Weekly Round Up: 11/20/20

At Greenspring we believe in venture capital's ability to propel innovation, job creation and positive societal change. We celebrate those who think differently, take measured risk and challenge perceptions. Here's what's trending in VC this week:

In what could be a game changer in distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, venture-backed Moderna is looking more effective than other candidates at 95% - and easier to store. Moderna’s vaccine remains stable at 36-46 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of a standard home or medical refrigerator, for up to 30 days. It can be stored for up to six months at negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit. By comparison, Pfizer's vaccine requires a storage temperature of minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit. Read more here.

The Wall Street Journal has just released its Women to Watch in Venture Capital List for 2020, which includes some venture investors to watch out for. Congratulations to Kelly Dill, Principal at Greenspring primary manager Imaginary and Grace Chao, Vice President at Felicis Ventures as well as all the other #WomeninVC. Read the full list here. 

💬Join Greenspring CFO Lindsay Redfield and other industry leaders on December 8th for the VC StratComm Summit presented by the National Venture Capital Association. Lindsay will be discussing how VC professionals can better communicate and measure DE&I messaging as well as Greenspring’s take on this topic! Register here.

Klaviyo, a Boston-based marketing automation and data analysis firm, has raised $200 million in Series C financing led by Greenspring primary manager Accel. Read more about this here.

“[T]here are many SaaS product categories where the market leaders have emerged from the low end of the market by leveraging intuitive product experience and low-touch go-to-market strategy to undermine any ‘higher end’ competition”. Greenspring primary manager, Bessemer Venture Partners, discusses 10 tips on moving upmarket as a Saas focused small to midsize business (SMB) here. 

This week on This is Series A, a podcast by Greenspring primary manager Bessemer Venture Partners, hosted by Talia Goldberg, Melanie Perkins of Canva and Rachel Carlson of Guild Education talk about new ways for technology to equalize access. Listen to this episode here. 

Forter, a company selling online fraud detection software powered by AI, has raised $125 million in recent financing led by Greenspring primary managers Bessemer Venture Partners & Felix Capital, with participation from Greenspring primary manager Scale Venture Partners. Read more here.

Alyson Welch, VP of enterprise sales at Twilio, discusses the company’s four-phase framework for upmarket strategy in the most recent blog post by Greenspring primary manager Bessemer Venture Partners. Read more here. 

Congratulations to Felicis-backed FarmWise, which helps farmers become more efficient and grow food more sustainably, for being recognized on Time Magazine’s list of the Best Inventions of 2020! Find the full list here.

Venture history in the making: In partnership with NASA, Founders Fund and Craft Ventures-backed SpaceX successfully launched four astronauts into orbit yesterday on the Crew Dragon. After docking at the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory, the crew will conduct science and maintenance before returning to earth in spring 2021. Also aboard, a stowaway Baby Yoda! Read more here.

Check out this recent conversation between Stanford University lecturer Ravi Belani and Ravi Mhatre, Founding Partner at Greenspring primary manager Lightspeed Venture Partners, exploring what a career in VC looks like and some of the sectors and technologies that are poised to transform the future here.

Watch Greenspring Advisory Board member and Mayfield Fund Managing Director Navin Chadda unpack the trends he is seeing in VC and entrepreneurship, from the rise of the individual to engineering biology, in this clip from the Web Summit Venture Day here. 

Check out the CEO and Co-Founder of Obvious Ventures direct investment Incredible Health, Iman Abuzeid, as she discusses building resilience during challenging times with NPR’s How I Built This with Guy Raz. As a custom-matching platform for hiring permanent nurses, the company has had a busy year amid the pandemic-induced shortage. Watch here. 

Struggling to write cold emails that actually get a response? Greenspring primary manager OpenView gives you their best tips for writing outreach emails that will actually get read here. 

“If the dominant question in March 2020 was how defensive should we be, the big budget question for 2021 is how offensive should we be.” With some tech companies not just surviving but on a relative basis thriving, Greenspring primary manager Scale Venture Partners discusses how companies should think about budgeting for potential re-acceleration in 2021. Read more here. 

Huge congrats to on-demand custom manufacturing platform and GA portfolio company Xometry on being named to the Deloitte 2020 Technology Fast 500 list of North American industry disruptors. Find the full list here. 

Our #JobOfTheWeek this week is from Fabric, which is a micro fulfillment solution helping with e-commerce from small spaces, backed by Greenspring primary manager Aleph. Fabric is looking to hire a Project Design Engineer to join the Deployment Team helping deploy the project from early stage through customer handover. Sound like something of interest? Apply here. 

Greenspring primary manager NFX is looking to hire a Head of Public Relations & Social Media. The candidate should have a proven track record in securing stories in top tech publications, someone who is a creative thinker and learner as well as someone who is looking to create value! Sound like you'd be a good fit? Apply here. 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.