Richmond Inno
“If you think of five in 100 startups getting funded and then one percent of those five being Black, it would take a lot of pipeline [for Black startups to get funded] even if there was no bias,” he added.
On the investor side, Laura Markley, managing director for Richmond-based VC firm NRV, agreed that this problem comes down to pipeline. While there is a bottleneck of who can get access to information about funding opportunities, the industry presents a diversity problem from the very beginning.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Several startup companies that are part of the investment portfolio of NRV, a Richmond-based venture capital group, have taken steps to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
The Richmond-based venture capital firm NRV has made investments in two companies — a Norfolk-based startup that makes software for industrial robotics, and a Nashville-based company that specializes in making nutritional frozen foods.
Life Pulse Health
Ario Technologies Inc., a software-as-service company that delivers augmented reality (AR) technology to the industrial workforce enabling immediate and easy access to communal knowledge, announced today that the company is offering Ario Connect, a video calling application employing AR, for free throughout Q2 for 90 days. On March 31, 2020, the complimentary application first launched to existing customers in response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spread and temporary, global migration to remote work.
Pitchbook
Private market investors are turning defensive.
Investors are riding out the coronavirus outbreak with a wait-and-see stance, but a significant portion of them already are expecting to scale back their bets this year, according to a survey by PitchBook.
The Counter
Rather than make the expensive upgrades required by big poultry companies, some chicken farmers let their barns fall out of use. Shenandoah Valley Organic sees a business opportunity in all that neglected infrastructure.
Forbes
Rent The Runway, the designer women’s fashion rental service, is private and doesn’t publish earnings but it would be surprising if it was profitable. It is valued at a cool $1 billion.
Stitch Fix, the online personal styling service, makes money but its earnings are erratic. It is valued at $2 billion, over 50 times EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).
Farfetch, the luxury fashion boutique marketplace, has never made a profit and every year it loses more money than the year before. It is valued at nearly $4 billion.
How do these new fashion companies convince investors to buy in at these values?
Venture Beat
During CES 2019, Verizon announced the Built on 5G Challenge, a nationwide search for solid 5G innovations that could be commercialized using its low latency, high bandwidth millimeter wave 5G network. Today, the carrier announced three winners across the fields of AR, VR, and artificial intelligence, earning $1 million, $500,000, and $250,000 prizes, plus special 5G lab access to develop their projects.
VegNews
Snack brand Beanfields develops “Vegan Cracklins,” its first non-chip product, in two bold flavors.
Richmond Inno
The Richmond area had a knock-out year for innovation, including a $13 million round of funding for a local startup at the end of 2019 and the $117.5 million acquisition of a Charlottesville-based IT company.
Business Wire
HARRISONBURG, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Shenandoah Valley Organic (SVO) announced it closed a $15 million funding round led by NRV with participation from Open Prairie, as well as existing investors S2G Ventures and Middleland Capital’s VTC Innovation Fund.
PR Newswire
Manna Tree Partners, a Vail, CO-based asset manager that invests growth capital in companies that produce, process and distribute healthy food, today announced it has closed a growth investment in Nutriati, a Richmond, VA-based developer and manufacturer of plant-based ingredients, including protein, flour and oil.
Harvard Business Review
Last year, when SAP spent $8 billion to acquire the online research firm Qualtrics, a price that was roughly 14 times the company’s projected 2019 sales, SAP’s CEO defended the deal by citing a statistic. Companies that create a new category typically capture 76% of the total category market capitalization, he said. Since Qualtrics created the category in which it played, the CEO said, this deal would payoff despite the steep premium.
Star Tribune
Schwan's will offer its vast nationwide distribution network to help specialty food startups.
New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, recently published a blog post titled “The Great Public Market Reckoning.” In it, he argued that the narrative that had driven start-up hype and valuations for the last decade was now falling apart.