💬 Welcome to issue #65 of Between the Lines

Good morning & happy Thursday. While the public markets continue their 2022 pity party, some promise may be ahead for the private markets. If history repeats itself, glory days could be ahead for early-stage VCs as startup valuations slump.

This week, we share data on some of Claremont’s early-stage startup successes and the investors backing them. We’re excited for the glory days ahead.👇

~ Josh & Miles

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📊 6th Street Stats: Claremont’s Early-Stage Startup Success

Authors: Josh Tatum & Miles Bird

Since the early 2000s, the Claremont Colleges have quietly started establishing itself as a highly successful university producer of entrepreneurs and founders. We’ve scraped a variety of internet sources, including LinkedIn, Pitchbook, and Crunchbase, and found that the numbers of Claremont entrepreneurs, Claremont-founded companies, and Claremont financings rounds have all steadily increased year after year to a point where Claremont’s startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem can no longer be overlooked.

We’ve found that historically, Claremont founders have founded over 1,100 venture-backable startups that have gone on to raise over $50.6B in financings. Twenty of these companies have gone on to IPO, 164 have been acquired, and another 15 are currently privately valued north of $1B. 🦄

Claremont’s ecosystem has had major IPOs like Cisco (current $164B market cap), Avalara (current $8.1B market cap), Doximity (current $5.8B market cap), and Intellia Therapeutics (current $4.2B market cap); and has had major acquisitions like Github ($7.5B by Microsoft), Kyphon ($3.9B by Medtronic), and Cruise Automation ($1.2B by GM).

However, the success of this ecosystem isn’t just in the past. The future is even brighter as most of these 1,100 + Claremont-founded startups have been founded in the last decade. These early-stage companies are not only being built but they’re also being financed and backed by top-tier investors.

Over the last ten years, Claremont-founded companies have raised at least 979 financing rounds from investors and venture capital institutions for over $31B. Of those 979 financings, 512 have been early-stage financings (Pre-seed, Seed, and Series A rounds). These numbers are also a conservative estimate, given that some financing rounds happen unannounced, particularly at the early stages. Below are Claremont’s total early-stage financings over the past decade, broken down by early-stage round type.

Unsurprisingly, investors and institutions have started to take notice of these impressive Claremont founders and their companies, and 42% of those 512 early-stage financing rounds involved top-tier institutional investors and VC firms. Below are some of the most active, top-tier institutional investors in Claremont-founded companies over the last decade.

Over the last decade, the Claremont startup ecosystem has averaged ~100 financings rounds and over $3B in raised capital per year. Some of the most active investors in the ecosystem right now are top-tier investors like Y Combinator, Accel, 8VC, and Techstars.

This seems like an ecosystem to start giving some attention to. 👀

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💼 Who’s Hiring?:

Agni, co-founded by Claremont grad Miriam Cruz, is a food healing company that makes foods and teas to support women through all stages of their reproductive health cycle. Agni’s cookies, teas, and seasonings are designed to replenish the nutrients women are most often depleted in and to support hormone balance, better periods, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and menopause.

Agni is hiring a program manager to scale their peer-to-peer sales community women to 10,000 women over the coming 24 months. They’re looking for an exceptional sales and marketing strategist to lead these efforts:

Consultant Program Manager

Founded by Claremont alumnus Ashwin Navin, Samba TV creates data at the heart of TV, powering a more scientific approach to advertising and a better viewing experience. By recognizing what's on screen, Samba TV learns what viewers like, and using machine learning algorithms, enables the discovery of shows and actors in a whole new way.

Earlier this year, Samba TV partnered with Disney to be their official measurement partner providing alternative data to Disney advertisers looking to better understand how their content is viewed in real-time via streaming. They’re hiring for the following roles:

Claremont graduate Josh Lewis is the CEO and co-founder of Sensible — the Twilio company for PDFs that transforms documents into structured data. Sensible’s mission is to bring about a world where computers do the work that computers are designed for (processing large volumes of data) so that humans can do what humans are best at (critical thinking and empathy).

Sensible is backed by some of the top investors in Silicon Valley, and they’re looking for more talented individuals to join their growing team:

Check out the other ~5,000 open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 1,000+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 40+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!

If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.

🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:

This week’s top read 🔥

Founded by Claremont graduate James Kaplan, the metaverse AI startup MeetKai is extending physical reality into the metaverse and has started mapping the entire world inside its virtual realm. MeetKai says it has the best AI on the market, with the capability to understand and remember natural speech and negation queries.

MeetKai Inc. @meetkaihub

🚀 We’re thrilled to have been listed last month in @VentureBeat ‘s “10 Blockchain Startups to Watch”. Click here to read more venturebeat.com/ai/blockchain-…

venturebeat.com10 blockchain startups to watchAmidst a surplus of funding, despite the economic downturn, here’s how 10 startups in the blockchain space are continuing to thrive.

This week’s Claremont financings 💸

Claremont alumnus Benson Tsai is a former co-founder of Motiv Power Systems and also a former engineer at SpaceX and Lucid Motors. A few years ago, he left Lucid to co-found Stellar Pizza. Stellar Pizza is hoping to become the future of pizza delivery with its automated, robotic pizza truck that will reduce labor and expensive real estate. JAY-Z recently led Stellar’s Series A with his VC firm Marcy Venture Partners.

HYPEBEAST @HYPEBEAST

JAY-Z Invests $16.5 Million USD Into Robot-Powered Restaurant Stellar Pizza

hypebeast.comJAY-Z Invests $16.5 Million USD Into Robot-Powered Restaurant Stellar PizzaThe first-of-its-kind mobile pizza restaurant.

This week’s top listen 🎧

Claremont alumnus Sebastian Brunemeier talks about the path to immortality, decentralized science business models, and the nexus between crypto and longevity on the Stranded Technologies Podcast. Brunemeier is the co-founder and GP at Healthspan Capital, a fund focused on longevity biotech & geroscience, and the co-founder/CEO at ImmuneAGE Pharma, a drug discovery platform for immune system rejuvenation.

Everything else you need to know💡

Carbon capture and transformation company Lanzatech has partnered with the world’s largest energy transition fund, Brookfield Renewable, to co-develop more commercial-scale carbon recycling plants. LanzaTech, led by Claremont grad and CEO Jennifer Holmgren, harnesses the power of biology and big data to create climate-safe materials and fuels.

LanzaTech @LanzaTech

News! The largest fund in the world focused on the energy transition, @Brookfield Global Transition Fund has partnered with us — committing $500 million to co-develop and build new commercial-scale production plants for carbon capture and transformation. globenewswire.com/news-release/2…

IRIS.TV, co-founded by Claremont alumni Field Garthwaite and Winston Owens, is the only data platform built for video. They provide video data connectivity to enable better viewing experiences and advertising outcomes. Last spring, they raised an $18M Series B from Intel Capital and were recently named one of the most promising ad and marketing startups.

IRIS.TV @iris_tv

We're honored to be named by @BusinessInsider as one of "The 19 most promising advertising and marketing tech startups of 2022, according to VCs". bit.ly/3RePtyE

Can’t get enough of Between the Lines? Follow and connect with us on Twitter!

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🍽️ BTL Snacks:

🌎 How to Build a Remote, International Sales Team….. Hiring a sales team comes with plenty of challenges, especially if it’s international. Claremont alumnus Neal Kemp shares how to evaluate choosing a country, training remote employees, finding international sellers, and defining your strategy. Neal is the co-founder of Strider — an online hiring platform for pre-vetted talent in South America.
🏠 Women Leaders In Construction….. Claremont alumnus Christina Lindal was recently named president of Lindal Cedar Homes. She is the first woman to lead the company since its creation in 1940 and one of only a small number of women leaders in the construction and manufacturing industry. Lindal Cedar Homes is a world leader in home design and the largest manufacturer of custom post-and-beam homes made of cedar and other quality materials.

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💸 Issue #65: Claremont's Early-Stage Startup…