Happy Canada Day and Fourth of July to our friends and colleagues on both sides of the border. We hope everyone is having a great start to summer.

Here’s a quick recap of the key activities, news coverage and announcements that occurred in Q2. Keep in mind that these are just the things that have been announced publicly; as always, other equally important things have been happening behind the scenes too.

Funding announcements and accolades

Abstract, a platform that’s changing the way modern design teams work together and collaborate, announced their $16M Series B led by Scale Venture Partners.

Outreach announced their $65m Series D led by Spark Capital. They were also recognized as one of the best places to work (and we agree), so congrats to the entire team!

Earlier this year, we invested in Celo. This quarter, they lifted the veil and announced what they’re working on. The startup aims to remove the barriers for large-scale adoption of cryptocurrencies as means-of-payment. You can read more about them here.

Crypto Listening

As you know, we spend significant time on crypto here at Version One. We are excited to think about how crypto will play out over the coming years and how we can should build a firm for crypto as it matures. If you want to dive into the world of crypto this summer, here are some recommended podcasts/videos:

Boris talked crypto with Harry Stebbings on 20VC. They discussed where the crypto market is today, how it compares to the Dotcom bubble of 2000 and why crypto is the biggest disruptor to hit VC in a decade.

Citizen Hex was on an episode of Banking on Blockchain podcast, with the theme Ethereum: Canada’s Unicorn.

Watch Fred Wilson of USV, another investor in CryptoKitties, speak with Dieter Shirley of CryptoKitties (who came up with the ERC721) talk about non fungible tokens.

Other news and highlights across the portfolio

The Coinbase Index Fund is open for investment. At this stage, the fund is open to those who wish to invest $250,000 to $20M.

San Francisco Business Times had a great profile on how Shippo is taking on Amazon in the shipping fight.

Gencove continues to focus on developing their low-pass whole-genome sequencing tech to replace genotying arrays. You can read about it here.

Blockstack announced the first universal app store for decentralized apps. You can find apps on Ethereum, Blockstack, IPFS, Steem, EOS and more. And if you’re a dapp developer, submit your decentralized app today at https://app.co

And, Booster Fuels (on-demand fuel delivery) added Fleet to their service offering.

We’re already moving full-steam into the third quarter. To make sure you don’t miss any of the action, follow us on Twitter. Happy summer everyone!