Social Leverage Weekly
Posts
Social Leverage Letter | Issue #40

Social Leverage Letter | Issue #40

Seed Funding, Back to the Future, Business Metrics, and It's Not All Unicorns

Pete Weishaupt
June 05, 2022

A weekly newsletter for early-stage seed startups and investors.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

READING

Crunchbase took a look at nearly 1,000 US seed and pre-seed rounds of up to $500k announced in 2022. Five areas stood out: Metaverse, NFTs, brain and neurotech, alternative protein, and fitness. Looked at in aggregate, we should have a sense of where future minded investors think we’re heading.

5 Areas Where US Seed Funding Is Strong In 2022

We looked at nearly 1,000 U.S. seed and pre-seed rounds of $500,000 and up announced in 2022 and some popular investment themes stood out. We take a look at five of them.

https://news.crunchbase.com/news/seed-funding-metaverse-nft-fitness/

WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING

Here's a few other stories that caught our eye over the past week.

Disappearing Term Sheets and Down Rounds: Inside Venture Capital’s New Normal
US and foreign investors drive Q1 2022 Canadian VC investments to $3.37B
Sandberg Built Meta’s Ad Machine, but Someone Else Will Have to Fix It

From our blog

Business Metrics and the Greatest Quarterback of All Time — Social Leverage

“What gets measured gets managed.” ~ Peter Drucker Nearly everyone reading this post has probably heard the phrase, “What gets measured gets managed.” at some point in their career; and with loving attribution to Peter Drucker. Let’s take a brief look at “measurement” when it comes to

https://www.socialleverage.com/blog/2022/6/1/1i2ldousiwl66ax2ubr690ppw0k5x5

LISTENING

In a world of dueling podcasts, investor, advisor, the funny man of fintech, world-renowned Twitter provocateur, and host of Panic with Friends – Howard Lindzon sparred with Rally’s own Rob Petrozzo on Rally’s podcast, The Best Money I Ever Spent. (Rally is a Social Leverage Fund III portfolio company.)

Howard Lindzon: You Don’t Have to be a Unicorn

Listen to this episode from The Best Money I Ever Spent on Spotify. Investor, advisor, and Twitter provocateur Howard Lindzon and Rally's own Rob Petrozzo spend an hour catching up — touching on everything from comedy to Chipotle to Tik Tok. Howard is the co-founder of StockTwits and founder of Social Leverage, where he's invested in Robinhood, Koyfin, Manscaped, and Rally.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/38yBUTQ2tADfeSvrAZDNUn?si=uEuSDwDqRiyhTv0L5QvTAw&nd=1

WHAT ELSE WE'RE LISTENING TO

A few more podcasts you might like:

Incredible Market Technician Helene Meisler of RealMoney.com on Price, Sentiment, and Probing for a Bear Market Bottom (Panic with Friends)
Ben Hunt — Preserving the Physical Metaverse (Infinite Loops)

DEAL FLOW

The latest venture funding from around the globe:

Fintech startup Wizest raises $1.7M in seed round
Talently Raises US $3M in a Seed Round To Increase its Presence in Latam
Poparazzi hits 5M+ downloads a year after launch, confirms its $15M Series A
FarmWise Raises $45M Series B To Expand AI-Powered Farm Equipment in U.S. Farms
Danish CleanTech ZeroNorth Raises Over $50M Series B Round to Help Decarbonise Shipping

CRYPTO CORNER

News on Crypto/web3:

Web3 Is About More Than Tech, Thanks to Its Inclusivity
Are People Leaving Their Tech Jobs for Web3?
The Pivot to Web3 Is Going to Get People Hurt
Solana's Future Uncertain After High-Throughput Blockchain Suffers Latest Crash

JOB BOARD

Explore openings at our portfolio companies:

Social Leverage Job Board

Search job openings across the Social Leverage network.

https://jobs.socialleverage.com/companies

Featured Jobs:

Senior Product Design Manager, Platform

Remote - United States

https://boards.greenhouse.io/narvar/jobs/4295240#content

Job Listing - Stocktwits About

We are looking for passionate people to join our team.

https://stocktwits.com/about/job-listing/?gh_jid=6182833002#content

Engineering Manager

Koyfin is a rapidly growing, VC-backed, NYC-based fintech startup looking to hire an Engineering Manager to join a small team to help scale our product from thousands of users to millions of users. Our mission is to empower investors with easy-to-use analytics and beautiful charts to research ...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DKrSOaDMXwLlZqmU4_eKK3MeKER3wEsRR8lz8wwePiI/edit#content

Check out all of our portfolio companies at Social Leverage.

Affiliate Disclosure: Social Leverage Group, LLC ("SLG"), Social Leverage Capital Fund I, LP ("SLC"), Social Leverage Capital Fund II, LP ("SLCII"), Social Leverage Capital Fund III, LP ("SLCIII") and Social Leverage Capital Fund IV, LP ("SLCIV") are all distinct entities from Social Leverage, LLC ("SL"). Social Leverage is not a registered investment advisor. SLC, SLCII, SLCIII, SLCIV, SLG and SL have used the logo and branding of Social Leverage with the permission of Social Leverage Group, LLC.