We are well into 2019. And yes, this is the time of year when people are thinking about resolutions and looking ahead. And while we are very excited about the new year and new fund, we also want to spend a few minutes to reflect on last quarter. Q4 was an important quarter for our firm and portfolio companies. As we move ahead into 2019, we can ride some great momentum.

Announcements

We announced our investment in Lolli, the first bitcoin rewards application that lets people earn and own bitcoin when they shop online. The company’s goal is to make bitcoin more accessible for all. There’s good coverage of their seed round in Forbes and The Wall Street Journal.

Dapper Labs, the creators of CrypoKitties, announced they raised $15 million to build more blockchain cats. It’s well known that CryptoKitties is the world’s most used consumer blockchain application outside of exchanges. You can read more about their growth and latest funding round on VentureBeat.  

Coinbase announced their Series E to accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrencies.  

And Ada Support raised $14m to help companies develop their own customer service chatbots.

Product Launches and Updates

Coinbase continues to explore support for new digital assets from Civic (CVC) to Augur (REP), from EOS to Tezos (XTZ). Their goal is to offer support for all assets that meet their standards and are fully compliant with local law – you can read more about this work on their blog.

Placenote continues to update their SDK, improving the product’s runtime memory usage during mapping and location. You can take a look at the latest specs here: https://placenote.com/docs/

Manifold introduced its all-new Manifold Marketplace – designed to be effortless and fun to use, just like every great developer tool should be.

Clio acquired Lexicata, a Los Angeles-based customer relationship management and client intake tool for lawyers. You can read about the acquisition here.

Booster Fuels is generating $180K in revenue per day delivering gas. You can watch CEO Frank Mycroft on CNBC, discussing the company’s aspiration to be Amazon Prime for gas.

Karthik Sridharan, founder of Kinnek, wrote a great article on Medium on what they’ve learned from building the largest North American B2B marketplace.

Accolades

Two Version One teams were named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list! Mike Murchison and David Hariri, the founders of Ada Support and Nikhil Srinivasan and Alex Kern, founders of Cleargraph, which was acquired by Coinbase last summer.

And, Laura Behrens Wu, CEO of Shippo, was named to Vanity Fair’s Future Innovator’s Index.

Congratulations to all for these well-deserved honors!

Version One News

In October, we announced the launch of Version One Ventures III with $45M USD ($57M CAD) in commitments. With the new fund, we’re doubling down on all that has worked in our previous funds – our strategy, geography, investment thesis and philosophy, If you haven’t heard about Fund III yet, you can read Boris’ announcement.

And last, but not least, Angela made two “investor to watch” lists on the very same day: she was featured in Forbes’ “Six rising stars in venture” and WSJ’s “Ten Women Fueling Tomorrow’s Disruptive Startups.”

That’s the recap from Q4 2018. A reminder that as we go into this new year, we are spending lots of time in crypto and bio. We are excited about network effects that exist in VR/AR, autonomy, etc. And we still love marketplaces, social platforms, and Smart SaaS.

Follow @VersionOneVC for the latest news from us and our portfolio!