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People procrastinate about buying insurance because it’s such a boring and complicated chore to compare policies. But Cover combines plans from 45 insurance companies into a single marketplace so it’s easy to find the best one for your car, home, rental, business, personal property, pets, jewelry and more. Now Cover is building powerful onboarding tricks like a driving school that earns you lower car insurance rates, and a way for Shopify merchants to sell warranties for their items.

The personal finance app Empower is throwing the kitchen sink at Millennials to recruit them as users. It’s offering traditional banking features like 1% cash back on debit card transactions and a 1.85% interest savings account, and it has secured $4.5 million in new investment, led by Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm Initialized Capital. Sequoia also invested in the “seed” round, bringing Empower’s total funding so far to $5.5 million.

Last fall, Defy Partners quietly raised $151 million for its maiden fund. Although the firm has largely operated under the radar since it wrapped up it fundraising, its Series A dealmaking is drawing attention. Co-Founders and Managing Directors Neil Sequeira and Trae Vassallo told VCJ that they went off to the races after the final close,…

Owl,  the two-way dash cam founded by a team of ex-Apple and Dropcam executives, has secured a $10 million Series A1 round led by Canvas Ventures. This brings Owl’s total funding to $28 million. “We’ve seen a lot of pent-up demand for car security, and Owl is tapping into that demand with a product that’s easy…

With a raging bull public market, massive M&A deals like Salesforce’s $6.5 billion acquisition of Mulesoft (not to mention Monsanto’s $85 billion acquisition of Bayer), and a record-setting Q1 for global M&A (totaling $1.2 trillion in value) with a strong Q2 ($715 billion in value) it seems like all the heat is currently focused at…

Defy, the early-stage firm founded by Neil Sequeira and Trae Vassallo, is on a mission to back entrepreneurs whose business model can upend an industry just beginning to be touched by digital platforms. The firm says it is doing just that by investing in Airspace Technologies Inc., a logistics startup that works with driver-contractors and…

Airspace Technologies, a technology enabled provider of time definite logistics, has raised an $8M Series A funding round to develop its next generation delivery network and software platform. The Series A was led by Defy with participation from Qualcomm Ventures (the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated), Cross Culture Ventures, and Schematic Ventures. Based in Carlsbad, CA, Airspace Technologies provides…

Financial advisors aren’t cheap to use. They aren’t always seen as trustworthy, either, with many advisors receiving — or perceived as receiving — incentives for recommending certain products over others.

Grove, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup, is taking on both of these issues through software that makes it easier for its own financial advisors — who are paid a straight salary — to help greater numbers of people, and more cost-effectively.

Trae Vassallo is the Co-Founder and Managing Director @ Defy.VC, one of Silicon Valley’s newest and most exciting Series A funds with the announcement of their debut $151m fund in Sept 2017. Prior to co-founding Defy, Trae was a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where she invested in a number of leading companies including eero, Nest Labs,…

Startups like Zillow and Trulia have reshaped the real estate market by giving consumers their 24-hour covetable, clickable window into shoppable home sales — and the other players in the real estate marketplace are struggling to catch up.