Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term seed suggests that this is a very early investment, meant to support the business until it can generate cash of its own, or until it is ready for further investments. Seed money options include friends and family funding, seed venture capital funds, angel funding, and crowdfunding.
Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Trustpilot Group plc, is a Danish consumer business operating a review website founded in Denmark in 2007 which hosts reviews of businesses worldwide. Nearly 1 million new reviews are posted each month. The site offers freemium services to businesses. It has been criticised for the publication of fake reviews, and allowing companies to remove negative reviews. Trustpilot is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Thumbtack is an American home services website. It is an online directory that allows users to search for, rate, and hire local service providers to work on a variety of personal projects, including home improvement, financial and legal services, computer / IT repair and event planning. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, Javelin Venture Partners, Baillie Gifford, and Capital G, among others.
Seedcamp is a European seed-stage venture capital fund, headquartered in London, launched in May 2007 by a group of 30 European investors. The fund's Managing Partners are Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Espinal.
Domo, Inc. is an American cloud software company based in American Fork, Utah, United States. It specializes in business intelligence tools and data visualization.
Angels Den is the Europe's first and largest online investment platform that connects businesses with angel investors. It was founded in 2013 and is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Snapplify is an edtech company, specialising in digital education content, related educational services, and devices. Snapplify is an African ebook aggregator and distributor, with an ebook offering of 240 000 titles from about 250 publishers. Snapplify has worked with many schools across Africa, offering them digital education tools.
Oregon Venture Fund makes venture investments in the Portland, Oregon area and throughout Oregon and SW Washington. The fund consists of 180 institutional and angel investors, of whom 85% have run or founded a business. The fund evaluates up to 300 business plans per year, selecting five to seven to invest in annually. In 2018, the fund changed its name from Oregon Angel Fund to Oregon Venture Fund and launched a new $30M fund. Since its inception, Oregon Venture Fund has generated an average annual rate of return of 34% and a return on investment exceeding $3.50 for each dollar invested.
Munchery Inc. was an online food ordering and meal delivery service that served parts of San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City. The company shut down abruptly on January 21, 2019. It was valued at $300 million. The website currently relaunched as a recipes-only website.
SimplyCook is a subscription-based recipe box service based in London. The company provides a monthly box containing four recipes and four nonperishable ingredient kits that are then added to fresh ingredients the subscriber purchases from the supermarket. SimplyCook was founded by Oliver Ashness in 2014. SimplyCook's recipes have been featured in Woman’s World, Daily Express, and The Independent.
Sunbasket is a subscription meal delivery service that ships members fresh, organic, and sustainable ingredients and recipes every week, allowing them to cook their own meals. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, and operates two regional distribution centers in Morgan Hill, CA and Westampton, New Jersey. It is part of the meal kit industry.
ToursByLocals is a Canadian-based, international private tour provider. Headquartered in Vancouver, with offices in Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur and Glasgow, the company serves upwards of 400,000 clients a year, connecting them with over 4400 private tour guides in 188 countries and 1,500 locations.
Adam Zbar is a Webby Award-winning Bay Area entrepreneur who is CEO of Sun Basket, a San Francisco-based organic meal kit delivery company, which he co-founded with Chef Justine Kelly. Previously Zbar founded social analytics company Tap11, and same day food delivery service Lasso, which closed when he launched Sun Basket. He was also formerly CEO of micro-blogging service Zannel.
Plated was an American ingredient-and-recipe meal kit service that has been acquired by Albertsons. The company was founded in 2012 and became well known through its participation in Techstars in 2013, Shark Tank in 2014 and Beyond the Tank in 2015. Plated's founders, Nick Taranto and Josh Hix, earned a deal on Shark Tank that fell through, but negotiated a deal with another investor after the show was filmed. The company accepted several rounds of venture capital investments and remained private until it was acquired by Albertsons in September 2017.
HelloFresh is a publicly traded meal-kit company based in Berlin, Germany. It is the largest meal-kit provider in the United States, and also has operations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Europe.
Peak is an artificial intelligence company headquartered in Manchester, UK. It was founded in 2015 and has additional offices in Jaipur, India, and New York City, United States. It is known for its artificial intelligence platform, a SaaS platform that allows data scientists to build AI workflows, invoke them on ingested data and expose the results via APIs and/or built-in web applications, as well as abstracting the underlying cloud infrastructure.
Matt Salzberg is a businessperson and entrepreneur, known for co-founding Blue Apron, Embark Veterinary and Suma Brands. He is currently founder and Managing Partner at Material, a venture fund focused on systematic company creation opportunities.
POPxo is a digital media platform based in Gurugram, India, that focuses on women's lifestyles and entertainment. Covering topics such as fashion, beauty, health, and relationships, POPxo is part of the Good Media Co, the media division of the Good Glamm Group. POPxo is frequently cited by news outlets such as Asianet News.
