Despite the obvious challenges, we ended 2020 on a strong note and, so far, our portfolio family has been riding a huge momentum wave. 2021 is proving to be an incredible year across our portfolio – from big funding announcements to significant product developments. We’re so proud of what everyone has been able to accomplish and are looking forward to spring – and more widespread vaccine availability so that we can all be together again soon!

Here’s a quick look at some of the things that happened in Q1.

Lots of funding announcements!

Dapper Labs (creators of CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot and the FLOW blockchain) raised $305M in funding. You can check out our original piece explaining why we’re so excited about Dapper Labs.  

SuperRare, an NFT Art marketplace, raised a $9M Series A. This capped off an incredible month for them, with over $29M in total sales volume in March. If you missed it, you can read our announcement here.

The SEC declared Coinbase’s S-1 registration statement effective. The company expects its direct listing to occur on April 14, 2021 with its Class A common stock trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol COIN. This marks the first IPO in the Version One family. 

Lolli, a Bitcoin rewards company, raised a $5M round led by 776 Ventures. 

Cazoo (which acquired V1 portfolio company Drover) is going public on NYSE via a SPAC at $7B. You can read about it here.  

Shippo raised $45M in new funding. 

Patch raised a $4.5M seed round led by A16z. You can read our thoughts on the opportunity in our pre-seed announcement. And there’s a great article by the team in Fortune on how efforts to make crypto less energy-intensive are already underway, but in the meantime, carbon removal should be an urgent priority.

We announced our investment in Arweave, a decentralized platform that enables anyone to store documents and applications forever. You can read our announcement here.

Celo raised $20M from A16z. 

Opyn raised $6.7M in Series A funding led by Paradigm.

Top Hat raised $130M and recruited a new CEO. You can read about it in the Globe and Mail.  

A strategic $2.7M contribution was made by various VCs and prominent angel investors to the Nexus Mutual foundation.

Preemadonna raised over $5M in seed financing. Here’s our announcement. 

Jobber raised $60M in funding led by Summit. 

Cap Hill Brands raised $150M to buy e-commerce businesses. You can read our blog post about why we’re excited about the opportunity. 

SilviaTerra closed a $4.4M seed round; you can learn more about their mission from TechCrunch and our own blog post.

And Manifold joined the Snyk team that just raised $300M at a $4.7B valuation. 

Product Launches and Updates

Uniswap launched Uniswap V3, which introduces concentrated liquidity (giving individual LPs granular control over what price ranges their capital is allocated to) and multiple fee tiers (so LPs can be appropriately compensated for taking on varying degrees of risk). You can read more about it here.

Celo launched the Valora App, a P2P payment app that lets you send money like a text message to anyone worldwide

Stacks 2.0.7 is now released! You can read some of our thoughts here. 

Arweave announced its incubator, the Open Web Foundry. It’s a six-week program guiding founders through the process of launching an amazing new startup on the Arweave’s decentralised web. 

Abstract launched Notebooks, a new product that enables a more inclusive design workflow and the insights needed to keep the seat at the table that designers fight so hard to get.

SilviaTerra launched its 1st quarterly Natural Capital Exchange (NCAPX), earning 20% of Microsoft’s carbon removal procurement. 

Jam introduced Jam Genies, so you can summon feedback from the world’s top designers on your projects!

Stay up to date with what is happening in the V1 family in real-time by following via Twitter and subscribing to our blog!