSat's first satellite successfully started orbiting Earth over the weekend, marking the start of game-changing technology for battling wildfires.
MIT is making waves in the world of soft robotics by developing artificial muscles that can move in multiple directions.
For the less rushed reader …
New neighbor moving in
A new venture fund is raising the stakes in healthcare. GSR Ventures launched a new U.S. arm called Informed Ventures, backed by a $200 million fund focused on early-stage healthtech. Informed Ventures will take over the U.S. portfolio from GSR, which includes companies like Medable, Nimble, and AppliedVR, and retain many of GSR’s seasoned partners. The fund will be led by Richard Lim, a managing director who brings over a decade of experience in digital health, SaaS, fintech, and consumer products. Lim and his team are determined to transform the patient experience, tackling long wait times, high costs, and confusing insurance policies. Cheers to Informed’s un-Lim-ited success and a healthy dose of capital for healthtech.
Boom, boom, firepower
Satellites are blazing a new trail in wildfire detection. Google-backed FireSat's first satellite successfully started orbiting Earth over the weekend, marking the start of game-changing technology for battling wildfires. When fully operational in 2026, FireSat’s 50+ satellites will image nearly the entire planet every 20 minutes. Unlike outdated aerial photography and low-res satellite tech, FireSat uses high-res, six-band infrared cameras designed specifically for wildfire detection. This effort is a collaboration between Muon Space, the Earth Fire Alliance, and major backers like Google and the Environmental Defense Fund. If, like me, you’re wondering who on Earth Muon Space is: it’s a startup worth watching. Founded in 2021, Muon Space has quickly raised over $90 million, including a $56.7 million Series B in August 2024, and locked down over $100 million in customer contracts. Hopefully, the man on the moon doesn’t mind a few extra stars in his sky.
Weird flex, but okay
Here’s a recent innovation that will turn heads – literally. MIT is making waves in the world of soft robotics by developing artificial muscles that can move in multiple directions—think the agility of your eye’s iris but on a robot. For years, scientists struggled to replicate the flexibility of natural muscle tissues, which move in various directions, like how our iris can contract and dilate. MIT researchers have cracked the code with a "stamping" technique that 3D prints microscopic grooves into a hydrogel, which is then seeded with muscle cells. The result is a muscle-powered robot that can contract in both circular and radial motions—no more robots that can only flex their arms like they're in a perpetual muscle pose. This breakthrough could allow robots to squeeze and twist through tight spaces, opening up possibilities for more complex and versatile robotic systems. If this means robots might join my yoga classes, count me in.
Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥
Highlights from this week’s pre-seed raises:
agritech
GigaCrop - Planting seeds for change.
GigaCrop raised $4.5 million from Playground Global. GigaCrop is developing a method to boost crop yields and enhance drought resistance by combining cutting-edge machine learning with enzyme engineering.
cybersecurity
Hawcx - Ditch the passwords in your notes app.
Hawcx raised $3 million led by Engineering Capital. Hawcx is creating a passwordless authentication platform that enhances security, simplifies user experience, and integrates in just five lines of code.
AI
MoirAI Cloud - Real world power rangers.
MoirAI Cloud raised $1 million. MoirAI Cloud is developing AI-powered software that slashes power waste by up to 95%, optimizing power usage, cooling, and server efficiency to reduce costs for data centers.
Outro🚪
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Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
