Mind the Gap Startup News - Global

Last week in startups - global

We had a total of 304 funding rounds, $5.7 billion total funding, 129 acquisitions recorded, and a transaction of a total acquisition amount of $32.1 billion.

Let’s dive right into the highlights now.
Modern Fertility raises $15 million to sell its hormone tests — and gather more fertility data from its users
A San Francisco-based company, modern fertility, sells fertility tests directly to consumers, but increasingly, those customers will be educating the company, too. Indeed, the two-year-old startup now plans to develop a database of anonymized data about its largely younger demographic. What do they do? They sell a kit from its website that’s sent to women’s doorsteps and allows them to gauge their levels of eight different reproductive hormones by using a finger prick. More specifically, the startup sends off its customers’ panels to CLIA-certified labs, where the tests are conducted, and most prominently, those tests are looking at the women’s level of AMH, or anti-mullerian hormone.
Modern Fertility has now raised $22 million to date. Among its other backers are Maveron and Union Square Ventures as investors.

That being said, Fertility startups have been on a fundraising gala recently. The global fertility services market is expected to exceed $21 billion by 2020.

Colombian point-of-sale lender ADDI nabs $12.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz

ADDI picked up $12.5 million in new financing in April of this year as the company looks to expand its lending services online.

Like Affirm, ADDI lets its borrowers apply for credit at the moment of purchase. The company likens its service to the layaway and credit plans that already exist in Colombia — but involve pretty onerous requirements to use. Company co-founder and general partner both commented on how, in some cases, Colombian shoppers have to have three people vouch for a borrower before a store will issue credit or agree to a layaway plan. The difference between an ADDI loan — or any loan — and layaway is that an installment payment plan doesn’t charge interest (and even with the fees that installment plans do charge, they are often still cheaper than taking out a loan).

Providing supplemental educational videos for healthcare online nets Osmosis $4 million

With over one million YouTube subscribers and 500,000 registered users for its supplemental educational videos, Osmosis, which bills itself as the Khan Academy of healthcare, has raised $4 million in new funding.

By reimagining medical education, Osmosis is addressing a critical impending global crisis: the need to develop and retrain tens of millions of healthcare professionals over the next decade to meet growing demand.
Using a library of over 1,100 videos produced by the former Khan Academy Health and Medicine team — which were poached by Gaglani — students can get supplemental materials providing tutorials on subjects ranging from basic knowledge to the soft skills required on the job.

Vectra lands $100M Series E investment for AI-driven network security
Vectra, a seven-year-old company that helps customers detect intrusions at the network level, whether in the cloud or on premises, announced a $100 million Series E funding round led by TCV. Existing investors, including Khosla Ventures and Accel, also participated in the round, which brings the total raised to more than $200 million, according to the company.
As company CEO Hitesh Sheth explained, there are two primary types of intrusion detection. The first is end point detection and the second is his company’s area of coverage, network detection and response, or NDR. He says that by adding a layer of artificial intelligence, it improves the overall results.

Moving on to mergers and acquisitions, we have Google acquiring analytics startup Looker for $2.6 billion

Google made a big splash when it announced it’s going to acquire Looker, a hot analytics startup that’s raised more than $280 million. It’s paying $2.6 billion for the privilege and adding the company to Google Cloud. Google Cloud has been mired in third place in the cloud infrastructure market, and grabbing Looker gives it an analytics company with a solid track record. The last time I spoke to Looker, it was announcing a hefty $103 million in funding on a $1.6 billion valuation. Today’s price is a nice even billion over that.

What else caught our eyes last week?

Based on data we know that this is the season of Healthcare, Cyber Security and Knowledge Sharing startups bagging fundings.
Last week four security companies changed hands. Security stays hot as Imperva grabs Distil Networks.
The shopping spree continued this week with CDN company Imperva announcing it was buying bot mitigation startup Distil Networks. The companies did not share the acquisition price.
Last week was an incredible M&A whirlwind with four security companies getting acquired over just a three-day period
On Tuesday, FireEye bought Verodin, a five-year-old startup that helps measure the effectiveness of your cybersecurity defenses for $250 million.
On Wednesday, Palo Alto Networks entered the fray, buying not one, but two Israeli security startups. The big prize was container security company Twistlock for $410 million. It also snagged serveless security company PureSec. Reports in Israeli media pegged that deal at between $60 and $70 million.
If that wasn’t enough for you, private equity firm Insight Partners bought 10-year old threat intelligence company, Recorded Future for $780 million.
If you’re thinking about starting a technology company, you may want to consider focusing on cybersecurity. I’ll leave you with that thought!