– Social music app mayk.it launches on iOS and announces its $4m seed round from investors including Greycroft, Chicago Ventures, Slow Ventures, firstminute, Steven Galanis, Randi Zuckerberg, YouTuber Mr. Beasts’ Night media, Spotify’s first CMO Sophia Bendz, Cyan Banister, artist T-Pain and music industry veteran Zach Katz, among others.
– The app lets users create, own and share music that they can create using just their phone.
– Users can upload their own beat or select an existing beat from another user, then add vocals (voice effects and somewhat corny lyric generators are available if you’re shy), and then add a visual from Giphy.

– Solo is an innovative platform for app-based gig workers, announced that it has raised $5.3 million in a seed round.
– The funding, led by Slow Ventures, will be used to fuel its ongoing development and go-to-market efforts.
– Solo tracks data across multiple gig platforms, including Uber, Doordash and Instacart, to provide city-level pay and performance benchmarks, including hour-by-hour earnings predictions that Solo guarantees, making up the difference if pay is less.
– Solo’s mission is to help workers optimize their time and maximize their income by leveraging community insights to power earnings predictions and dynamic income guarantees.
– Solo is bringing transparency to the gig economy and giving workers the information and power to earn more.

– BreachQuest from Dallas TX develops incident response software.
– The company raised $4.4M in seed funding.
– The round was led by Slow Ventures, with participation from Tinder Founders Sean Rad, Justin Mateen and Lookout Founder Kevin Mahaffey.
– The new investment will be aimed at accelerating the development and rollout of its PRIORI platform.

– Healthy and sustainable food products company Starday raised $4m in seed funding.
– The round was led by Equal Ventures and Slow Ventures, and joined by Haystack, Great Oaks Venture Capital, XFactor Ventures, ABV and a group of angel investors.
– The company plans to launch four or five brands in the next 12 months.

– Class Technologies, an edtech platform, has raised a $105M Series B round.
– Led by the Softbank Vision Fund, the round also includes GSV Ventures, Emergence Capital, Maven Partners, Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, SWaN & Legend Venture Partners, Rise of the Rest Fund, Learn Capital, Reach Capital, Slow Ventures, Sound Ventures, Chimera Investment, Daher Capital, Guy Oseary, Bill Tai and Tom Brady.
– The company was founded by education software pioneer Michael Chasen.

– Class Technologies Inc. from Washington, DC develops a platform enhancing virtual and hybrid classrooms by adding teaching and learning tools to Zoom.
– Series B $105m round was led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and participated by GSV Ventures, Emergence Capital, Maven Partners, Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, SWaN & Legend Venture Partners, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Fund, Learn Capital, Reach Capital, Slow Ventures, Sound Ventures, Chimera Investment, Daher Capital, Guy Oseary, Bill Tai, and Super Bowl champion and entrepreneur Tom Brady.
– The new investment will be used to accelerate growth and expand globally into new markets.

– Music app Breakr raised $4.2m in seed funding.
– The round was led by Slow Ventures and joined by others investors.
– The company plans to use the funding to expand its influencer network.

– Robocorp, the open-source process automation platform, has closed a $21m Series A investment round led by Canvas Ventures with participation from Benchmark, Uncorrelated Ventures, Slow Ventures, Firstminute Capital, Harpoon Ventures, Artisanal Ventures, Haystack Ventures and a host of angels in the intelligent automation and open source space.
– Additionally, Robocorp is releasing Robocorp Control Room, a self-managed automation orchestration platform for solutions integrators, robots-as-service providers, and enterprises that want to power automations at scale with governance and control.
– Businesses are looking to automate manual tasks and tedious processes for business functions that include HR, IT, finance, data management, customer communications, and IT operations. In fact, 50% of CIOs will be accelerating robotization and automation by 2024 according to IDC.

– Stork Club announced it raised $30M in Series A funding led by General Catalyst, with Hemant Taneja joining the board.
– Existing investors Bowery Capital, Slow Ventures and angels Jack Altman, founder of Lattice; Zach Sims, founder of Codecademy; Oleg Rogynskyy, founder of People.ai; and Kevin Mahaffey, founder of Lookout also joined the round.
– Stork Club is also announcing several new customers from a variety of industries, including Ropes & Gray, Crescent Capital, Corgan, Fors Marsh Group and Inception.
– Stork Club is the first to extend traditional employee benefits to include historically overlooked, yet critical components of maternal health: diagnostics, egg and sperm freezing, IVF, surrogacy, adoption, pregnancy guidance and postpartum recovery support.

– Odie Pet Insurance, a New York-based tech-enabled pet health insurance company, raised $3M in funding.
– The round was led by Walkabout Ventures and Slow Ventures with participation from New York based family offices and individual investors.
– The company intends to use the funds for continuous product and technology enhancements including claims and payments automations, increasing member portal functionality, and the expansion of partnership integrations, and building out a member experience team and filling other key roles.

– Fold, the top bitcoin rewards app, announces a $13m series A round to fuel its growth.
– Since its launch in 2019, Fold accrued a waitlist of over 250,000 waiting for access to their bitcoin cashback debit card.
– The round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from M13, Slow Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners.
– In addition, Fold is excited to open access to its bitcoin cashback debit card to all U.S. residents.
– Instead of offering points or airline miles typically found in most card programs, Fold provides bitcoin rewards through a gamified experience that emphasizes healthy financial habits.
– Fold Cardholders can earn variable rewards by spinning a rewards wheel after each qualifying purchase, like earning 100% of their purchase back in bitcoin, or even winning a whole bitcoin, which ten users have done to date.

– Chia Network Inc., a company built around a new energy efficient decentralized blockchain and smart transaction platform founded by Bram Cohen, has secured a $61m Series D Preferred equity investment led by Richmond Global Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from True Ventures, Slow Ventures, Cygni Capital, Breyer Capital, Naval Ravikant, Collab+Currency and DHVC.
– David Frazee from Richmond Global Ventures will join Chia’s board.
– The proceeds from the financing will accelerate Chia Network’s mission to operate a more energy-efficient, secure and user-friendly payment system for governments, financial institutions, corporations and consumers worldwide.

– Avanti Financial Group announced the closing of its Series A financing round at $37 million.
– Trace Mayer, Marcel Kasumovich, Rob Kauffman (Aldel Capital), Tim Keefe, Lawrence Lepard, Eric Ly and others were among the investors.
– Institutional investors included 1843 Capital, AP Capital, Banca del Ceresio, Binance.US, Coinbase Ventures, ECMC Group, Equity Management Associates, Greybull Stewardship, Hard Yaka, HashKey, Holon Global Investments, Lemniscap, Madison Paige Ventures, Morgan Creek Digital, PJT Partners, Slow Ventures, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments and The University of Wyoming Foundation.

– Fetcher, a startup that promises to make the recruiting process easier while also diversifying the candidate pool, is announcing that it has raised $6.5m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by G20 Ventures, with participation from KFund, Slow Ventures and Accomplice.
– Fetcher has now raised a total of $12m.

– River Financial closed a $12m Series A equity financing round to continue growing its financial service offerings for traditional investors.
– The investment round was led by Goldcrest Capital with participation from Craft Ventures, Polychain Capital, M13, Castle Island, Slow Ventures, and The Kraft Group.
– River Financial previously announced a $5.7m seed round in June 2020.
– River’s client base has grown by almost 600% and order volumes have increased by 3,500%.
– River’s recent iOS app has accelerated the company’s growth, already accounting for over 30% of all River’s order volume within five weeks of launch.
– River Financial continues to experience exponential growth in new customers and order volume month-over-month as global interest in Bitcoin continues to grow rapidly.

– Eco, a digital global cryptocurrency platform, raised $26m funding.
– The round was led by a16z Crypto and joined by Founders Fund, Activant Capital, Slow Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Tribe Capital, Valor Capital Group and more than one hundred other funds and angels.
– CoinList co-founder Andy Bromberg stepped down from his role last fall to head up Eco.

– Identiq announced a $47m Series A round led by Insight Partners and Entrée Capital, with additional participation from Amdocs, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, and existing investors, including Vertex Ventures Israel, Oryzn Capital and Slow Ventures.
– The company plans to use the investment to further accelerate its network growth, adding more members, each of which will improve the validation, quality and coverage for all members. This flywheel effect will drive further value for the network’s existing members, improving data coverage and accuracy.
– The company is building the world’s largest Identity Validation Network, enabling companies to jointly validate consumer identities, payment details and other sensitive information without sharing or exposing any private data.

– MealMe.ai, a food search engine, raised $900k in pre-seed funding.
– Palm Drive Capital led the round, with participation from Slow Ventures and CP Ventures.
– TechCrunch first became familiar with MealMe when it presented as part of the Techstars Atlanta demo day last October, mentioning it in a roundup of favorite startups from a group of the accelerator’s startup cohorts.
– The company’s product allows users to search for food, or a restaurant. It then displays price points from various food-delivery apps for what the user wants to eat and have delivered. And, notably, MealMe allows for in-app checkout, regardless of the selected provider.
– The service could boost pricing and delivery-speed transparency amongst the different apps that help folks eat, like DoorDash and Uber Eats.

– Pawlicy Advisor is a NYC-based pet insurance marketplace.
– The company raised $6.5m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Rho Capital Partners and existing investor Defy Partners, with investment from Slow Ventures.
– The new investment will be used to develop the company’s platform, expand its team, and pursue partnerships and educational outreach to consumers and veterinary offices.
– Founded in 2018, the company assesses insurance policies based on breed-specific health risks, pet age, location, and the fine print in each provider’s policy – to arrange insurance policies across top providers by projected lifetime cost and coverage value for each unique pet.