It’s hard to believe that it’s already October and time to recap another quarter. While we are all focused on staying safe (whether from Covid-19 or an unprecedented fire season), we are also looking ahead – working hard to build great companies and hopeful for 2021! 

As we do at the end of every quarter, we’ve summarized some of the key highlights and activities across our portfolio. 

Announcements

Patch, a platform for negative emissions, officially launched. Patch helps businesses of all sizes automate their sustainability goals with just a few lines of code. It integrates with businesses to calculate their carbon footprint and systematically compensates by funding verified carbon removal projects. Few launches have been as timely, as the impacts of climate change have been all too real to those of us on the west coast. You can read our blog post to learn why we’re excited about Patch’s mission and approach.

Uniswap raised its Series A led by A16z with additional investments from USV, Paradigm and Version One. As we shared on our blog, Uniswap’s combination of an open platform and an automated liquidity creation mechanism is crucial for the long tail of crypto currencies and tokens, to a point that one can imagine Uniswap becoming the default price API for every single token out there. In addition, UNI arrived and was probably one of the largest token distribution events ever with 15% of all tokens going to nearly 300K liquidity providers and users. Just imagine a company going public hands out 15% of their stock to their users at IPO – for free! 

And, Drover announced $26M in funding to take its car subscription marketplace to Europe. Drover offers flexible car subscriptions for individuals – longer than a rental, and shorter and more flexible than a lease or purchase. 

Accolades

The Globe and Mail included three of our portfolio companies Ada (#11), Jobber (#87), and Top Hat (#230) on its list of the 400 top growing companies in Canada. 

Outreach was named to the 2020 LinkedIn Top Startups list, which uncovers the 50 companies that have stood out this year, attracting investment, employees and attention.

Scanwell Health was awarded a $1.6M grant for its smartphone-enabled, at-home screening test for chronic kidney disease.  

Product releases and news

Shippo published the Online Selling Handbook. It’s a great and free resource for anyone starting, or thinking about starting, an online business.

Flow tokens are available on CoinList until October 2 as part of its community sale. Flow is the next-generation blockchain developed by Dapper Labs (creators of CryptoKitties).

Cape Privacy had the third release of Cape Python with reversible, linkable tokenization. For more on the how and why of reversible tokenization, check out their announcement. 

Celo native asset $CELO is now on Coinbase.

EdTech startup Top Hat acquired another education publishing company, recently closing a deal to purchase Bluedoor. 

Opyn frequently launches new options: check these out. 

Version One updates

We realized it was time to refresh our thesis. We still think that network effects are incredibly valuable, but the founding team is the most important factor in our investment decision-making. No matter the vertical, geography, business model, macro or micro trends, entrepreneurs form the nucleus of a generational company. And for us, it’s all about mission-driven founders – those entrepreneurs who will stop at nothing to solve a deep pain point that they know well. 

You can listen to or read stories about some of our mission-driven founders. Varun Khona shares the story of the creation of Headout. Josh Nussbaum discusses his personal journey that led him to start Halcyon Health. You can read about Frank Mycroft’s (Booster Fuels) journey from spacecraft engineer to entrepreneur. And the Globe and Mail featured Jobber co-founders Sam Pillar and Forrest Zeisler. 

And we’re happy to announce that we will be publishing the 3rd Edition of our Guide to Marketplaces next week! Stay tuned!!

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