Amplify releases their Seed Deal Report, Warp raises $7.5M, and More!
Our latest Seed Report is live!
Read on for a snippet of our coverage, and huge thank you to dot.LA for covering the report!
On a global scale, venture funding tumbled to $445 billion in 2022, a 35% decline YoY from the $681 billion deployed in 2021. Flaunting its relative immunity to broader venture pessimism, seed stage funding was the “least impacted funding stage” of 2022’s downturn. Despite the rosiness this might imply, when taken piece by piece, 2022 represented a steady, stepwise decline in quarter over quarter seed funding, with Q4 alone clocking in with 35% less funding than the same quarter the year prior.
And when we look at LA dealmaking, it doesn’t get much prettier. While the narrative, and numbers, for the first half of 2022 might have led one to believe that LA was uniquely protected from whatever evil was plaguing the rest of the world, the second half of 2022 was a sobering reminder that we are no exception.
Company Raises
Warp, a Los Angeles, CA-based tech-powered freight network specializing in middle-mile solutions, raised $5.7M in additional seed funding led by MaC Venture Capital, Bonfire Ventures, and Frontier Venture Capital with participation from insiders like us and Bee Partners. Warp will use these new funds to scale its network and tech platform to further automate traditional supply chain “hacks” that were previously done manually.
Portfolio News
The Bouqs Co., a cut-to-order flower e-commerce company, was ranked as the best online flower delivery service by the lovely experts at WireCutter. The Bouqs shined above all other competitors in beauty, order process, arrival time, and packaging. Wirecutter reported that, “the Bouqs Company just looked better, even to casual observers. Add to that reliable delivery, a clean, easy-to-use website, and the fact that it offers three price options (akin to small, medium, and large) for each bouquet, and you really won’t find a better delivery service.” There’s still time to order for Valentines day!🌸
WeeCare, one of the largest childcare networks in the US, is celebrating its 5-year anniversary and was recently ranked as one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in America by Inc. Magazine. WeeCare provides access to high-quality childcare for all families, supports childcare providers in operating sustainable businesses through a technology-based marketplace, and helps employers of all sizes offer their employees childcare benefits. WeeCare also won dot.LA’s Social Equity Award for their admirable mission to make childcare accessible for all.
Thankful, a provider of AI customer support SaaS that integrates with any helpdesk and solves customer queries end-to-end, announced its integration with ChatGPT. Thankful is the first customer service tech to marry the benefits of generative text with the need for vertical-specific knowledge. Thankful also received six awards in G2’s Fall 2022 reports. For the third quarter in a row, G2 has named Thankful a High Performer in the Intelligent Virtual Assistant Software, Customer Self-Service Service, and Mid-Market Customer Self-Service categories.
Cheese, The first zero-fee cash-back debit card for immigrants, launched their new Credit Builder product and is top ranked in the app store amongst credit builder products. Cheese allows you to show credit bureaus that consumers can consistently make on-time payments. This builds your payment history, which makes up 35% of your credit score!
Why We’re Backing Reactive
When you think back to 90’s catalogs, what comes to mind? Maybe a product image, a quippy blurb, available sizes, and maybe even multiple color options. Save for slightly more engaging elements (like carefully filtered customer reviews and embedded social posts from their most aesthetic fans) e-comm product pages remain almost identical in 2022! And unfortunately, the vast majority of e-commerce sites suffer the same problem their retro paper ancestors did: they fail to convert 99% of potential customers. The e-commerce revolution has, in many senses, simply copy and pasted the customer experience of the 90’s and early aughts into today’s world.
In our latest blog post, you can read all about how Reactive is bringing the interactivity of social to merchant storefronts, and in turn, ushering e-commerce into an engaging new era. Reactive offers live streaming infrastructure as a service, providing e-comm sellers the building blocks for exceptional, low-latency live experiences, focusing on live commerce. Using Reactive, merchants can go live on their first-party platforms, own their audience and brand interactions, and seamlessly incorporate critical features like enhanced audience analytics, payments, chat, and more. Read more here about why we decided to back Andrew Conti.
Events & Opportunities
LA Tech Week is a week of events hosted by the LA startup community to celebrate the growing ecosystem. More than 16,000 people came together for LA Tech Week 2022. This year, it’s going bigger and farther with Tech Weeks in LA, SF and NYC. Make sure to save the dates and sign up here! SF (5/30–6/4) | LA (6/5–6/11) | NYC (10/16–10/22)
Pitch HearstLab: LA is a pitch competition focused on women-led startups in the US. After applying, select founders will get the opportunity to pitch onstage in Los Angeles on May 9th. Winners will receive $100,000 in investment funds and support from HearstLab for three months. Apply by Wednesday, March 1st.
Amplify is a first check fund backing LA’s earliest and strongest tech teams. You can get in touch with us here. Want these updates delivered to your inbox? Join our newsletter!
