Unstoppable Domains, the leading platform for Web3 digital identity with more than 2.5 million registered NFT domains, today announced it has closed $65 million in Series A funding at a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by new investor Pantera Capital with participation from Mayfield, Gaingels, Alchemy Ventures, Redbeard Ventures, Spartan Group, OKG Investments, Polygon, CoinDCX, CoinGecko, We3 syndicate, Rainfall Capital, Broadhaven, EI Ventures, Hardyaka, and Sound Media Ventures, along with previous investors Boost VC and Draper Associates. Unstoppable Domains will use the funding to fuel product innovation and grow our partnerships in the web3 space as we continue to build a platform for user-owned and portable digital identity.

“Unstoppable Domains is rapidly defining a new category of decentralized identity that will change the internet as we know it,” said Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital. “We’re proud to back Matt and the rest of the team who are making this vision a reality.”

Founded in 2018, Unstoppable Domains offers NFT domains that give people full ownership and control of their digital identity. The company has registered 2.5 million domains, which people can use to log into more than 150 Web3 applications, replace lengthy crypto wallet addresses on more than 80 wallets and exchanges, create decentralized websites, and build their web3 identity. Unstoppable Domains has built more than 300 partnerships with leading web3 companies like Polygon, Blockchain.com, MoonPay and more. Unstoppable Domains has generated more than $80 million in sales since launching in 2019.

“For too long, companies have controlled people’s digital identities, and Unstoppable Domains is putting that power back into the hands of people,” said Matthew Gould, Founder and CEO of Unstoppable Domains. “As the digital economy becomes a larger part of our lives, it’s time for people to own their identity on the internet. We’re thrilled to partner with Pantera and other investors who share our vision of onboarding billions of people onto Web3 through NFT domains that unlock user-owned, private, and portable identities.”

Unstoppable Domains is a fully remote company and was recently named one of America’s Best Startup Employers by Forbes.

ABOUT UNSTOPPABLE DOMAINS

Founded in 2018, Unstoppable Domains is an NFT domain name provider and digital identity platform working to onboard the world onto Web3. Unstoppable Domains offers NFT domains minted on the blockchain that give people full ownership and control of their digital identity, with no renewal fees. With Unstoppable Domains, people can replace lengthy alphanumeric crypto wallet addresses with a human-readable name and log into and transact with apps, wallets, exchanges and marketplaces. The company was named by Forbes as one of America’s Best Startup Employers in 2022.

ABOUT PANTERA

Pantera Capital is the first institutional investment firm focused exclusively on bitcoin, other digital currencies, and companies in the blockchain tech ecosystem. Pantera launched the first cryptocurrency fund in the United States when bitcoin was at $65/BTC in 2013. The firm subsequently launched the first exclusively-blockchain venture fund. In 2017, Pantera was the first firm to offer an early-stage token fund. Pantera Bitcoin Fund has returned over 32,000% in nine years and has returned billions to its investors. Pantera manages $4.7bn across three strategies – passive, hedge, and venture.

The original press release can be found on PR Newswire.

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During these times, people are looking for sound financial investments, especially those with good value, a rare commodity on a global scale since the pandemic. It has since rebounded, calling for an even greater demand during the reconstruction phase. Though it may be undervalued in luxury markets, the portfolio approach is the same as any other form of financial mobility.

People are looking for value; that’s the key. There are scores of buyers in local and international markets put against a relatively minuscule inventory of value real estate that offers a high quality of life. Real estate is part of the financial portfolio, whether people realize it or not. In fact, it is the most ideal for long-term investments, though it can be difficult to maneuver because of its illiquid nature. That’s why, like with any major investment, finding the right advisor is absolutely imperative.

Leslie McElwreath’s ability to help people do just that, no matter where they’re based, is what makes her service and that of Sotheby’s International Real Estate as a whole so unique. They put their clients into the capable hands of trusted real estate advisors advisors around the world, such as herself.  

Leslie McElwreath, the top Sotheby’s realtor in Greenwich, Connecticut, has represented some of the finest homes in the United States for more than two decades. These homes include several of the most iconic, highest priced single-family home sales in Greenwich Great Estates history, including Rockfields, a former Rockefeller estate, Sabine Farm, Old Mill Farm, and Dunellen Hall, the former Helmsley Estate. Suffice it to say Leslie has had a lot of success in her local market. Now that the world has changed, perhaps for good, she has been ramping up her efforts on the international market, establishing herself as a global real estate advisor. As with any investment vehicle, people are looking for value. With Greenwich currently undervalued in luxury markets, Leslie with her vast network and experience in financing, helps her buyers grow their real estate portfolio as an asset class that is increasing in value. Utilizing the portfolio approach, the same as any other financial investment, is the prudent approach whether the purchase is for a second home, vacation home or for a family member.

McElwreath has 39 years of sales and marketing experience under her belt and a commitment to excellence and unparalleled customer service. Her singular results have made her the #1 agent in the Town of Greenwich in both 2019 and 2020, per the Greenwich Multiple Listing System. What’s more, Leslie’s career sales volume has exceeded $1 Billion and her annual production places her among the top real estate agents in the United States. Her time as a Wall Street executive was also influential in developing her mind for business, having spent 15 years with firms like Bankers Trust Company, Bear Stearns & Co, Drexel Burnham and Lambert, Inc. and J.P. Morgan.

Leslie is active in all aspects of residential real estate from listing homes and land to working with buyers and relocating families. Her tenacity and dedication have allowed her to achieve extraordinary results, regardless of inflation or stagnation in the market. What’s more, Leslie’s previous career on Wall Street gives her a unique insight on how people in that industry communicate and do business.  

The real estate market, along with every other industry, has been turned on its axis. Those who refused to pivot their models of operation accordingly have fallen behind, which is why Leslie has augmented her efforts to assist both relocating families and buyers in Greenwich, and investors, financiers, and buyers throughout the US and overseas.  

It is both Leslie’s experience as a realtor and financier that truly sets her apart as an a Sotheby’s Senior Global Real Estate Advisor. With almost 20 years of experience in the financial markets, Leslie is positioned uniquely in the real estate market. As a real estate portfolio manager, she is able to work with a network of top realtors around the world. Her experience has also given her access to off market transactions which are ideal for strategically adding to any investors’ real estate portfolio.

As a pillar of her community, Leslie ensures that her success is given back to her hometown of Greenwich. For every commission earned, she donates a portion to The Greenwich Land Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving open space in Greenwich.

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Elation Health, the clinical-first technology company powering innovation in primary care, today announced a Series D financing round of $50 million. Generation Investment Management, a firm established in 2004 to back businesses driving sustainability, co-led the round alongside Ascension Ventures with participation from Threshold Ventures, Ascend Partners, and individual investors including Fay Rotenberg and Jonathan Bush. This new round brings Elation Health to $108.5 million in venture funding to date.

Funding will be used to continue rapidly scaling Elation’s market reach and platform features for high-value primary care success in all settings. In addition to being a market leader for independent primary care practices — including those taking insurance, in risk-bearing contracts, and in the direct primary care setting — Elation is the operating technology for many of the largest and fastest-growing primary care innovators such as Crossover Health, Cityblock Health, and Firefly Health.

Anthony Woolf, Growth Equity Partner at Generation Investment Management — “We believe Elation Health is powering primary care’s value-based future, which needs to be more physician-managed and patient-centric and less administratively driven. We need to move away from a fee-for-service system to one where incentives align with long-term health outcomes for patients. Elation has built the leading cloud-hosted, API-enabled electronic health record system fit for the modern digital health environment. This funding round aims to accelerate what Elation offers to physicians and patients as the company continues to work with forward-thinking leaders to build a more sustainable primary care-driven healthcare system.”

John Kuelper, Senior Managing Director and head of Healthcare Technology at Ascension Ventures — “Ascension Ventures believes that independent primary care practices will continue to be a foundational component of care delivery, particularly as healthcare moves towards value-based care. Elation has demonstrated that it can enable these clinicians to operate at top-of-license by making clinical and practice management more intuitive and efficient with technology and automation. With this foundation in place, we are particularly excited by opportunities to further enable these practices to collaborate more deeply with insurers, specialists, and hospitals around value-based initiatives. Elation has the potential to make care delivery much more collaborative by empowering the primary care clinic with the information and tools needed to better coordinate complex care.”

Former athenahealth CEO and Founder Jonathan Bush, now CEO of Elation Health partner Zus Health — “athenahealth’s original mission was to remove all the scut work from the practice of medicine so doctors could be doctors. Decades later, the industry still needs far better solutions to enable primary care to work best in support of clinicians doing just that and developing trusted relationships with their patients. This requires flexibility and space for listening, not checklists and a focus on CPT codes. I first met Kyna when she was automating her family’s primary care practice and believe the sensibility she developed in that effort is what makes Elation such a unique technology platform. The bonus is that discerning engineers and builders love using Elation as well as clinicians. I can’t wait to see what’s next!”

Kyna Fong, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Elation Health — “There is tremendous power in a primary care–led future. The concept of specialty-led, billing-first care from the last few decades, and the technologies that have enabled it, has delivered unsustainable costs, burnout, and declining health outcomes. We are in the midst of a major shift toward primary care returning to its leadership position, and Elation is honored to have a role in powering that change. Every patient deserves a primary care physician they can trust.”

Designed from the start as a Collaborative Health Record, the Elation Health technology platform has a unified patient architecture that intuitively makes real-time shared data available to every clinician without overwhelming data noise. In 2021, the company was invited to work with the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) on technology that can ease administrative burden on physicians. Elation Health has invested significantly in technology tools that make it easy for clinicians to get credit for the relationship-driven care they provide to patients. Today, millions of patients are being cared for by clinicians in value-based care arrangements using Elation.

Additionally, Elation has become the API-driven, EHR platform of choice for development teams at primary care organizations to accelerate innovative care models without creating technology systems from scratch. The platform currently supports more than a million API calls each day with connections to 300+ technology and healthcare organization collaborators including Dock Health, Hint Health, and Zus Health.

The company will continue to build for clinician delight. In an increasingly complex healthcare landscape, Elation is maintaining the highest NPS and KLAS scores while advancing primary care success across the wide variety of new practice and payment models. For more information about Elation Health’s platform for primary care, visit elationhealth.com.

About Elation Health

Elation Health is the most trusted technology platform for high-value primary care. Since 2010, the company has delivered clinical-first solutions — built on a collaborative EHR platform — that help practices start, grow, communicate, and succeed in delivering the highest-quality personalized care to patients. Elation Health supports primary care clinicians in upholding the craft of medicine, while thriving in an evolving healthcare landscape. Today, Elation Health serves 24,000 clinicians caring for millions of Americans. Learn more at elationhealth.com, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

About Generation Investment Management

Generation Investment Management is dedicated to long-term investing, integrated sustainability research and client alignment. It is an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and headquartered in London, with a U.S. presence in San Francisco. Generation Investment Management LLP is authorised and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority. In the U.S. Generation operates via Generation Investment Management US LLP, a Registered Investment Adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission. www.generationim.com

About Ascension Ventures

Ascension Ventures is a strategic healthcare venture fund with more than $1 billion in capital under management. Our limited partners are some of the most respected, values-driven nonprofit healthcare systems in the U.S. As a strategic investor, Ascension Ventures adds value by sharing its portfolio companies’ solutions across its limited partner base. The work we do at Ascension Ventures generates returns to our limited partners that help support their missions to provide care to the poor and vulnerable. http://www.ascensionventures.org/

The original press release can be found on Elation Health’s website.

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But during the most recent explosive period of growth in the blockchain industry, adoption and popularity of the technology increased in parallel. With so many newcomers, it’s no surprise to see such widespread disappointment in the community. Not only is this the first bear market for many, but it is also their first experience in the financial world. After all, the largest ownership demographic is the 25-34 age range. 

Cyrus Taghehcian started building in blockchain back in 2016 while searching for solutions to problems in legacy finance. Since then, he founded SHOPX.co, an e-commerce infrastructure project powered by blockchain technology and NFTs. I interviewed Cyrus today to get an expert’s opinion on recent events. Hopefully, his experience will help calm some of the uncertainty in this difficult time. 

Grit Daily: What do you think caused this most recent crash and bear market?

Cyrus Taghehcian: The crypto bull run is officially over. It has been over since November, confirmed in May. Here we are in July and most of the disbelief is starting to dissipate. You could say that the crypto market is irrational. You could definitely say it was over-leveraged. The reasons behind the bitcoin bull cycles in the past have always been irrational to me. The slashing of the bitcoin mining rewards in half every 210,000 transaction blocks has been causing crypto to bubble about every 4 years since its inception in 2009. 

GD: What does the bear market mean for crypto and the economy at large?

Cyrus Taghehcian: Well, there’s good news. Real money is made in bear markets. The true builders are still here looking for funding. The scammers and noise have died down. There are distressed assets everywhere ripe for the taking. This crypto bear cycle will be like none other we have experienced before. In the US, we haven’t had a recession in 14 years. Those that study economics/history/money policy know that we are long overdue for a proper recession. 

GD: What is the benefit of sitting on the sidelines while prices are so low?

Cyrus Taghehcian: In the past two years, the US has added dollars to the market at an unbelievable rate. War. Sanctions. Global trade is greatly impacted.  Scarce assets will remain scarce. The price of anything is determined by its supply and people’s demand. People have access to more dollars than ever before. Now it is more important than ever to have dollars on the sidelines ready to enter the market as we start to enter this overdue recession. 

GD: How can young investors take advantage of current market conditions?

Cyrus Taghehcian: Multiple half-billion crypto companies have declared bankruptcy already. Their assets will be on sale. The S&P 500 is down historic year-over-year lows already. Almost every industry is seeing massive value wiped off the scoreboard. As whole markets and countries capitulate, this is where the good news lies. There are opportunities everywhere. A well-placed investment strategy could be life-changing for some and could mean generational wealth for others. We all have to start somewhere. Cryptocurrency presents an entirely new asset class to the world. Digital property will cause the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever seen.

GD: When do you think we can expect to see a reduction in the volatility in the cryptocurrency market?

Cyrus Taghehcian: While the space is still unregulated, many are still waiting to enter this newish sector. Bitcoin, introduced in 2009 after the last economic crisis, was the first solution to the digital money problem and the first cryptocurrency project introduced. In 2018 Gary Gensler, chairman of the SEC, said that meaningful regulations to cryptocurrency were at least ten years out, while teaching a course on blockchain at MIT of Cambridge, MA. We will need a mix of both internal and external regulations as well as to establish a standardized routine of best practices if we want to beat volatility.

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To that end, it is a catch-all term for the next iteration of the World Wide Web, which can make it confusing, especially if you don’t understand it. But there are plenty of resources available to get your bearings and better understand Web3, including many of the people on the forefront offering advice and education on the topic.

Among the resources out there, podcasts are one of the best since they offer unique perspectives and each episode keeps you up to date with trends and changes. Web3 SUCKS! is one such podcast, and it is focused on helping its listeners understand everything about Web3, NFTs, and the Metaverse. For those looking for an intro into Web3, or those already initiated but looking for up-to-date information, it is something to check out.

The podcast is hosted by celebrity podcaster Sebastian Rusk, the host of Grit Daily Startup Show, who has interviewed big names like Gary Vaynerchuk, Marie Forleo, Daymond John, and John Lee Dumas. Sebastian’s knowledge and experience stand out among those in the podcasting space and makes him comfortable with live interviews, which is one of the reasons Web3 SUCKS! is recorded live on Twitter Spaces.

After the live recording via Twitter Spaces, the recording is produced as a podcast episode. Moreover, it is made available to all guests on all social media platforms as a social media micro-video.

Some of the topics recently covered on the podcast include an episode on helping businesses go from Web2 to Web3 and how artists use NFTs to grow their brands. The topics are diverse, as are the guests, and it has a growing episode list and following. That includes nearly 8,000 followers on Twitter and 9,000 podcast downloads to date.

Of course, Web3 SUCKS! is only one of the resources available, but with Web3 on the horizon and developing by the day, the more information you have, the better. Web3 SUCKS! is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, where you can listen to previous episodes and new ones as they come out.

Looking to book yourself or your clients on Web3 SUCKS!? Email [email protected] for more info.

The post Grit Daily Launches Web3 SUCKS! Podcast to Demystify Every Aspect of Web3 appeared first on Grit Daily News.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Voyantis, a prediction-based growth platform, unveils its codeless AI platform, which enables growth and marketing teams to acquire and retain high-value users for greater long-term profitability.

Up until recently, the growth-at-any-cost approach reigned supreme, as companies and investors alike focused on acquiring users, regardless of profitability. There was additionally a significant inflation CAC, caused, among other factors, by privacy restrictions in iOS and other operating systems and ad networks. The dramatic changes in the market, combined with their after-effects, carried over to the first and second quarters of 2022. As a result, the public and private investors became more focused on profitability instead of driving growth-at-any-cost.

Marketing and growth teams now realize they have to shift gears, and move from actions based on naive models and assumptions, to AI-powered actions that leverage predictions to support marketing profitability at scale—from user acquisition and remarketing, measurement, activation to lifecycle marketing. Harnessing the power and potential of AI technology, Voyantis’ predictive growth platform bridges this gap, by enabling online businesses to transform the way they acquire and retain customers, focusing on those with the highest value.

The company’s technology applies machine learning on thousands of zero-and first-party data points, owned by their customers, to predict each user’s future propensity and lifetime value shortly after acquisition and throughout their journey. At the fingertips of marketers, these predictions can be used to make informed and quick actions—shifting from a naive CAC-approach, to a positive LTV/CAC approach, improving ROI at scale. The predictions can also be automatically fed as signals into ad networks such as Google and Facebook, enabling marketers to optimize campaigns using superior predictive events and unlock new audiences.

This allows companies that rely on frequent repeat purchases or subscription models, to break free from the struggles and limitations that stem from lacking data and short-term campaign optimization processes focused on events/revenue manifested during the first few days or weeks from acquisition. Instead, smarter and more informed actions can be made, based on futurespected data—all with profitability in mind, resulting in substantial increase in returns on investment.

Voyantis, which operated in stealth since its founding in 2020, has integrated its platform with customers such as Notion, Miro, Ipsy and others.

Voyantis is revealing that it has raised $19M in seed funding from leading VCs, including Target Global, Square Peg, Schusterman Family Investments, Kaedan Capital, Stormbreaker, Jibe Venture, Two Lanterns and Operator Partners, with additional participation of notable executives at Adobe, Shopify,, Tinder and Facebook.

“Talking to hundreds of customers we realized that there’s a need to shift from decision making based on spreadsheets and calculations, to decision making based on machine learning and predictions,” says Ido Wiesenberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Voyantis. “Another realization is that predictions alone are not enough, the capability to seamlessly act on them is no-less important. That’s why we built the platform to support both decision-making, and actions with zero R&D needed.”

“Predicting who the high-value customers are early on becomes even more critical as the mindset shifts to profitable growth.“ says Yonatan Sela, who led the investment for Square Peg. “These are inputs any company scaling online customer acquisition and retention efforts should leverage, and Voyantis makes them easily accessible across the org.”

“It was easy to work with Voyantis’ signal optimization solution, and the results speak for themselves,” says Fabien David, who leads the performance marketing team at Notion. “With a 21 percent increase in team activation rate, as well as a 38 percent predicted 6-month increase in ROAS, new possibilities await for Notion as we cast a wider net as part of our growth strategy.”

About Voyantis:

Voyantis (https://www.voyantis.ai/) is a predictive growth platform which empowers online businesses to achieve sustainable LTV-based growth–while overcoming privacy challenges and ever-growing costs of acquisition. Leveraging artificial intelligence, Voyantis’ codeless platform, which is used by world class brands such as Miro, Notion, Ipsy, Beard-Club and others, analyzes thousands of data points to predict each user’s future propensity and lifetime value shortly after acquisition enabling growth and marketing teams to acquire and retain high-value users for greater long-term profitability.

The original press release can be found on Marketing Dive.

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SAN FRANCISCO, June 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Pave, the real time compensation platform that helps companies plan, communicate and benchmark against the market, announced today that it has raised $100 million in Series C funding and acquired Advanced-HR from Morgan Stanley. Advanced-HR has a product suite that includes Option Impact, Option Driver and the VCECS (Venture Capital Executive Compensation Survey).

The round was led by Index Ventures with Partner Mark Goldberg taking a Board seat. Several new and existing investors also participated, including Andreessen Horowitz, YC Continuity Fund, LocalGlobe, Craft Ventures, Original Capital, Backend Capital and Contrary Capital as well as notable individuals including former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and former Facebook VP of HR Tudor Havriliuc.

Pave will leverage the capital infusion and acquisition momentum to accelerate its path towards becoming the world’s premiere global compensation platform. Since Pave’s inception in 2019, the team has grown to 150 employees and now supports over 2,500 customers. The new funds and acquisition of Option Impact will also accelerate Pave’s European market expansion.

“The Pave journey has just barely started. There are four billion participants in the global workforce, and compensation is a guessing game for every single one of them,” said Pave Founder and CEO Matt Schulman. “We will not stop until every single person in the world knows their value and earns what they deserve.”

“Compensation is a visceral problem for every company. For generations, we have been stuck with offline, finger-in-the-air practices when figuring out how much to pay people. These problems are both universal and wildly expensive. The ubiquitous compensation pain felt worldwide is what made me particularly excited when I first met Matt and the Pave team. We are thrilled to fuel their growth to help Pave empower all global businesses and employees,” said Mark Goldberg, Partner at Index Ventures.

The acquisition of Option Impact now positions Pave as the world’s largest compensation database

The acquisition of Option Impact strengthens Pave’s market position. The consolidation of customer bases from both firms into the Pave ecosystem solidifies Pave as the largest compensation benchmarking database for private technology companies in the world.

Through this acquisition, Pave will also partner with Morgan Stanley at Work, an industry leader of equity management and workplace financial solutions including Shareworks and E*TRADE Equity Edge. Morgan Stanley at Work will bring Pave’s compensation benchmarking and planning products to their clients in addition to offering a seamless integration with the Shareworks platform.

“We could not be more excited to roll out our partnership with Pave,” said Kevin Swan, Co-head of Morgan Stanley at Work Global Private Markets. “Morgan Stanley has long played a major role in the private markets and startup ecosystem, and is a sought-after partner of many of the most interesting technology companies. Through our work with innovative companies like Pave, we help ensure that game changing technologies are brought to bear to support our clients, advisors, and the growth of our business overall.”

Providing compensation clarity during market uncertainty

The world has experienced unprecedented levels of macroeconomic flux since Pave’s inception. COVID initiated a flurry of highly dynamic shifts including the March 2020 Black Swan outlook, the accelerated revolution of remote work, an unprecedented tech bull market, rampant inflation, new pay transparency legislation and now, a dire downturn as we enter a possible recession. Compared to the hot job market and bull economy 2022 began with, the realities of today’s economic dip are in stark contrast.

Every single one of these events drives compensation uncertainty. Public companies are now reevaluating how to compensate and retain employees after their stock has halved – or worse. Private companies are considering cash preservation strategies as private market funding has vaporized. Employees are asking themselves if they are still willing to jump between jobs with the same frequency we observed during The Great Resignation.

During times of uncertainty, Pave’s real-time pulse of the market is more relevant than ever. It is now a competitive disadvantage for employers to not be on top of cash and equity pay trends in real-time.

Companies can sign up for Pave’s real-time compensation dataset here. It’s free.

About Pave:

Pave is a real-time compensation platform that helps companies effectively plan, communicate, and benchmark compensation. The Pave suite integrates with dozens of ATS, HRIS, and equity management tools, including Greenhouse, TriNet, BambooHR, Namely, Lever, ADP, Workday, Jobvite, Shareworks, Equity Edge Online, Carta, Rippling, Justworks, Paylocity, Sapling, Personio, Capdesk, Ledgy, and UltiPro. Founded in late 2019 by CEO Matt Schulman, Pave is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more about Pave’s vision from our CEO and founder, and visit us at pave.com.

About Advanced-HR:

Based in San Francisco, Advanced-HR is the trusted source for compensation data in the venture capital and private company ecosystem. Through its products, OptionDriver and OptionImpact, the company has unparalleled expertise with compensation data and services. Over 3,900 companies and 290 top venture capital firms use Advanced-HR for compensation and equity benchmarking and planning.

About Index Ventures:

Index Ventures is a venture firm investing in the next generation of entrepreneurs from seed to IPO. We partner with founders with bold dreams that challenge the status quo to build enduring companies. With offices in London, San Francisco & New York, we invest in entrepreneurs all over the world. Generational Index-backed companies include Adyen, Datadog, Discord, Figma, Robinhood, and Roblox.

The original press release can be found on PR Newswire.

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With investors currently looking for the best way to deal with the inconsistencies of the current economic landscape, caution seems to be the law of the land across markets. As such, investors are choosing to focus on projects generating actual value instead of their potential, status, or connections. This means that at this time, a startup with a positive balance sheet has a unique opportunity to beat unicorns when it comes to raising pre-IPO funding.

Surprisingly, Venture Capitalists in the crypto ecosystem seem to have remained more cool-headed than their stock counterparts. It is well known by now that Andreessen Horowitz raised a $4.5 billion crypto fund. However, other Crypto investors have also achieved the same, with Sequoia raising $500 million back in May and Binance lab doing the same in early June.

What all of these funds have in common is their heavy focus on Web3 projects, a continuation of a trend that has been going on for several months. The popularity of Web3 in the tech world has been so overwhelming that tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have been unable to deal with it. Despite having been the mecca for tech employees for more than a decade, these companies have seen an exodus of top talent looking to work in Web3.

While Web3 is only one of the niches driving the pre-IPO deal flow in the blockchain space, its relevance is of special significance. This is especially true due to the criticism Web3 has received from figures like Jack Dorsey, Aaron Levie, Stephen Diehl, and Molly White. Despite this criticism, investors like Marc Andreessen are extremely bullish on Web 3, going as far as saying:

“The easiest way to think about it is: When you get something like this, this sort of collective effect that has a movement behind it and is attracting many of the world’s smartest people to work on it… basically the criticisms end up playing out differently than the critics think. These critics make a long list of all the problems but these genius engineers and entrepreneurs look at that list of problems as a list of opportunities.”

The question “Where Is the Pre-IPO Deal Flow?” was the main topic of one of the panels at Grit Daily House earlier this month. Karim Nurani, Chief Strategy Officer at Linqto; Evan Greenberg Co-Founder of Blockchain Beach; and Marc Weill, Senior Advisor at Two Sigma Ventures, sat to share the unique environment that has emerged with the latest market winter.

If you missed the chance to attend Grit Daily House in person and to hear what these panelists have to say about this topic, worry not. You will be able to watch the panel in the video below and find our other panels on Grit Daily’s official YouTube Channel.

The post Crypto Startup Funding Is Still Going Strong, but Where Is the Pre-IPO Deal Flow? appeared first on Grit Daily News.

With every bull market, however, there are bear prognosticators who bet on the price of lithium to decline with the market heading into balance or even over-supply.  As a battery metals veteran, my viewpoint of “hold your horses, Wall Street” is echoed by many lithium analysts and experts who believe that battery metal market fundamentals shed light on a variety of pressing reasons why a lithium surplus marketplace with dramatically reduced prices is not on the horizon.

Industry veterans are joined by a number of analysts and other experts, including Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a leading research firm that covers green energy minerals.  Its recent report titled, “Lithium oversupply?  Not likely – five main reasons why” offers a convincing rebuttal to the flawed thesis that lithium supplies are, in fact, elastic.

How Fast Can Miners Move from Discovery to Production?

What lithium ‘bears’ do not understand is that while lithium may be present in a number of different forms globally, the processes involved in economically extracting and producing battery-grade lithium are extremely challenging. It can take up to a decade to discover a deposit, develop it, build a mine and extract and refine battery grade lithium. Even in China, where permitting is typically easier and lithium production is often fast-tracked, this is proving to be the case.

The process of turning lithium into the chemicals that power batteries is not easy.  Also, refining raw lithium into high-purity lithium carbonite, which is of sufficient quality for batteries, involves complicated metallurgical processing methods and is very time consuming.  

Ensuring Environmental Responsibility

While the production of the lightweight metal lithium is essential to technology to drive the shift to the new clean energy paradigm, certain processes associated with some forms of lithium production or refining are environmentally damaging.  In addition, with the primary sources of lithium being hard rock deposits and salar brines, lithium processing through conventional methods such as evaporation ponds are inefficient, with lithium extraction rates often less than 50%.

Pollution, significant high-water usage and land use permitting are other challenges that lithium miners face.  So, as EV makers are looking for long-term lithium suppliers, they should be mindful to ensure that their upstream suppliers are committed to environmentally sustainable mining practices. This is already happening, with some EV makers actively seeking out sustainable lithium miners.  However, with the domination of China in the global supply of refined battery products, including lithium, it’s not always possible to ensure best environmental practices are being adopted. Not only is it critically important that we develop domestic lithium supplies in North America, but also that we put sustainability and environmental best practices to the fore.

Fortunately, two major organizations, Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance and Responsible Minerals Initiative, have established the necessary guidelines to act as a gold standard for all sustainably mined materials.

Is Low Quality Chinese Lithium a Global Supply Fix?

Some lithium ‘bears’ point to China to account for a future oversupply of lithium.  Benchmark Mineral Intelligence is emphatic that China cannot ramp-up output significantly to create an over-supply. Here’s the crux of Benchmark’s argument as stated in its lithium report. “Known domestic Chinese spodumene and other hard-rock resources are low quality, a key reason why there has been an increasing reliance by Chinese converters on Australia for supply instead. China’s deposits of lepidolite may have the potential to help bridge the deficit in coming years, but are unlikely to lead to oversupply.”

According to Benchmark, “the lithium market will start to balance over the next few years” but believes it is unlikely that “marginal, unconventional feedstock will fill the deficit” and “unlikely that demand will weaken significantly.”

Benchmark’s view on spot prices for lithium concludes that, “end-users can only absorb so much cost pass through before it has an unsustainable impact on their electric vehicle ambitions.  However, the spot market price in China does not represent the true price of lithium in the market, and is often not the true price being paid by western battery majors. In these markets we expect to see a gradual ramp up in contract deals being settled with increasingly flexible, and more frequent, pricing mechanisms.”

Upstream Investment in Mining is Vital to Meet Rising Demand

It is important to encourage upstream investment in mining; particularly as there is still not enough upstream investment to meet current and future demands for lithium.  Some financial analysts predict global demand of 1.2 million metric tons of lithium carbonite by 2025, but the reality is that even this level of demand growth is likely to be well off the mark.  To my mind, the better way to measure the true pulse of the marketplace and what packs the most punch are the announcements from major lithium producers with Albemarle and Ganfeng Lithium each expecting demand of around 1.5 to 1.6 million metric tons of lithium carbonate in the same time-frame.

As for American Lithium, we are focused on aiding the shift to the new energy paradigm through the continued development of our TLC lithium claystone project in the richly mineralized Esmeralda lithium district in Nevada, which is within three hours’ drive of the Tesla giga-factory. We are also continuing to advance our high-purity, hard-rock Falchani lithium  project in southeastern Peru. This project has demonstrated the ability to precipitate battery-grade lithium carbonate without the need for additional refining. A robust preliminary economic assessment, that was published in 2020 and is now being upgraded, also suggest the prospect of low-operating costs.

All of this speaks to the fact that American Lithium intends to be a key part of upstream lithium development in the Americas.

Lithium Whisperer is the Marketplace

It is important to listen to the market place to gauge lithium supply status.  Consider the following statistics.  First of all, global EV sales doubled in February 2022 reports Inside EVs on April 6, 2022.  Or that the spot price of one metric ton of lithium carbonate (LCE) rose from $6,750 in September 2000 to a recent high of $78,000 USD. By 2025, automakers will have spent $365 billion USD building EV and HEV production facilities, reports Bloomberg Energy Finance.

As lithium scarcity grows, BloombergNEF forecasts prices of lithium carbonate and hydroxide — the main lithium chemicals used in battery production — to continue to go skyward until 2030 due to anticipated supply deficits.

“As the market wrestles between long-term supply security to fuel the lithium-ion economy, and increasingly market-led pricing mechanisms to incentivize supply growth, the era of lithium market volatility is likely just beginning,” Benchmark surmises.

Mission Critical: Urgency for ‘Made in America’ Lithium

The quest for EV manufacturers, (as well as other industrial and military users,) to secure access to high grade lithium is intense. So, too, is the need to ensure supply chain security.  To this end, the United States and other countries are looking to untangle their clean energy supply chains from China which is currently the leading producer of lithium-ion batteries.

As such, there is an urgency to secure long-term supplies from geopolitically-safe, lithium-rich countries such as the United States, Canada, and Peru. The conflict in Ukraine is a stark reminder of what happens when the supply of energy and other critical commodities is “in the hands” of unstable or unfriendly regimes. Accordingly, the US has a heightened need to source as much sustainable, “home-made” lithium and other critical minerals as quickly as possible, particularly given the fact that lithium mining in the US is currently estimated to account for less than 1% of the lithium mined annually across the world.

The post Lithium Oversupply?  Hold Your Horses appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Just 18 months since its initial product launch, Banyan’s Series A round reaffirms the considerable industry interest currently surrounding the innovative platform. Led by VoLo Earth Ventures, with additional investment from Ulu Ventures, Vista Verde Capital, Nomadic Venture Partners and Industrious Ventures, the round puts Banyan in the perfect position to achieve its goal of digitizing and onboarding sustainable infrastructure investments and loans with higher velocity, standardization, and transparency.

Despite the advances in availability of asset and financial data, investing in sustainable infrastructure remains a largely manual and inefficient set of processes relying heavily on spreadsheets and disconnected systems. Banyan’s platform tackles this issue head-on. By providing dynamic online checklists and scorecards, approval-based workflow automation, APIs to existing data sources, a centralized data vault to complement existing virtual data rooms, and a self-service client portal, the company provides a platform purpose-built for project finance and sustainable infrastructure teams.

Since its inception, Banyan has helped to deploy and manage over USD $1bn of capital towards sustainable infrastructure developments. However, set against the backdrop of rising climate concerns, as well as a more concerted global effort by major institutions and nation states to address environmental challenges, the demand for such projects continues to rise. Thanks to its Series A raise, Banyan can help its customers meet this growing demand faster and more effectively by simplifying and optimizing the mechanisms needed to finance the switch to low carbon infrastructure. In meeting this demand, Banyan brings real technology to bear and helps to tackle the cost of capital, whilst still accelerating the deployment of necessary sustainable infrastructure globally.

Speaking on the raise, Will Greene, Founder and CEO at Banyan commented: “The face of infrastructure projects is changing. While the era of megaprojects is far from over, developments are generally becoming smaller and cheaper. However, the cost and complexity of lending or investing has hardly changed. In response, infrastructure companies are increasingly interested in solutions to help manage growing pipelines and portfolios and take advantage of this market opportunity.

“Thankfully, by automating contractual compliance and synthesizing key insights, Banyan offers the ideal system for addressing this challenge. Now, with our Series A raise, we’re able to take this offering to the next level. More than ever, customers can rely on our solution to proactively mitigate risks by providing greater transparency across all counterparties. In short, our tech-first platform is helping to provide loans and investments originated at a higher velocity, serviced at a lower cost, and syndicated with greater liquidity.”

Alongside the raise, Kareem Dabbagh, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at VoLo Earth Ventures will join Banyan’s Board of Directors. Kareem is a solar industry veteran, with considerable experience pursuing soft cost reductions on sustainable infrastructure projects by prioritizing innovation, quality control, and process improvement. As such, he represents the ideal addition to the company’s growing employee ranks, and will bring several key skills, which are integral to Banyan’s core business mission.

Speaking on his involvement in the raise, alongside his appointment to the company’s board, Kareem told us: “Banyan is an exciting business that is helping to reshape the world of sustainable infrastructure. By working with direct lenders, banks and project owners, the company can deliver a service that is long overdue, with a value proposition to save clients money and provide actionable insights into sustainable assets. What’s more, by offering this service through a SaaS distribution model, Banyan is helping to make its solution as accessible as possible, allowing it to benefit the largest number of people while accelerating deployment in the sector.”

Banyan Infrastructure is a software platform for facilitating sustainable infrastructure investments, headquartered in San Francisco. Built by prior project financiers in 2018, Banyan enables streamlined underwriting, risk management, and ultimately securitization of infrastructure investments at higher volume and lower cost.

Since its inception, Banyan has helped to deploy and manage over USD $1bn of capital towards developments including solar, energy efficiency, energy storage, waste-to-value and more. Backed by VoLo Earth Ventures, with additional investment from notable VCs, the business has announced an $8.2m Series A round which will facilitate significant scaling and customer support.

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